Fledglings

My dashboard clock hasn't worked in months, but according to my phone it's three of. I barely made it to the funeral, now I'll barely make it today. A therapist once told me that being late a lot is a sign of passive aggression, and when it happens I should try to figure out what I resent about whatever I'm going to. That might have been the case yesterday, but this was my idea and I lay awake for ages last night thinking about how it would go and what to say, so maybe it's just how I am. I quit those sessions not long after that.

It was the way she tucked her hair back that did it for me, even before I really looked hard at her face. Pushed it behind the ear, then tugged the strand with thumb and forefinger along her neck. I've always done that, though I didn't realize it until my brother pointed it out when we were teens. He'd been watching all these crime shows and suddenly thought he could pick out everyone's little tic and tell. At some point he got ahold of some detective kit and tried to fingerprint the cat, Chance, and then told our mother I'd done it when he tracked ink all over the house.

When I saw her do the hair tuck yesterday, it was like I knew before I understood, like when you start singing along with a song before you remember what it's called. I nudged Andrew, who was next to me — we weren't really doing a receiving line, just a formless huddle. "Who is that?" I asked, trying to subtly gesture with my head.

"What?" He was both shaking hands with some older guy, a neighbor, maybe, and trying to stop Braeden, his middle kid, from running a Matchbox car up his arm and into his ear, as he had been doing for most of the ceremony. When Andrew went up to the podium to recite the lines the minister had handed him an hour before, his wife Cindra had shot me a look over Braeden's head as if to say that I, sitting on his other side, was supposed to jump in and correct him at some point. Not likely. I don't think any of those kids even remember that I'm their aunt. "Who?"

"Right there. Black dress with the white flower."

He glanced over. "Probably some cousin? Or someone's date. Why?"

I shouldn't have been surprised that he didn't see what I did. I muttered a vague "hmm-mm" that might've been a noncommittal answer or a reply to the wild-haired woman who was currently telling me that our dad had been "a fine man," which was starting to sound to me like the barest of compliments. Eh. He was fine. For a second I wanted to ask if she was in his bird-watching group and made a nest of her hair in order to attract them, but I thought better of it. It was several more minutes of nodding and closed-mouth smiling before the small crowd started to file out of the church and I could catch up with her in the lobby area.

It's four after. That doesn't really count as late. She's already here, sitting by the window, but she's not looking and doesn't see me until I'm close to the table. She makes a slight movement as if to stand — for a hug? A firm handshake? — but changes her mind. She gives me what I recognize as a nervous smile as I slide into the booth and unwind my scarf.. There it is again, the hair tuck. Her hair's straighter than mine, and lighter, but her features and the shape of her face are strikingly close. I've spent enough years unhappily scrutinizing mine in the mirror, taking those magazine quizzes to see what haircut's supposed to be the most flattering.

God, I'm just studying her and not saying anything. "Thanks for meeting me," I say quickly. "I know you don't have a lot of time."

"No, yeah, it's fine." She gives a half-wave. "My flight's not till 5:00."

"Oh, okay." Silence again. I spent all that time last night thinking of things I wanted to ask, but I didn't bother figuring out how to start. Am I supposed to make small talk first or just get right into it? The waitress makes a well-timed appearance and we both order coffee, and it occurs to me that maybe I'm supposed to pay for both of us here, as I did the inviting. A low, familiar ripple of panic tingles my stomach — what if she orders something else? I only worked three shifts last week. "So—"

She speaks in an anxious rush before I can come up with anything. "Is it okay that I went yesterday? I thought about it a lot, but I thought maybe I could just stand in the back and not, like…" Both hands are braced on the table. Her manicure is simple, but the idea that she got it done just for this makes me sad. "I really wasn't trying to make some big statement or scene or anything."

"I didn't think you were," I tell her honestly, and she visibly relaxes. It occurs to me that maybe she was up all night too.

"When I saw in the notice online that it was open to the public I figured I could just blend in," she continues. "But…I guess you saw me." She makes the end of the sentence a little playful, like I'd won some strange adult version of hide-and-seek, but the point was there: she had blended in until I spotted her and started all this.

"I guess I sort of chased you there," I admit. Is there a difference between following and chasing? Maybe only to the one being chased. "I just saw you and…" I do a shrug with both hands. "Kinda couldn't help but notice." That we look a lot alike. That we stand the same way. That we both have his nose. It's a relief not to have to say it. "I didn't really think about it, I just felt so curious all of a sudden and I had to know right away."

She looks even more relieved at the word 'curious.' It sounds unthreatening. "As soon as I saw you I felt like everyone would know right away," she admits, and she leans forward slightly. "Like those dreams where everyone turns around to look at you."

"I know what you mean," I tell her, and I actually do. No one had looked, no one had turned around as I'd pulled away from the thinning huddle and followed (chased) her out into that little vestibule, but in my head I can picture the movie version, the one where everyone's heads swivel around to follow me and they all draw back in shock when we're face-to-face, forming a wide circle around the two of us, flapping their old-timey handkerchiefs. My God! Look at the two of them! How can this be?

She was almost to the outer door when I caught up and stopped her with an uncertain "hi?" She turned, and up close it was even more obvious. She looked wary, her eyebrows knitting — now I realize she thought I was going to yell at her, or hiss between clenched teeth, tear her apart for interrupting this poignant moment of family grief, barging in on a private scene of catharsis and comfort. It amazes me to think that anyone could look at us and see that.

She'd returned my greeting with a minute glance over her shoulder at the door. "I'm Sarah," I added, because it felt like the thing to say.

"Right, yeah." She knew that. More people were filling up the lobby area, and we both moved away — simultaneously, I think — off to the side where we wouldn't be heard. "Perry."

I just nodded, looking at her. Hair tuck, earring tug. She looked younger than me, and her eyes had a little more green in them. It was probably about ten seconds at most, but in my memory there's a horribly long pause before I just said "Was he your dad?"

I didn't really need the tentative nod that came a beat or two later; her expression was enough to tell me. Surprised, maybe even scared, but somehow a little relieved, too. She looked around the lobby again, and though the hum of chatter wasn't very loud, I could hardly hear her when she said "I didn't mean to…"

She trailed off, and when she glanced toward the door again I was suddenly afraid she'd run for it, leaving a cartoon cloud of dust behind. "Can we talk?" I asked quickly. "Not here. Maybe tomorrow?"

"I leave tomorrow," she said. "But maybe — in the morning? My hotel's near here."

I named a diner ten minutes from the church, and she entered the address in her phone. We agreed on a time. She didn't ask for my number, so I didn't ask for hers. It occurred to me midway through the reception — cold sandwiches and cash bar at a nearby pub that Andrew claimed was a favorite of our dad's, or at least he'd been there a few times — that she might've said yes just to get away from me and had every intention of standing me up. I tried to think about what I'd do if the roles were reversed and I'm still not sure.

"So I guess you have a lot of questions for me," she says now, with a slight wince. "I owe you that much."

"Well," I say. I hadn't thought of it as owing. Of course I'd tried to find her on Instagram last night, but I hadn't had any luck, as I didn't know her last name or where she lived. I'd just scrolled through a few hundred Perrys, hoping her face would pop out at me and tell me everything I wanted to know. Was she a live-laugh-lover? An emoji obsessive? "Is your mom…does she know?"

"That I'm here?" The waitress returns and sets the coffees down. Perry takes one sugar, I take four. "No. She lives in Sarasota now, or somewhere around there. I'm in Pittsburgh." She saves me the trouble of having to elaborate. "They met at Daltex. She was on the graphics team."

I try to remember when he'd started at that company. We moved when I was in second grade; was it then? He did something or other with numbers, or files.

She takes advantage of my silence. "Can I ask you something?" I nod, shrugging. She's looking at the rim of her slightly stained white mug as she asks, "Did you know about me at all?"

"No. Not at all." Her eyebrows shoot up.

"So yesterday you just—"

"Yeah, I don't know," I admit. "I can't explain it, I just sort of knew. It made sense. If that makes sense." Of course it doesn't. I decide to return the favor and spare her from having to ask. "I don't know if my mom knew, either." She looks up at me. "She passed four years ago."

"Oh, God." She looks stricken. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks." I guess I'll have to get used to the taste of that exchange all over again now. "I don't know if she would have told me — me and my brother, I guess — if she did," I add. "That wasn't really her style." To put it mildly.

She nods slowly. "My mother's not too fond of talking about him," she says carefully, folding her empty sugar packet into tinier and tinier squares. "I don't think I'm going to tell her that I came here. It just wouldn't do any good."

"How long were they…dating, or whatever?"

Now she rearranges the little creamers in their dish with one finger. "Not sure," she answers. "On and off till I was twelve or so, I think. That's when he stopped coming around. I remember my grandmother kept asking us to move to Centerville to live with her, but my mom wanted to stay around here." She has the pained look of someone recalling a humiliation, a spectacle. "Now I think she was probably waiting for him to change his mind. Finally leave and come be with us." I hear the sarcastic lilt on the last few words, her disdain for the embarrassing cliché. I can almost picture her as a little kid, wearing a grown-up's look of disapproval at a situation she can't fully understand, but somehow grasps better than any of the adults involved.

It takes me a minute to wade through everything she's said. Stopped coming around. "Finally" leave. On and off for what had been most of my childhood and teens. There had been a huge fissure running through everything I knew, and I hadn't even noticed a hairline crack. I never even thought to look under my feet.

"I'm surprised he didn't," I say, and I immediately regret it when I see the look on her face. "I just mean, well, I wouldn't call them very happily married, my parents." Or very unhappily married. They weren't very anything to me. How do I explain to someone who grew up with such a gaping absence in her home that he just lived there in mine? We all just lived in the same house, and then eventually we didn't. "That's why I thought it made sense, when I saw you. I hadn't known, but it just fit."

One thing I do know: if he hadn't left us, then he had never promised to leave us. He was not one for false promises, my father. He would do something or he wouldn't, but false hope didn't interest him. I never scanned the audience from the stage at school rehearsals, never felt that sinking disappointment that I saw in other kids. I knew better.

She processes this. "You said you had a brother?" She must have seen him at the funeral, but it's an easier way to ask it. I wish I knew how to do that.

"Yeah." I drain my mug. "Andrew. He's four years older, a lawyer. Three kids." That's it; I've run out of details to offer.

"Does he know?" I must look blank, because she adds "About me?"

The most he and I had said to each other at the reception was about what to do with the flowers, the chemical-smelling purple blossoms in heavy glass bowls on the tables in the back room of the pub. I'd taken one mostly to avoid another round of hand-shaking on the way out. Rebecca, my roommate, had wrinkled her nose in displeasure when she came in and spotted them on the coffee table, but hadn't commented. I hadn't told her where I'd been that day.

"I don't know," I realize aloud, and this time Perry tries to hide her look of surprise. "I haven't told him anything. And he's never said anything to me." But it's possible, I know it is, that I'm actually the last one left out. Perry clearly knew about us to some degree, after all.

She's trying to keep her face neutral, but I can see it, another hammer blow to the idea she'd had of us. I think she's starting to share my surprise, or some mirror image of it: he stayed for this? This one was the preferable choice? I half-expect her to demand more on this point, how I could've left Andrew out of this, but she doesn't.

I guess it's my turn. "So he was around a lot for a while, then? Before you were twelve?" Of everything I've learned so far, this is the part I can't picture.

"Sometimes. Mostly for dinners and stuff like that. I think that's the only reason my mom learned to cook, actually," she says. "Once in a while on weekends we'd go to the park. That was a big deal, weekends." She almost smiles at the memory. "But it was always sporadic. I'd just come home from school some days and he was…" She gestures with one hand: ta-da. "Then it was just less and less often. It took me a while to figure out that it wasn't normal not to have his phone number or to know where he lived. I'd mention something offhand to my friends and they were just like, what? You don't know? I was just so used to how things were."

She's not looking right at me, and somehow I don't think she's talking entirely to me anymore. But I just stay quiet and let her say it — who else can she tell? I wasn't there, and yet I was there. She pauses for breath and then almost bursts out, "I sent him my dissertation. Isn't that ridiculous? I was out of state and I hadn't talked to him in years by then, but I finished it and I was so relieved and, I don't know, it just seemed like a good idea at the time." She's shaking her head; this time the disapproval is for herself.

I can't bring myself to ask what happened with that. I can just tell that I shouldn't make her explain it. Instead I consider for a few moments, then take a deep breath and say, "That's just how he was. It wasn't you, or me or any of us, I don't think. It was just how he chose to do things, I don't know why. I never knew why." I don't know how to make any of this right or good, but I can give her this one small thing, if it even counts for anything. "It really wasn't you. I lived with him the whole time, and all I really ever knew about him was that he liked birds."

Now she looks at me again. "Birds?"

"Yeah, it was his thing. He was even in this bird-watching group and they'd go on walks and visit parks at dawn and whatever." The only time he'd ever raised his voice at me was when I'd touched those heavy black binoculars in their brown suede case. We'd just read Harriet the Spy in school and I was obsessed with the idea of rooting out intrigue and scandal on our street — kind of ironic, I realize now — but he'd snatched them out of my hand when he caught me hovering at the bathroom window, telling me sharply that they weren't for games. I still think there wasn't a huge difference between our hobbies.

"He took me with him once, actually," I continue. I haven't thought about this in ages. "I don't know if it was dawn or midnight or what, but I remember it was dark out and we went to the park. I didn't think that was allowed, so it was, like, this wild adventure to me." It's coming back to me in snippets — hot chocolate in my school thermos, a bunch of adults whispering. A round white face with bottomless black eyes. "It's the only time he ever did anything like that with me. Andrew wasn't there. He really wanted me to see this one certain bird, for some reason." Even as I'm saying it, I'm doubting myself. Surely that couldn't have been him. Was it something I saw on TV and reshaped into a memory of my own?

"A barn owl." I've been staring vaguely out the window and I turn back to look at Perry now. "There were a few of them living in that covered bridge over the creek."

I stare stupidly at her for a few seconds before it clicks. It did happen. "He took you, too."

"Just the once," she says. "Not that long before he stopped visiting, I think. He said some people called them 'ghost owls' and thought they were bad luck, but they really weren't scary at all." There's a sound of powerful wings in my head. "Honestly, the whole thing kind of freaked me out, but he seemed so into it and my mom was so happy he took me, so I didn't say anything."

I think it's the longest silence between us yet as we try to understand this, but this time it feels shared. We've been floating in this same silent space together for years, orbiting the same dark moon; we just didn't know it.

At some point all I can think to say is, "Not even close to enough," and she knows what I mean and shakes her head.

We talk for another hour and two refills each. She likes her new job and isn't sure if she wants her boyfriend to propose or not; I tell her about my neighbor with the trombone and my favorite regular customer with the ridiculous hat collection. We take each other's numbers, though I'm not expecting much more than mutual holiday greetings a few times a year.

Of course I find her Instagram later in the evening and scroll through it for a while. Nature shots, a few fancy cocktails on #girlsnightout, a lot of her dog, Chance. I leave a like on the most recent one, and she follows me a few hours later.