belonged to the air again.
Mara came to stand beside her. She wore a green dress Evelyn had never seen before and looked healthier than she had the day at the terminal, though sorrow and love still lived together in her face.
“They look alike when they’re plotting,” Mara said.
Evelyn smiled through tears. “They’re definitely plotting.”
Ava spotted them and waved both arms. “Mom! Mara! Come here!”
Leo added, “We made a rule.”
Evelyn walked over. “Should I be nervous?”
“Yes,” Ava said seriously. “Birthday rule.”
Leo held up one frosting-covered finger. “Nobody sings the sad version anymore.”
Evelyn knelt in the grass.
Mara sat beside her.
“Fair,” Evelyn said. “What version do we sing?”
Ava and Leo looked at each other, then smiled the same smile.
“The found one,” Leo said.
So Evelyn sang.
Her voice shook at first. Mara joined quietly, then Tessa from the picnic table, then June, then the friends and neighbors who did not know the whole story but understood enough from the way Evelyn held both children close.
The sun dropped behind the trees. The balloons moved softly in the evening wind. Ava pressed against Evelyn’s left side, Leo against her right, and for the first time since a doctor with dry eyes had told her to accept the impossible, Evelyn felt the locked room inside her open completely.
It was not empty anymore.
It was full of rainlight, muddy shoes, lemon cake, chocolate frosting, a woman who had saved her son, a daughter who had remembered him, and a boy who had finally stopped standing beneath station lights like a ghost.
Leo looked up at Evelyn when the song ended.
“Can we go home now?” he asked.
Evelyn kissed the top of his head.
“Yes,” she said.
And this time, both her children came with her.
