Lay Me Down

15. Turn around.

{Cary}

"So—five weeks, no incidents." There was a small pop as the counsellor opened the tube of hand lotion, and her office filled with the smell of lemons and vanilla.

Cary shrugged, stroking another dark line on the paper in front of him. He was keeping his head down at school, filling in more than half the blanks on his assignments with his cramped scrawl, and taking the bus back to the stop a block from the Whites' every day. Five weeks was the longest trouble-free stretch in his high school career, and as far as he was concerned, that meant there wasn't any reason to keep showing up here for an hour in the counsellor's office.

"So what's different now, Cary? My boss thinks I'm helping you, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. Since you talk about as much here as you do waiting for the bus on the bench out there."

"I talk in here." His voice was dry with disuse, like it got at school. He could go days without speaking.

After a pause, the woman asked, "What are you drawing?"

"A bird Bea found." He darkened the black bead of the eye, careful to leave the white dot of reflected light untouched. That tiny speck of light was the difference between dead and alive. "It fell out of the nest. Pete told her its parents were coming back for it. It had a broken wing or something." The bird's beak was open, crying that tiny cry as it fluttered on the ground.

"What happened then?" the woman asked.

"It died." He had gone back later that day and found the bird lying still and silent in the leaf litter under the bush. The black bead of its eye was dull, and its limp body weighed nothing at all in Cary's hand. He had scratched a shallow grave under the pine tree where the rest of the living chicks stuck their fuzzy heads above the nest and peeped—where Bea would never find it.

"How did you feel about that?"

Cary shrugged. "It's just a bird."

"Which you're drawing now," she pointed out.

He looked at her sideways, spreading his hand over the page. He hadn't drawn anything from his old house in weeks. Those memories seemed a long way away now.

The counsellor lifted her eyebrows, the corners of her lips turning up in an almost-smile before she turned her chair aside like there was something interesting on the wall beside her window. Today her hair puffed around her head like dandelion seed. "Do you think there was anything Pete could have done to save that bird?"

Cary dropped his eyes. The bird was a small, crumpled shape, dark in the middle of the white page. "No." He thought of Pete dropping to a crouch beside his daughter, stroking one hand down her back as she hugged his knee.

"She'll be okay, right, Daddy?"

"Sure she will, Honey Bee," Pete's voice had rumbled comfortingly. "Her parents will take care of her."

Bea had turned a glowing face to Cary, crouched silently next to her. "See?"

He had made a smile back—he could do that now—and Pete's warm look had moved from his daughter to Cary for a moment. Cary had carried that look to warm himself with for the rest of the day. He had the leftovers of Pete Whites' care for his real children, and he hoarded every scrap like treasure.

Cary shook his head. "It was too broken. If he'd tried, he would've just hurt it more. But if he'd thought there was a chance, he would have tried. He's good at fixing things."

She had her chin propped in her hand, watching him as he spoke. "Pete sounds like someone you admire very much," she said.

"I guess." Cary looked aside. He didn't really know what she meant by that.