Hide And Seek. Amy Bird

the almost survivors – they think they’re fine, having fended off attack. They go about their day. Then later on, they’re dead. And I’ve got to teach my students to be alert to that. I’ve got to share these mysteries with the scientifically-minded public and my fellow faculty members. To remind them to look beyond concussion, to keep those observations going overnight. And to know what it means, when the blood starts to form, when the brain starts to swell. How easy it is to miss the signs.

      Have I been missing signs, all these years? Has there been some other secret world going on around me, some intrigue in which John Spears has suspected with each growing year that his loving wife, Gillian Spears, is not so loving after all, and actually had an affair with their good friend Max? Who their son now closely resembles? Has our house, always a loving family home to my eyes and ears, actually held bitter hisses and accusing glances, shot over my head for the last thirty-four years?

      Or has John Spears been completely ignorant of it all? Innocently going about bringing up ‘his son’, while my mother laughs at him and nurtures a secret love affair with my real father? Can a man be that blind? What if it were Ellie, and our son, little Leo, as he will be? What if he weren’t really mine? I would notice, wouldn’t I? Maybe that is why Ellie is so convinced about Gillian, a little voice in my head says. Maybe her female intuition is nothing but a shared female guilt.

      No. I shake my head. I imagine I’m trying to shake those fragments of piano keys from the dream out of my ears, out of my brain. The music has confused me. These are my parents (as Ellie and I will be Leo’s parents). Something has unsettled them, that is all. I get out my phone to call Ellie, to abort the plan, to tell her I trust my parents. But my fingers stop before they unlock the phone. If we don’t see it through, if we don’t read the letter that will undoubtedly be innocent, the idea will be Ellie’s constant refrain, a recurring theme over the years. And so, we will go ahead with the plan. Tonight.