Lost Bird (11 page)

That she still couldn’t recognize the blonde girl with short hair and her own blue eyes in the mirror every morning, even though she was the one who’d decided to change her appearance.

That her mom was dead, and her own life forever altered.

That she saw auras now, something that freaked her out at first until she started researching them on the Internet.

That she still had nightmares every night.

Her destination of Florida had simply been a logistical issue. Had she been able to drive to Cuba and spoken Spanish, she would have settled there.

Luckily, trap and skeet were pretty big in Florida. Despite having grown up in New Jersey, the thought of living in Tampa or St. Petersburg freaked Sachi out a little, the sheer size of the cities. Brooksville was smaller, quieter, and there was a community college there she could attend.

Property had been inexpensive, and the staff at the trap and skeet club there were in desperate need of a juniors coach. Within six months, she had built an outwardly good life for herself. She’d invested some of the money her dad gave her from her mom’s life insurance settlement, as well as a wrongful death lawsuit they’d filed and settled out of court. Bought herself a house. Enough money still to pay for school and bills, as long as she was careful.

And she was very,
very
careful. She might have sucked at math and science, but at least she’d managed to snag one stereotypical trait of her mixed heritage and was extremely good at managing her money. She also held down a series of part-time jobs until she was able to prove herself and become a skeet instructor at the field.

Sachi had called Florida home for over eighteen months when she stepped into Many Blessings one afternoon after her school classes, because rain had cancelled her skeet lessons for the day.

That day was another one forever etched in her memory. Thankfully, for a far more positive reason.

Julie had been alone in the store that day. Sachi remembered walking through the door, the bell jingling, and her pausing as the cool AC briefly chilled her and her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light.

The petite, red-haired ball of fire had looked up from where she was writing something down at the counter. Then her eyes had widened before she swooped across the showroom with a happy squeal, as if Sachi were a long-lost friend.

Julie had grabbed Sachi’s hands, a beaming smile on her face. “Yes!”

“Uh, sorry? Yes what?”

Julie squeezed her hands. “You’re hired.”

“I wasn’t coming in here for a job.”

“I know. Doesn’t matter. Auras, right?”

Stunned, Sachi had nodded.

“Then it’s settled. Can you start today, or tomorrow?”

And that was all there was to it. Julie had brooked no disagreement, and Sachi had quit her other part-time job working as a cashier at a hardware store.

Julie, Mandaline, and the others had welcomed her into the fold, worked with her, taught her so much about what she could do, as well as other things. She discovered she had a talent for reading Tarot cards. Combined with her ability to see auras, she was able to start giving readings to customers, then teaching.

Between working at the store, teaching skeet, and going to school, Sachi was almost too busy to look over her shoulder all the time.

She even quit dying her hair and let it grow out again.

About a year after going to work at Many Blessings, she’d spent a quiet evening upstairs in the apartment with Julie, having dinner, and tearfully admitting everything she’d gone through.

The only person, besides her father and the cops, to whom she’d told the complete and unabridged story of what had happened since it happened.

On Julie’s couch, her friend had held her as she’d sobbed the story out in a way she’d never been able to before. Julie was also, at that time, the only other person who knew her real name. She’d wanted Julie to know in case something happened to her, so she could contact her dad for her and tell him.

Julie had held her, gently rocking her. “You are not the sum of your scars, Miki Bloomfeld. You are a beautiful woman, a powerful creature, a steadfast pillar of strength for those who love you. Now and in the future.” She’d cupped Sachi’s face in her hands and made Sachi look her in the eyes.

“The cardinal isn’t your totem just because of your mom’s love for it. It
is
you. You don’t realize how much you brighten a room by walking into it, do you? The people around you love you for your intelligence, your insight, even your snark. You will have to learn to let go of your pain, stop using it as a shield against the world. Once you do, you will open yourself to joy the likes of which you don’t believe is possible.”

Sachi was yanked out of her memories by the pilot’s announcement that they were beginning their final descent into Spokane. Her stomach reflexively clenched as the plane gracefully sank through the clouds.

As she tightly gripped the armrests on either side of her, Brad and Ellis both reached over and covered her hands with theirs.

“Don’t worry,” Ellis said. “We’re here with you.”

“Yeah,” Brad added, “and Mandaline will kick our asses if we don’t take care of you.”

She glanced over at him and spotted his playful smile.

Taking a deep breath, she let it out again. “I
really
appreciate this, guys. I can’t tell you how much.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Ellis said. “Because you’re even more than a friend. You’re family.”

She closed her eyes and took another deep breath.
Family.

Julie, I’m trying to open myself, like you said. I really am. Please help me, if you can hear me. Give me a sign.

Her dad was waiting for them in the terminal, and she let him pull her into his arms for a huge hug.

“I apologize in advance for the disaster at the house,” her dad said as he led them out to his SUV, “but moving is messier than I thought it’d be. It didn’t seem like I had a lot of stuff when I started out to do this.”

Sachi spent most of the ride with her face turned to the window while her dad and the men talked. Some of the passing landscape looked desolate and ruggedly familiar. Other areas no longer resembled her memories in any way due to development.

When he turned off onto the road curving up to the house, she forced herself to breathe. In summer’s dry heat, the area had lost its bright spring green colors in lieu of fading green and even brown. Trees had grown up in the years since she’d left, creating more shade than she remembered in some areas.

And when he pulled into the driveway, she thought about the first time they’d pulled up to the house, that time in a moving truck, her dad driving, herself in the passenger seat.

The past and the present merged, melding, until Brad’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts. “Sachi? You all right?”

“Yeah.” She unfastened her seat belt and opened the door, climbing out. The warm piney air felt dry, unlike Florida’s ironically cooler, albeit muggier breezes.

A moving truck sat backed up near the front door. “I’ve already got my tools loaded,” her dad said. “I figured we’d be dumping a lot of stuff into the storage unit when we get to Florida, so I’d leave everything in there and then could move them into my truck once we’ve got the moving truck emptied.” He walked up to the house and unlocked the door, leading the way inside.

Sachi hung back for a moment, her thoughts a jumbled swirl. She’d been swathed in a painful and emotionally numb kind of haze when they’d first moved here. If it hadn’t been for her father’s gentle prodding, she might never had gotten out of bed again. But he hadn’t given up on her, refused to let her give up on herself despite his own grief.

They’d become a team of sorts, despite everything they’d lost.

When she stepped inside, the past and present did a funky little dance again. It even smelled the same inside, the faint cedar aroma of the paneling in the small house’s living room lingering in the air.

In one corner still stood the glass-fronted curio cabinet. When they’d moved there, Sachi personally had placed every object as close to its original position as she could based on pictures and detailed notes she’d taken before packing it. It had been her mom’s, and the majority of the items were cardinals. Ceramic, glass, even carved wood, they took up the bulk of the six shelves.

It looked like her dad had kept it as close to the same and meticulously dusted everything the way she had.

She opened the door and adjusted the front bird on the third shelf from the top, pointing it a little more out to the front.

The way her mom had kept it.

Her dad walked up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I hope you don’t mind I left it for you to pack. I thought maybe you’d want to do it since you did it before.”

She reached up and squeezed his hands. “Thanks, Daddy,” she whispered, her throat threatening to squeeze closed on the words. “I appreciate it.”

One of John’s guys finished a job sooner than expected and was able to take on another job he’d planned to handle personally. That left him with extremely rare free time.

He opted to swing by Many Blessings. He wanted to invite Sachi to dinner with him and Oscar tomorrow night, on the fourth. They didn’t have a lot to offer in terms of ambiance, but Oscar was a fan-damn-tastic cook. It felt more right doing things that way than trying to arrange a formal three-way date.

Not
date
. Quit calling it that. You’re not asking her out on a date.

No, he didn’t want that. Well, he did, but knew he couldn’t. Dinner didn’t mean a date, right?

What his aunt had said to them at dinner the previous week kept rolling through his head.

He found a parking space on the square. A bell on the door jingled, announcing his arrival as he pushed it open. He walked inside the cool store and enjoyed the way the AC chased the early July heat away. Upon initial glance, it looked like he was the only customer in the store.

A guy wearing an apron stood behind the counter. He recognized him as Brad, from the investigation. Apparently, from Brad’s beaming smile, he recognized John, too.

“Hey, John. How are you?”

“Brad, right?”

“Yeah.” They shook hands over the counter. “Did something else happen at your aunt’s?”

“No.” John suppressed the nervous cough that wanted to break through. “I just wanted to stop by and see Sachi for a moment and ask her a quick question.”

“Oh, sorry. She’s not here.”

His heart sank. “Oh. Well, I can just call her. She left me her cell phone number.”

“No, I mean she’s not in town right now. She and Ellis are driving her dad’s moving truck back to Florida.”

“Oh.” His heart sank even more. His aunt had told them Sachi had postponed things because of a move, but not any of the details. “I didn’t realize she was married.”
Idiot. Why did I say that?
In fact, he could have sworn Aunt Tammy said Sachi was single.

Brad laughed. “Uh,
nooo
. Sachi’s single. Ellis and I are Mandaline’s guys. Ellis is just helping out as a friend. I would have helped drive, too, except I’m not supposed to drive.”

Brad tapped his temple. “Old brain injury. Once in a while, I have seizures. I flew out, helped with the packing part of the operation, and flew back to Florida with her dad. He just started his new job yesterday.”

John was still stuck on trying to process the
Ellis and I
comment. “Huh?”

Brad’s grin widened. “You heard me right. I’m guessing that’s what’s causing your confusion? Don’t worry, it throws everyone who hears it for the first time.”

He stared at Brad. This had gone from a painfully awkward attempt on his part to ask Sachi out to dinner into a very strange and possibly even more awkward discussion.

“Feel free to ask questions, if you want,” Brad said. “We’re used to it.”

John’s brain tried to form words and couldn’t. His mind felt too clogged up to dump vocalizations down into his larynx.

Brad, ever helpful, added, “And we’re not gay, either. It’s called a
poly-V triad
.”

John stared.

“It gets easier to process after the initial shock,” Brad assured him.

The glimmer of something tried to take hold in his mind and he shoved it away. Sure, he and Oscar had had juvenile, frat boy discussions about sharing a woman. Usually after having downed their third or fourth beer each, while in the privacy of their own living room, and usually while watching a bad B-movie on SyFy staring a buxom C-list celebrity.

It wasn’t something that had ever crossed his mind as being in the realm of possibilities, no matter what his aunt had said. He suspected Oscar was also attracted to Sachi, from the way his friend had looked at her at Aunt Tammy’s house the other night, and from how Oscar had tried to hide his disappointment over the postponed investigation.

Not to mention Oscar’s reaction over what Aunt Tammy had said to them.