The Aviary (31 page)

Ruby came in rubbing her eyes. “Good morning to you all,” she said. “I’ve slept no more than two hours, but here is the sun again and hungry people needing to be fed.”

“Morning?” said Clara. “Oh dear. I must leave a signal for Daphne that we’re all well.”

“Ahem!” said Frances. “Who says we are all well?”

Peter stretched out his yellow neck and chattered at Clara while Helen hopped onto the kitchen table and did a little dance of distress.

“Clara,” said George, “we need to go home. You remember, don’t you?”

Clara bowed her head. “Forgive me. Of course.” She looked searchingly at George.

“Do you know how it can be done?”

“Trial and error, no doubt!” he proclaimed.

“But mostly error,” said Frances, “if past is precedent.”

“Where
is
Elliot?” asked George.

“In the parlor with Harriet,” said Ruby as she fed the stove. “They’re afraid to let go of each other, it seems. It’s a second courtship, I declare.”

“Are you talking about us?”

Clara saw her mother in the doorway, leaning on her father’s arm, and leapt up. “We’re discussing you for good reason. We need Father to help free his brothers and sisters.”

Elliot patted his wife’s arm. “You must excuse me. I’ve been looking around at the house with Harriet, and I lost myself in admiration for the old place. The woodwork in the foyer and the staircase is incomparable.”

“Your father can hardly wait to get his hands on the place,” Harriet told Clara, “warts and all.”

“So we’re staying?” Clara asked.

“I like fixing things,” he said. “Setting things to rights. Besides, it’s our family home, and I’d like to have my time in it.”

“Good,” Frances said. “But first, set
us
to rights.”

“I’m at your service, Brothers and Sisters. Where do we begin?”

“We can start with the clue from the mourning picture,” Clara said. “I think I remember the poem by heart”:

“From the sound of that,” Elliot said, “my coming back to Lockhaven should already have released everyone.”

“Maybe you’re meant to say the rhyme together?” Clara suggested.

“Bee-tee-WEE?!” said Peter.

“Clara,” Frances said, “Peter would like to remind you that there are only two of us who speak.”

“Oh yes. I keep forgetting,” Clara said.

“Let’s try something else,” Elliot said. He spread his arms and passed his hands over the heads of the birds while reciting the rhyme. Clara held her breath and waited for a transformation. But nothing happened. So he tried next to touch the birds as he recited, but nothing changed.

Clara felt a knot of apprehension in her chest. She knew how badly the Glendoveers had longed for Elliot’s help; how they had looked to it as their only hope. What if they never figured out what was required?

“All right,” Clara said, “let’s think hard. Is there someplace that the children considered themselves most at ‘home’?”

“We did gather often in the parlor,” George said.

Elliot nodded. “Let’s try it.”

Again, in the parlor, Clara watched as her father went
through the motions, reciting the incantation; and after each attempt, the mood of the room became more somber.

“Dear, dear, dear …,” George trailed off. “Not good.”

Then Helen, the youngest and smallest and greenest, began to sing! She swept around the room, angling her little body so that she just missed the noses of the grown-ups as she circled.

“A brilliant idea!” Frances said. “Helen says to follow her.”

The honeycreeper darted up the stairwell and down the long hall until she came to the room with the children’s old furniture.

“The nursery!” said George. “We each have happy memories here.”

“I have the key!” said Clara’s mother. As soon as she got the door opened, she rushed to the bank of windows over the wide window seat, pulled back the dusty curtains, and opened a window to let the air in.

“What a spectacle!” said Ruby.

Coral clouds glowed in a blue sky that looked warm enough to swim in. And though dew still clung to the lawn and masses of roses below, the room took on the garden’s heady fragrance as if it were two in the afternoon.

“I remember seeing the sun rise here on summer mornings,” George said.

“Yes,” returned Frances. “And Mother always sat there in the rocker. That’s where I remember seeing you too, Elliot. We all were rocked in that chair.”

Clara’s father went over to the old rocker and ran his hand reverently over its dusty back. “Thank you, Frances,” he said. “It does me good to know that someone remembers me as one of the Glendoveer children.”

“Everyone!” cried George. “The chair.”

“Yes,” said Elliot. He sat in the rocker, and the birds perched around him, all bathed in the morning light. Each bird stretched out so that the family was connected, wing to wing, feather to finger. Then Elliot recited:

And on that word
home
, Clara beheld the bodies of the birds dissolving into a dazzle of light and sparkle. She was forced to close her eyes, though she did not want to. And when she opened them, there they were: all of the Glendoveer children, outlined in a soft opalescent glow and dressed impeccably in white, down to their boots—and smiling! She had never seen such smiles.

“ ’Tis a miracle,” said Ruby through her tears.

Clara herself could not speak.
How does one address a roomful of ghosts?
she wondered. But when little Helen stepped forward and seized Clara around the waist, she allowed her hand to rest on the girl’s silky hair and found, to her astonishment, that these children felt as real as she was.

“You are so warm!” said Helen in a high, clear voice. “How good it feels to hold you.”

Peter, fair and freckled, pushed his brother Arthur forward teasingly. “Go, give her a kiss,” he said.

But Arthur didn’t hesitate. He threw his arms around Clara too, and when he allowed her to kiss his black brows without so much as a blush, Peter had to have his kiss as well.

Handsome George stood straight, his transparent blue eyes shining. He stepped forward, took one of Clara’s hands, kissed it, and bowed. “Words fail me,” he said. “I am too happy.”

“Me too,” Clara managed to stammer. Seeing him now in all his joyful radiance was a vision that she knew she would never forget.

Now only Frances stood alone. Clara could see by her dark, intelligent gaze and sharp features that she was indeed the mynah of old. Her straight ebony hair was pulled back from her face in a white bow, and her smile was sly.

Clara and Frances advanced toward each other and clasped hands. “It’s a good thing that we had you to help us, Clara Glendoveer,” Frances said.

“No, I thank you, Frances. I’d never have figured out what to do if you hadn’t pushed me,” Clara told her. “I wouldn’t have my father.”

“Enjoy him, Clara!” Frances said. “Every minute you have together. Time moves by very quickly—except, perhaps,
when you are spending decades in a birdcage,” she added drily.

With an abrupt nod, Frances too let go of Clara and addressed her siblings.

“Now let us go to our own mother and father. I suspect they might be as impatient to see us as we are to see them. Who goes first?” she asked.

“Me!” said Arthur, raising his hand. “I’m the bravest!”

“No, you aren’t,” protested Peter. “I’m just as brave as you!”

“As the oldest, I should lead the way,” George said.

“Don’t leave before I do,” said Helen.

While the children argued, Frances raised the hem of her skirt and climbed atop the window seat. With a push of her hand, the cross-paned window flew wide open, and she scanned the sky.

“Follow me!” she said.

She jumped before anyone could stop her. Ruby slumped into Elliot’s arms, and Clara buried her head in her mother’s shawl. And then she swore she heard a familiar voice.

“Who’s next?”

Clara had to look up. There was Frances the Mynah, perched on the windowsill, canting her head jauntily, as if she was quite pleased with herself.

“Surprised?” asked Frances.

“Shocked, is more like it,” Clara told her. “Oh, Frances, I thought you were all done with feathers!”

She answered with a sigh. “I know. It’s a shame to put them on again, but it’s only for the moment. We Glendoveers have a final flight to make.” Frances, her red eyes gleaming, hopped forward to regard the others and crowed, “Come, everyone! Let’s put these wings to use one last time!”

Arthur and Peter gave a whoop, mounted the window seat, jumped, and popped up again on the sill beside Frances in feathered form.

“Carry me?” asked Helen, reaching up to George.

He took her on his hip, but did not leave before shaking everyone’s hand. “My brother,” he told Elliot, “we shall meet again when it is your time. Until then …”

George took to the window seat with a bound, Helen waving at them all over his shoulder—and they were off!

Clara, Harriet, Elliot, and Ruby leaned out the casements and watched the children wheel once around the yard and launch into the sky until they became black dots, which evaporated among the clouds.

Clara turned to Ruby. “Do you think we’ll ever hear from Mrs. Glendoveer again?”

“No, no,” she said. “I suspect she’ll be off with her children. All she ever wanted was to be reunited with her family.”

“I hope that doesn’t make you sad, Clara,” her mother said.

“I’m not,” Clara said. And she thought of Daphne, hands jammed in her pockets, declaring, “Life is for the
living
!”

“Shall we go downstairs, then, for our first family breakfast?” her father asked. “I’ve shifted for myself in the kitchen and would love to make you my griddle cakes.”

“Lovely,” said Ruby. “And Harriet and Clara and I will sit at the table and sip our tea. That’s about all I’m good for this morning anyway!”

“There’s never been another one like it,” Clara’s mother said. “Clara, you coming?”

“In a moment, Mama.”

Clara walked to the window facing her friend’s house and pulled the curtains open wide to let her know that, indeed, all was well at the Glendoveers’.

Thanks to Cecile Goyette, Joan Slattery, and Nancy Siscoe for their invaluable help with this book. And a special note of gratitude to Laurel Brady, to whom I owe so much.

Kathleen O’Dell was named a
Publishers Weekly
Flying Start Author for her much-praised debut novel,
Agnes Parker … Girl in Progress
. She is the author of two more Agnes Parker stories and the novels
Ophie Out of Oz
and
Bad Tickets
.

The Aviary
is her first historical mystery, but Kathleen took to the genre like a bird takes to the air. The past became like a second home to her while she was writing this book.

Kathleen O’Dell lives with her husband and sons in Glendale, California. You can learn more about her at
kathleenodell.com
.