The Birdman's Daughter

“I think he wants to go back to his office.” She looked at her father as she spoke. At her words, he relaxed and nodded.

“What’s he gonna do in there?” Mrs. Dominic asked as she helped Karen transfer Martin to the wheelchair.

“He can work on his computer. He types with his right hand, so he can communicate.” She lifted his left foot onto the footrest and strapped it in place. “I guess that’s less frustrating for him.”

Once at his desk, he waved away Karen’s offer of a drink, but she brought him a Coke anyway, with a straw to make it easier to sip. He was alarmingly thin, and the doctor said she should try to get as many calories into him as possible.

She thanked Mrs. Dominic and sent her on her way, then began putting away groceries. At home right now she’d be answering phones for their business while trying to decide what to cook for supper. If Casey was around, he’d suggest they have pizza. He would have gladly eaten pizza seven days a week.

How were Tom and the boys managing without her? Was paperwork stacking up on her desk at the office, while laundry multiplied at home? We need you here. Tom’s words sounded over and over in her head, like an annoying commercial jingle that refused to leave, no matter how hard she tried to banish it. He’d sounded so…accusing. As if she’d deliberately deserted them in favor of a man who had earlier all but abandoned her.

No matter what Tom might think, she’d never desert her family. They were everything to her. But she couldn’t turn her back on her dad, either. He was still her father, and he needed her. Maybe the only time in his life he’d needed anyone. She might never have a chance like this again.

She decided to make corn chowder, in the hopes that her father could eat some. Though he’d never been a man who paid much attention to what he ate, content to dine on ham sandwiches for four nights in a row without complaint, she thought the diet of protein drinks must be getting awfully monotonous.

After living so long with three boisterous, talkative men, the silence in the house was getting to her. She started to switch on the television, then at the last minute turned and headed for the study. Her father couldn’t form words, but as long as he could type, they could have a conversation. It was past time the two of them talked.

“Hey, Dad,” she said as she entered the room.

When he didn’t look up, she walked over and stood beside him. “What are you doing?”

He glanced up at her, then leaned back slightly so she could get a better view of the monitor screen. He’d been studying a spreadsheet, listing birds by common and scientific names, locations where he had seen them, columns indicating if he had tape-recorded songs for them. Birds he had never seen were indicated in boldface. There weren’t many boldfaced names on the list.

“Mom said you had just seen a Hoffman’s Woodcreeper when you had your stroke,” Karen said.

He moved the mouse back and forth, in jerky motions, until the cursor came to rest on the entry for the Woodcreeper. It was no longer boldfaced, and he had dutifully recorded the time and date of the sighting.

“That’s great, Dad. You’ve done a phenomenal job.”

He shook his head, apparently not happy with her praise. She wasn’t surprised. As long as she could remember, he hadn’t been satisfied. When he was home, he was always planning the next expedition, making list after list of birds he had not yet seen, counting and recounting the birds he had seen, and frowning at whatever number he had reached so far.

In addition to the life list of all the birds he’d ever seen, he also kept a yard list of birds seen at his home, a county list, state list, as well as various regional and country lists. This accumulation of numbers and ordering of names seemed to be almost as important to him as the birds themselves. Maybe more so.

He closed the spreadsheet and opened a new file. Using the index finger of his right hand, he slowly typed in a number: 8000.

Karen nodded. “The number of birds you’ve been trying for.”

He typed again: 7,949.

She studied the number, wondering at its meaning. “The number you’ve reached on your list?”

He nodded, and punched the keyboard again. Another number appeared on the screen: 1.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What’s the one for?”

He grunted, and typed again: Brazil.

“One more bird you haven’t seen in Brazil.” Her eyes met his, and the anger and pain she saw there made her stomach hurt. Her father was so upset over a single species of bird that had escaped him in Brazil. Had he ever cared so much about another person? About her?

She patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to clean up Brazil while you were there. But the doctor says you should be able to regain a lot of function on your left side, and you can learn to talk again. Going back to Brazil and finding that bird can be your motivation.” Never mind staying around to see his grandchildren grow up, or to enjoy his own children in his old age. Some people were inspired by goals like that; for her father, the only thing that mattered were birds.

The next morning, very early, the phone rang, jolting Karen from sleep. She groped blindly for the receiver, her hand closing around it as her other hand reached for the light. “Hello?”

“Have you heard from Casey?” Tom asked, without bothering to say hello.

The urgency in his voice jerked her wide awake. She sat on the side of the bed and clutched the receiver with both hands, heart pounding. “No. Why? What’s going on?”

“He went out walking before supper last night and hasn’t come home.”

Fear, like a freezing wind, stole her breath. She stared at the phone, as if she were staring down the barrel of a gun. “What do you mean, he hasn’t come home?”

“Just what I said. At first I thought he was at a friend’s house, or was staying late at the mall, but I’ve called everyone he knows and driven all over town looking for him and no one knows anything.”

News stories of missing children flashed through her mind, the headlines stark and chilling: Abducted. Missing. Gone.

“Karen, are you still there? Have you heard from Casey?”

Tom’s words jolted her to life again. She forced herself to breathe deeply. Now was no time to fall apart. “No, I haven’t heard anything.” She looked at the clock. 6:00 a.m. Five in Denver. Tom must have been up all night. “Was he upset when he left? Did you have a fight about something?”

“No. We hadn’t talked at all since morning, when I’d agreed to let him apply for the lifeguarding job. He seemed happy about that.”

“What does Matt say?”

“He says Casey seemed fine. I don’t know what to think.”

Tom’s voice was ragged with exhaustion. She imagined him, unshaven, running his fingers through his hair the way he did when he was upset. Of course he had handled this for hours by himself. “Maybe you’d better call the police.”

“I already did. They promised to keep an eye open, though they’re treating it like a runaway situation.”

“Why would Casey run away?” Granted, he didn’t like school, but he’d always been happy at home. Things that would get other kids down didn’t seem to touch him. More than once, she had envied her youngest son his easygoing demeanor. “Maybe he has a friend we don’t know about, and he’s staying with them.”

“Maybe. His backpack is gone, and Matt thinks he took some money with him, but his clothes are still here.”

“He’s probably with a friend.” He had to be. Surely he wouldn’t be one of those kids you read about in the news—children abducted by strangers. She resolutely shoved the thought away.

“If he was going to stay with a friend, he should have called us.”

“He should have. But you know Casey. He doesn’t think about things like that.” When he was little, she could always find him in the house by following a trail of his belongings to the room he occupied. She used to berate him for being so inconsiderate, but he’d look at her with genuine confusion. “I wasn’t doing it to be inconsiderate,” he’d say. “I was just thinking about other things.”

That was Casey, head in the clouds all the time, dreaming big dreams no one else could comprehend. Lost in thought, had he stepped off a curb and been hit by a car? “Did you…did you check hospitals?” she asked, her breath catching on the words. “Maybe he’s been hurt and can’t call.”

“I’ll do that as soon as I get off the phone with you. I’m sorry to worry you, but I was hoping you’d heard from him. He talks to you about things more than he does me.”

And if I was home, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. The unvoiced accusation hung between them.

“Please, let me know if you hear anything.”

“I will.” He sighed. “I’d better go.”