The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook - Lydia Millet (primary phonics .txt) 📗

“What the hell is that?” asked Max, amazed.

“Another friend,” said her mother. “Mine and yours too. Our friends are everywhere.”

“And our enemies?” asked Cara.

Their mother smiled sadly. “You’ll know when I need you. Until then, listen and learn. And remember this before all else: you may sometimes feel alone, but you are not. You are not alone.”

“Mom,” said Jax suddenly. “Why can’t we—why can’t I go with you?”

“Not now, Jackson,” she said kindly.

Then the enormous, flapping beast descended from the trees onto the reedy mudflats and was hunched over in front of them, its wings stretched out to the sides, its head lowered. Cara couldn’t see well anymore—they’d left the headlamps hanging from branches in the backyard—and though she squinted, she couldn’t make it out exactly. She couldn’t see the head or beak from where she stood, and she thought maybe it wasn’t a living thing at all but some kind of an elaborate machine. No bird could possibly be so big.

Her mother stepped onto its back. She took hold of something that almost looked like a pair of reins.

“Stay safe. Remember how much I love you,” she said. “Never doubt that.”

The dark beast beat its wings and rose up into the sky, their mother standing on it in her bare feet, her hair streaming behind her and the thin sundress flapping. They raised their hands to wave—they couldn’t help it, Cara thought, even if the hands would be invisible in the dark.

As the flying thing went up higher, Cara thought she saw her mother sit down, the way you’d ride on a horse, but it all happened too fast for her to be sure.

Soon both of them, their mother and whatever she was riding on, were lost in the dark above—a blot against the field of stars.

And then nothing at all.

The chirping of crickets grew up around them; there was the lapping of the tide. Cara felt the day-to-day world coming back.

She realized she was standing in cool, wet mud and didn’t like how it felt; her clothes were clammy and dirty; and the tube of her mother’s old lipstick, now warmed by her skin, was still clutched tight in her right hand.

“Jax,” said Max, presently. They made their way back up to the house, subdued. “You’ve gotta know. You always do. All she said was friend. But seriously. Talking turtles, mythic women that are half-seal, and now—? What the hell was that thing?”

“I can’t be sure,” said Jax. His voice sounded small. “But it looked an awful lot like a pterosaur.”

The next morning Cara made toast, put it on a tray with a glass of orange juice, and carried it out to her dad. He’d been working away in his study since before any of them could drag themselves out of bed, but these days he often forgot to eat breakfast.

They had decided she should be the one to talk to him—that she should just say she’d had a conversation with their mother. If Cara said she alone had talked to their mother, Max had reasoned, their dad wouldn’t feel as singled out.

Also, someone was going to have to tell their dad about Rufus. Say Rufus had run away, or something.… Their dad had loved Rufus. She could barely stand to think about it.

“’Morning, Dad,” she said, peeking around the door jamb.

He smiled at her from behind his big desk. He had his chair pushed back, balanced on its two back legs with the front two legs in the air. There was a thick paperback book propped open on his lap, and his sock-clad feet were crossed atop one of the desk’s precarious piles of papers, which looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

“Good morning,” he said.

She pushed the door open with her elbow, since she had the breakfast tray in her hands. The curtains had been pulled wide open and light streamed in from the sky; she could see the high, clear blue, the fleecy clouds, and the sparkle of the water out the window behind him. The room seemed kind of golden, and her dad actually looked all right—better than he had the day before, jammed miserably into the red sports car with not enough room for his guilt over Max.

“I made you some toast,” she said. “With the butter all melted and lots of raspberry jam. Your favorite, right?”

“Very thoughtful of you, my dear,” he said, and smiled at her.

She went up to the desk and set the plate down.

“I can make you coffee, too, if you want,” she added.

“Well, this is the VIP treatment,” he said. “What did I do to deserve it?”

“Listen,” she said, and perched opposite him on the arm of one of the big chairs. “It’s a kind of small celebration.”

“Oh? What are we celebrating, then?” He picked up a piece of toast, biting in.

“Dad. Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do,” he said, chewing.

“You know how, back in the early part of the summer, from time to time—even though she never picked up—I would, you know, try Mom’s cell,” she said. It was true. “Remember?”

“I do. Jax and Max, too. And eventually we decided you kids should stop it, that it was getting you down. Hearing her talk on the voice mail and never reaching her.”

“But so, I tried again, just, kind of, for something to do. You know, like randomly, because I was bummed out or whatever. Yesterday night.”

“Mmm,” said her dad, and nodded slowly, cocking his head to one side to keep listening. She thought he was trying not to look judgmental.

“And the thing is…” A white lie, she thought. For his own good. “She picked up.”

Her dad stopped mid-chew, slowly setting his half-eaten toast down on the desk. Lifting his feet carefully off his desk, setting them on the floor, and sitting forward. The front legs of the chair made a cracking sound as they hit the floor. As though in a daze, he