**Part 3**
That was two years ago.
Sandra was charged with misappropriation of fiduciary property and mail theft. She pleaded guilty. She paid back forty-one thousand dollars to the trust. She sold the jet ski.
She left my father in May.
She took Tyler and moved to Denver.
My father lives alone on Aspen Lane.
He painted the kitchen yellow.
He sent me a picture. In a text. No words. Just the picture.
I didn’t answer.
He comes to the cabin sometimes.
Not often. He calls first. He asks if it’s okay.
Sometimes I say yes.
Sometimes I say no.
He’s learning to hear the difference.
Last August, he came up and helped me fix the porch roof.
We didn’t talk much.
At the end of the day, we sat on the steps. Looking at the plum tree.
“She used to sit right here,” he said. “In the summers. Before you were born. She’d make jam. She’d sing that song.”
“Little Wren,” I said.
He looked at me.
“She wrote it before you were born,” he said. “When she was pregnant. She sang it to her belly. She said you could hear.”
He was quiet for a long time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t fight for you,” he said.
I didn’t say it’s okay.
It wasn’t okay.
But I didn’t tell him to leave either.
Harlan lives with me now.
He couldn’t go back to his cabin alone. Not after the stroke. His left hand doesn’t work right. He walks with a cane. A four-pronged one.
He moved into the cabin on Whitfield Ridge in March.
I used some of the trust money to add a room. A bedroom. On the ground floor. With a wide door for his walker. And a window facing the plum tree.
He says it’s the best room he’s ever slept in.
He tells me stories.
Every night. By the stove.
About Grandma Hazel. About hauling stones from the creek in 1946. About my mother at ten, learning to shoot a rifle and hitting the target on the first try and then crying because she felt bad for the tin can.
About Laurie Bird.
“She came to my door,” Harlan told me. “In September. The September before she died. She could barely walk. She’d lost forty pounds. She made Kenny drive her up and then she made him wait in the truck.”
He looked at the fire.
“She stood on my porch,” he said. “And she said, Harlan, I need you to promise me something.”
“The cellar.”
“The cellar,” Harlan said. “She said, Every October. As long as you live. Fill it up. Make sure there’s dog food too.”
I looked at him.
“Dog food?” I said. “We didn’t have a dog.”
Harlan looked at Dutch.
Asleep by the stove. On the braided rug. His stiff leg stretched out.
“I didn’t either,” Harlan said. “Not then. I asked her the same thing. Laurel, why dog food? Wren doesn’t have a dog.”
He smiled.
“And she said, She will.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time.
“She said,” Harlan said, “My girl’s going to find something that’s been forgotten too. Something that’s been left out in the cold. And she’s going to feed it. Because that’s who she is.”
He looked at me.
“She said, Make sure she has enough to share.”
I went to the bridge in April.
When the snow melted.
The little wooden bridge behind the cabin. Over the creek. Grandma Hazel built it. Weathered gray. Moss on the railings.
The creek was high. Snowmelt. Loud and fast and cold.
Dutch came with me.
Harlan stood at the edge of the clearing with his four-pronged cane. Watching.
I stood in the middle of the bridge.
I took the glass bird out of my pocket.
I held it up.
The sun came through it.
A little blue light landed on the water.
And I sang.
Loud.
Like she told me.
“Little Wren, little Wren,
fly away and come back again,
when the snow is on the ridge,
I’ll be waiting by the bridge,
little Wren, little Wren,
fly away and come back again.”
My voice cracked on the last line.
I sang it anyway.
Three times.
Like she did on the tape.
When I finished, the creek kept running.
The pines kept swaying.
Dutch leaned his whole weight against my knee.
And somewhere, up in the aspens, a bird started singing.
I don’t know what kind.
Harlan says it was a mountain bluebird.
He says they come back to the ridge every April.
He says they always have.
Last October, I stocked the cellar.
Harlan sat on a stool at the top of the ladder and told me what to do. His left hand doesn’t work well enough anymore to carry jars. So I carried them.
Green beans. Corn. Tomatoes. Peaches. Applesauce. All from the garden I planted in the spring. Harlan taught me to can. In Grandma Hazel’s kitchen. With Grandma Hazel’s pots.
Rice. Beans. Flour. Sugar. Oats. Powdered milk. Coffee.
Blankets. Candles. Lamp oil. Matches. A first-aid kit.
A forty-pound bag of dog food.
And on the shelf at eye level, I put a jar.
Small. Dark purple.
Plum jam.
From the tree in front of the cabin. Grandma Hazel’s tree. My mother’s tree.
I made it in August. My first batch. Harlan said it was too sweet.
It was.
I made it anyway.
I put a piece of masking tape on the lid.
I wrote on it.
In blue ink.
PLUM.
And underneath, in smaller letters:
For whoever needs it.
Harlan watched me from the top of the ladder.
“Who’s that for?” he asked.
I looked at the jar.
At the shelves. At the blankets. At the dog food.
At Grandma Hazel’s stones.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
I thought about my mother.
On Harlan’s porch. The September before she died. Forty pounds lighter. Barely able to stand.
Make sure she has enough to share.
“Somebody’s going to need it,” I said. “Somebody who’s been forgotten. Somebody who got left out in the cold.”
I climbed up the ladder.
I closed the hatch.
I pulled the braided rug back over it.
“And when they find it,” I said, “I want them to know what I know.”
Harlan looked at me.
“What’s that?”
I looked out the window. At the plum tree. At the ridge. At the aspens turning gold.
At Dutch, asleep by the stove.
At the little glass bird on the windowsill. Catching the afternoon sun. Throwing a small blue light across the floor.
“That somebody saw it coming,” I said.
“And got ready.”
“And that they were never forgotten.”
“Not for one single day.”
