Then he typed:
I owe you an apology.
CHAPTERELEVEN
Kitty stood at her easel, brush moving in slow, delicate strokes, her head tilted just slightly as she studied the canvas like it had whispered a secret to her.
Birdy sat on the old corduroy loveseat. Her legs were curled under her. She half-watched her sister. The other half of her was lost in thought. Her sister's town house was warm from the old radiator humming in the corner. The only other sound was the occasional swish of brush on canvas and the distant tick of a kitchen clock.
She and Kitty had been relatively quiet children, Birdy lost in a book while Kitty scratch-scratching in a sketchbook. They could sit in companionable silence all day long without exchanging words and call it a good day.
“You’re painting foxes again,” Birdy said, taking a sip of her now-lukewarm tea.
“I like foxes. They’re clever. Observant.”
Birdy stood and walked closer, the mug cradled in her hands. The painting was nearly complete—a snowy forest scene, hushed and dreamy, with two foxes in the center. The vixen was vivid: reddish brown, alert, watching something just beyond the frame. The silver fox beside her was already moving, his head turned slightly away, as if he hadn’t noticed her waiting there.
Kitty's brush moved gently over the canvas, adding a soft shimmer of white at the silver fox’s paws, like snow disturbed by motion. Her face was calm, but there was a tenderness in her expression, something wistful in the way she lingered over each stroke. No, that wasn't wistfulness. It was longing.
Birdy didn’t say anything. She just watched her sister—watched how Kitty’s hand slowed when it passed over the silver fox’s form. Watched how her eyes softened as if she were memorizing him with every line.
The vixen wasn’t chasing. She was just there. Waiting. Hoping. Holding her place in the snow while the one she loved wandered away from her again.
That was Kitty and her husband. They'd married soon after Kitty had graduated high school, and then he'd been deployed. Then another deployment. Birdy didn't think he'd come back even once. She wasn't sure if he ever would. But Kitty kept sitting here by the window painting him in flowers and foxes.
Birdy knew she could never endure what her sister was going through. Waiting like that? Staying soft like that? It required a faith she no longer possessed.
“So you and the social worker?” Kitty let the question hang in the air.
Birdy wasn't about to answer, but she wanted to set the record straight. “Are going to war—yes.”
“Hmmm? Sounds like you were at some kind of peace accords before that.”
“He helped me with an IT problem is all.” Birdy shrugged, downing the last of her tea.
“Did he untangle your wires or something?”
“Grow up, kitten.”
Kitty turned around to face her sister. The smirk she'd been wearing before melted from her face as she looked at Birdy seriously. “When was your last date?”
“Define date.”
“Someone who makes your stomach flutter and your guard slip.”
Birdy rolled her eyes. “That's never happened.”
Except it had happened. But not on a date. In an online chatroom.
Kitty set down her brush and came close to her sister. “You keep pretending you don’t want companionship, but you do. You always have, Bird Brain.”
Kitty had never even dated. She'd married straight out of high school. Her only kiss, so far as Birdy knew, had been at the wedding ceremony. She and her new husband hadn't even spent their wedding night together.
“You’re still waiting for him,” Birdy said, her voice a little quieter. “Even now.”
“That’s not the same as being alone.”
Birdy opened her mouth to argue, but her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, not expecting anything important. But there it was.
