Tell Me Who We Were by Kate McQuade

Author:Kate McQuade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

“And what happened next?” the little girl will say. “Did we get away?” Though of course she already knows. She will tilt her dark, tousled head on the pillow, curl her feet into eager parentheses and grab them with her hands, rocking back and forth. This is a bedtime story she loves. Romantic epic of birds and mystery, of secret corridors and flight, and the Crow Man with his wide wings—her favorite part—chasing them breathlessly down the halls. She knows the ending, but happy endings never fail to please, even when you know they’re coming.

Claire will turn out the lamp and tuck up the covers. She will touch her daughter’s hair, her chipped pink smile, and continue to find stray pieces of her phantom husband, the husband who will return and leave and return and leave for years to come, never able to decide A or B. Here, though, are his eyes: a burnt brown, shrewd and skeptical, and darker with every passing year. Here are his hands, delicate, golden in the night-light’s cast, reaching for her. Here is his faith in the power of a story told with conviction.

“Of course we got away,” Claire will tell her, smoothing her hair, her princess nightgown of palaces and horses. “I saved you, all by myself. Don’t you remember?”

“But tell me. Tell the Crow Man part again.”

“The Crow Man wanted to take you. He reached out with his shiny black wings. He opened his dark, dark mouth. And we ran and we ran, down every long hallway. I said to you, should we go this way? Should we go that way? Will we ever make it out? And you said, Oui, maman! Oui!”

“We!” The girl will laugh. “Tell me!”

“And we gathered speed. We were airplanes stuck inside, we were birds in a cage, we were ready for takeoff—”

“Tell me! Tell me who we were!”

“We were smoke, so fast they couldn’t see us. We were superheroes, so fast they couldn’t catch us. And we flew around and around those hallways, faster and faster—”

“Yes!” the girl will cry. “We! We!”

“Until we turned the corner and there they were, the doors to the outside, to the sky—and then finally—”

“Lift-off!” The girl will leap on the bed. She will come back down and wrap herself close, believing it will always be this way, that it has always been this way. “We, we, we!”

“That’s right, my love. You and me. All the way home.”

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