Black Wings Read online

  Marian shrugged, uncomfortable with the question. They’d been neighbors for about a year, but this woman was essentially still a stranger. Too many people felt like it was okay to ask women about their plans for their uteruses, she thought, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t sound rude, even if she thought Amy’s question had been a little intrusive.

  She was saved from answering when Amy noticed Briella and Toby had reached the end of the cul-de-sac, passing Hank’s house and starting down the small path that cut between his yard and the house between his and Amy’s. That house had been empty for the past six months, and the yard was overgrown, providing a border of grass and weeds to the left of the path. On the right side, Hank’s electric dog fence was marked about two feet back with small white flags.

  “Toby, wait for Mommy!” Amy’s voice had risen high enough that Briella and Toby both turned around to look with surprised expressions.

  It was because of the dog. Rufus, Hank’s ill-tempered hound, wasn’t always out in the yard, but today he trotted toward the boundary of the electric fence. The dog kept his distance from the flags, trained by the shock collar, but the moment Briella put a foot to the path, the dog barked and ran back and forth along the invisible barrier.

  Toby, startled, began to cry until Amy got to him and picked him up. Briella didn’t look frightened, but she hung back to wait for Marian to take her hand. Her little fingers squeezed.

  “It’s okay, Mama, he won’t come beyond the fence.”

  The girl was trying to comfort her, Marian realized with a pang of emotion, a surge of love so deep and strong she wondered how any mother could endure it without dying a little from the force of it.

  “I don’t like those shock fences,” Amy said in a low voice as they managed to get beyond Hank’s yard and into the forest proper. “They don’t seem safe. And they feel cruel.”

  Marian had let go of Briella’s hand so the girl could run ahead to the small pond a bit farther down the path. After a moment, Amy hesitantly let Toby down to join her. She gave Marian a sideways glance.

  “I admire you,” she said.

  Marian let out a surprised laugh. “What? Why?”

  “You just seem so confident as a mother.” Amy shrugged and looked awkward. “I hover. I fret. Jeff says I baby Toby too much, but you know what, he’s still a baby to me. Jeff says that soon enough he won’t be, and I guess that’s true, so why not let me…you know. Let him be a baby for as long as I can? Toby! Not so far ahead! See? I just…”

  Marian shook her head at Amy’s self-conscious laugh, and both of them stepped up the pace to get around the bend in the path so they could see the kids. “You don’t have to apologize to me. I get it. I’m glad you see me as being so confident, because I can tell you, Amy, I am so, so not.”

  “Not so close, wait for Mommy!” Amy shouted.

  Briella was the one to wait, looking over her shoulder, and she grabbed the back of Toby’s overalls to haul him a step back from the pond’s edge. The pond itself was little more than a drainage ditch, not deep enough to sustain fish. But it was home to a chorus of peeping frogs all summer long, even into the late fall.

  The path continued toward a stream that ran along the power lines, but Marian had never hiked beyond the pond. Dean had told her that as a teen, he and his buddies had hung out by the stream, skinny-dipping and smoking weed, drinking beer. The path ended at the junkyard, where the coyotes were rumored to linger.

  “Were you close with your mom?” Marian asked as they drew closer to the pond.

  Amy smiled. “Yeah. She’s an inspiration to me. She always had time for us, no matter what. Dinner on the table at six. Came to every school event. The whole thing. Even now, she’s always there for me when I need her. How about you?”

  “My mom passed away about nine years ago. But yes, we were close. We were different in a lot of ways. I know I disappointed her sometimes, mostly about religion. But I always felt like she understood me.”

  Amy smiled. “Oh, that must be nice for you. To have been so close to your mom, and to have such a great relationship with your daughter. I’m sure that has a lot to do with why you’re such a good mom to Briella.”

  I don’t understand Briella, Marian wanted to say. And I don’t know if I could ever have explained that to my mom.

  “Gogs!” Toby pointed at the pond, his face alight.

  It was the first time Marian had heard the kid speak, and the toddler way he shouted the word made her laugh.… And it felt good to laugh, she thought, realizing it had been too long since she had. Standing on the edge of the tiny pond, watching her daughter and the neighbor boy hunting all around for ‘gogs’, Marian breathed in the warm fall air and let herself simply enjoy the moment.

  “We’re working with him on his language skills. He’s a bit developmentally delayed,” Amy said, sounding embarrassed. Her chin went up, her mouth giving a little wobble, but she didn’t cut her gaze from Marian’s. “I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “I hadn’t,” Marian assured her. Amy’s admission made Marian somehow like her more.

  Amy stared past her, toward the kids. “It’s harder than I thought it would be. You know when they’re born, you have all these big plans. I think I hold on to him so hard because I’m worried he’s never going to…that he’s going to have trouble. Now he’s still little, you know, people give him a break. But the older he gets, the less kind people will be.”

  “I do know,” Marian said a little too fervently.

  “I got one!” Briella’s breathy scream of excitement brought Marian back to herself.

  “Gross,” Amy said with a wrinkled nose.

  Briella was squeezing the frog in one fist, its legs dangling from between her fingers. Yeah, the critter was supposed to have pop eyes, but Marian was pretty sure they were bulging from the kid’s grip. She waved a hand.

  “Not so tight, Bean.”

  “I have to hold him tight, or he’ll get away!”

  “You’re going to squish it,” Marian said, but Briella was too busy squealing at the feeling of the frog in her palm to pay attention. She sighed. “Let Toby look.”

  Annoyance flashed across Briella’s face, but she bent to let the little boy see the frog in her hand. When he tried to grab it, though, she held it up too high from him to reach.

  “No, no,” she scolded. “You’ll squish it.”

  Toby didn’t cry, but giggled as Briella bent again to show him the frog, which took that moment to struggle its way free. With a shout, Briella grabbed at it as the frog tried to hop away. She caught it by one leg and lifted it, swinging, while Marian cried out for her to be careful. The weight of the frog’s body was too much for it, and as Briella swung, she was left holding only the leg as the rest of it tore free.

  Toby was screaming, Amy was shouting, Marian was trying to catch the falling frog. Briella held on to the single leg with a stunned look. The rest of the frog hit the dirt by the pond and lay there without moving before feebly trying to hop with one leg toward the water.

  “Don’t touch it,” Amy told Toby, who was trying to pick it up. She gave Marian a wild-eyed look of panic.

  Marian’s stomach twisted at the sight of the mangled frog, and she bent to try and nudge it along to the water, even though the thought of touching it grossed her out. “Bean…”

  “I didn’t mean to!”

  “I know you didn’t. It was an accident.”

  From the woods on the other side of the pond, a black shape flew. It circled them, rasping out its rough greeting, before diving toward the maimed frog and stabbing it with its beak. Amy screamed again, this time lifting Toby to shield him from the sight. Marian fell back, still feeling the wind from the raven’s wings on her face.

  The damned thing had nearly clipped her. For a second she considered trying to wrest the now limp frog from its mouth, out of