Chapter 17 Great Horned Owl
Seventeen
Great Horned Owl
Bubo virginianus. The great horned owl, also known as the tiger owl or the hoot owl, is a large owl native to the Americas. It is an extremely
adaptable bird with a vast range and is the most widely distributed true owl in the Americas. A fierce and strategic hunter,
the great horned owl can be an intimidating sight with its short wide wings, massive claws, and staring yellow eyes. Its “horns”
are tufts of soft feathers near its eyes. Male owls fear the larger females, often taking hours to approach during mating
rituals. Owls have fourteen bones in their necks, compared with a human’s seven bones, hence their ability to turn their heads
nearly completely around. Silent in pursuit of prey, they eat even large birds such as hawks, also rodents and frogs. Their
eyesight is so keen that it is the equivalent of humans seeing a mouse by the light of a match a mile away. Owls often live
more than twenty years. In some cultures, the owl is considered the ruler of the night and the seer of souls, the guardian
of those as they pass from the earthly plane to the realm of the spirit.
Before Sam ever got the chance to approach him, we learned about Jack by chance. To this day, however, we aren’t sure exactly
what we learned.
Something none of us could explain happened once Nell visited Madison on behalf of Damiano, Chen, and Damiano.
Little overachiever that she was, Nell had by then passed the bar in both states, and she sometimes acted as Sam’s emissary when someone had to shuttle back and forth to wrap up small matters with cases at the base camp location of the firm.
Nell had picked up her rental car and was headed for the office downtown when she passed my old workplace, Ophelia.
On impulse, she circled back. She still had fond memories of the barroom brawl, a crazy that she still dined out on with friends.
When she ducked through the jingling curtain behind the front door, Nell noticed how dim and decadent it was, almost like
a bordello, or like a haunted house. She had grown accustomed to Florida, where shopping centers in lime and coral stucco
popped up overnight and were stocked within a week with shiny shoes and seventy-five-dollar T-shirts, if not a juice bar.
There were only two customers in that sleepy interval between lunch and the first show. As Nell waited for someone to appear
behind the bar, she saw Archangel arrive, then Boston, then Rochelle. At last, Lily came out of the back room, adjusting the
collar on her black button-down shirt. She looked right into Nell’s eyes.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“I’m here to apply for the bartender job,” Nell joked. She grinned. But Lily didn’t crack a smile.
“We aren’t hiring,” she said flatly.
“Lily! It’s Nell Bigelow. It’s Reenie’s sister.”
“I’m sorry?” Lily said.
“Reenie’s sister! Reenie Bigelow. The writer? Felicity’s friend? You remember that Reenie came here to write about Felicity.
You know that Felicity went to prison but she didn’t . . .”
“I know that case, but I don’t know any of those people,” Lily said. “If you will excuse me, I have to get to work.”
“But, Lily, remember the night of the big bar fight, when the owner showed up with the police . . .”
“There have been lots of fights,” Lily said, not unkindly. “This is a strip club, not a . . .”
“Library,” Nell finished for her. “My sister said.”
Lily regarded my sister mildly and began to stock clean glassware. Nell knew that Lily recognized her, and that Lily was lying.
She had no idea why.
Did Lily act that way because of Jack Melodia? Perhaps nobody will ever know. Lily certainly isn’t saying.
She owns Ophelia now. Apparently, her agreement with Jack provided that if he should die or be otherwise incapacitated, she
would assume full ownership responsibilities for the club for a period of three years, after which she would own it free and
clear. I remember Archangel saying that Lily was the only one Jack ever really trusted. Did he trust her too much?
For Jack disappeared. That was how Lily described it when Sam finally went to see her. Sam had to try to negotiate some kind
of visitation with Sparrow, if that was what Jack wanted and if his current marital status was expansive enough to accommodate
the heretofore-unknown child of a former mistress. Grudgingly, Felicity knew she had no choice. She took Sam’s advice to relocate
before he gave even preliminary notice. If Felicity had still been in Madison, Jack could presumably have requested anything,
even joint custody. He still could have.
But he had disappeared.
Lily shrugged when Sam pressed her about how to get a message to Jack. “I have no idea where he is,” she said.
“When did he contact you last?”
“The last time I saw him.” That had been last spring, she thought. Why hadn’t she reported him missing? “Wasn’t up to me,”
she said. “Maybe his wife did. I really don’t know.”
It was clear to Sam that she knew more than she was saying.
Sitting in the midday dusk at Ophelia, Sam ventured something about how all this seemed pretty convenient, but Lily came back hard.
“Convenient how? I get twenty questions a week about liability and facility depreciation and city permits that I have to figure out on my own. He’s the one who knew that stuff. ”
And again, Sam had little doubt that Lily was literally unable to ask Jack for advice. Jack had overseen the financials of
the club, separate from the accountants who handled the rest of his properties. Inherited from his godfather, it was a sort
of passion project, Lily added. She gave Sam an ironic look that said she knew exactly how that sounded.
And yet, I had to consider Lily’s unswerving loyalty to Felicity—and how the two of them, hiding in the back room that day,
overheard Jack as he showed that man a photo. Of what? Of whom? Something or someone so dear to that guy that he was reduced
to a blubbering, trembling, begging wreck of a creature . . . who knew Jack would do anything to keep what was his.
When Sam got back, I asked him if he ever had any news of Jack.
Sam said, “Not much.” Before I could question him further, he added, “I’m not trying to find him. Nobody is trying to find
him, I don’t think.”
“Do you think something happened to him?”
“I don’t think about it,” Sam said.
“Oh yeah, you do.”
“When I do, I remind myself not to.” He went back to the corner piece he was struggling to fit into the edge of our white subway tile kitchen backsplash.
As he turned away, satisfied, the chip popped out like an imp.
“Oh please, let’s call a guy,” Sam said.
“This is an art form, and I clearly don’t have what it takes.
But I’ll bet the guy I pay to do it couldn’t make a closing argument either.
” Sam paused. “No, maybe he could.” We stepped out onto the screen porch.
We were nearly drunk on the blessed interval of aloneness because Claire was visiting, and she and Miranda and Felicity had taken the children on the long-promised sojourn to Magic Kingdom!
We didn’t know what to do first, go out to a fancy restaurant or get drunk or have noisy sex or simply turn off all the lights and sleep for nine hours.
Or put all those things on hold to talk about things we didn’t talk about during the ordinary run of life.
“Where do you think he went?” I asked Sam. “Come on!”
“Remember when we were first together, and I told you that you could ask me anything and I would give you an honest answer?
But never to ask me a question you didn’t really want to know the answer to? This falls under that heading. Because I am telling
you the truth, Reenie. I really don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”
“You think somebody whacked him?”
“I think those are great movies, Reenie,” he answered. “He lives the kind of life that could put you in harm’s way. So maybe.
Maybe he went to Missoula.”
“Would that be all bad?”
“I guess for his family.”
“But not for mine,” I finished, and my husband knew just who was included in “my family.” As we lay in bed, I remembered that
Lily used to be a police officer. If anyone knew how to make someone disappear and stay disappeared, it would be a cop.
Some months later, I wrote the real story. A murderer confessed her guilt. An innocent woman was freed. A businessman disappeared.
All this happened in the name of love—all the fear, all the deception, and all the courage.
And that really was that.
The house that Felicity built was a lush little jewel box, everything in blue and gray except for a pop of gold here and there, with every amenity Patrick could dream up.
In time, Sparrow began to call my parents Granny and Grandpa.
In another year, Felicity decided, even if a prince did not come to break the spell, much less a familiar villain to try to ruin her life, she would try to have another child.
The world to which she had returned, she said, was like a pair of running shoes she’d purchased but barely used—still practically new, worth another try.
Does it all sound so tidy and even sweet?
Parts of it were sweet and still are. Parts of it were not.
Shortly before her fiftieth birthday, Ruth died at Dawn Hill Hospital for Women. She was gardening with another inmate, another
patient, and she simply lay down on the grassy verge and died with the sunlight on her face. The cause of death was cardiopulmonary
arrest—as was true for everybody, as the medical examiner said in court years before. But though Ruth wasn’t very old, the
heart in her chest and the other heart, the one we think of as the seat of spirit, were too battered to last any longer. So
was her ruined mind, once finely tuned and trained.
After she and Sparrow had moved to Florida, Felicity visited Ruth in the prison hospital only twice. Ruth’s sisters went often,