When Cardinals Appear

Diana Crenshaw hated the smell of her sister-in-law’s house. The two-story residence wreaked of wet cotton which only seemed to intensify with every visit. A pervasive mustiness infiltrated every room, as if sewer water nested in the pipes, providing the perfect breeding ground for mold. The walls themselves showed no evidence of damage, but no matter how many observations she made about the smell, her sister-in-law remained oblivious to it.

As she entered the residence, Diana closed her eyes and took a deep breath to adjust her senses to the stuffy aroma, knowing it would be her companion for the next couple of hours. Breathing was difficult, but not impossible and as Diana moved deeper inside the domain, it began to have less of an effect on her.

“I really appreciate you coming all this way to babysit Connor,” Lyra confessed, as she ushered Diana into the living room. Were it not for the hint of southern drawl laced into her voice, Lyra could have almost passed for northeasterner. As it was, she was very much a North Carolina native who swore moonshine was a cure for everything cheddar biscuits couldn’t fix.

“It’s no trouble at all, especially now that my schedule’s opened up, since I quit the force,” Diana replied, trying not to wince. Her resignation was hardly four weeks old, and the topic was still a sore subject. She had spent years building a career in Phoenix, going as far as being promoted to detective with talk of moving into a lieutenant’s position. Her work was her life, and everything was going according to plan, until two years ago when her brother disappeared.

She turned her entire life upside-down, moving from Phoenix to North Carolina, to dedicate every waking hour to his search. Everyone on the force knew that “missing” meant “dead”, but for Diana, it was the “not knowing” that ate at her, taking her sanity with it. What was the point in being a detective if she couldn’t help the ones she loved most?

“Well, I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am that you could come at such late notice,” Lyra continued, oblivious to the dark look passing over Diana’s face. “This is the third time the regular sitters cancelled, and after today, I don’t think she’ll be so regular anymore,” Lyra replied with an airy laugh.

“So, what’s the occasion for going out?” Diana asked curiously, eying Lyra’s choice of outfit which consisted of a modest, but formal light green embroidery dress with flared sleeves and a flattering waistline. The dress flared at the bottom just above Lyra’s knees and was coupled with a pair of black flats to complete the look.

Lyra seemed to freeze at the question. “Well, this isn’t easy to say, so I may as well just come out and say it.” Lyra took a deep breath to calm herself before confessing. “I was asked out. On a date.”

If Diana was surprised by such a confession, she kept it hidden behind a neutral expression.

“Now, before you judge me,” Lyra continued, “It’s been two years since…” Lyra’s tongue couldn’t form the words, so she opted for another approach. “I can’t keep holding myself back from moving on with my life. I have Connor to think about and it’s hard being a single mom. Not to mention—”

“—Lyra, Lyra, calm down,” Diana interrupted, “I get it. You don’t need to explain yourself.”

There was no point in being bitter about it. Considering how much time had passed, it was arguably acceptable for her sister-in-law to date. Still, that didn’t mean she wanted to hear about it.

“Good, good,” Lyra said, recovering herself and visibly relaxing. “I was hoping you would understand.”

“Where’s Connor?” Diana asked instead, wanting desperately to change the subject.

“In the yard. I told him he could play until you arrived,” Lyra responded, beckoning for her to follow.

Diana followed Lyra to the kitchen and out the back door which opened into a porch just big enough to hold a grill and a table with four chairs and an umbrella. The rest of the yard was a clearing of green complete with freshly cut grass, flowering bushes, and a small shed. The end of the clearing was marked by the beginning of hickory trees which led into deeper wood. There was no such thing as fences to mark the end of a property line; just the unspoken agreement that one should never venture beyond the trees.

“Connor!” Lyra called just as Diana spotted him huddled near an oversized log on the edge of the clearing. “Your Aunt Diana’s here. Come say hi.”

At the mention of his aunt, Connor ran towards the house with a large smile plastered across his face, and muddy footprints following in his wake. Diana returned the smile, genuinely happy that she would be getting quality time with her nephew.

“Oh, no, no, no! Stop right there, young man,” Lyra said, holding up her hand to stop him in his tracks before he could even place a foot on the porch. “Just look at you! You are covered in mud!”

“There’s moss growing on Old Stumpy, ma!” Connor exclaimed, too excited to share his discovery than take notice of his clothes. “Old Stumpy ain’t never had moss before. Hi, Aunt Diana!”

Diana waved back, taking in her eight-year-old nephew. He was only a few inches away from reaching her height, but everything about him still screamed little boy from the mud strewn across his Flash T-shirt to the brightness in his eyes. Aside from the freckles which were a trademark from his mother, everything about him screamed Douglas Crenshaw. From the tips of his wild curly hair to his posture, he was the living embodiment of her brother.

Lyra insisted that Connor remove his shoes before entering the house and ordered him to go straight upstairs to shower. Once he was settled, Lyra briefed Diana on everything she needed to know, which included a list of emergency contacts posted to the refrigerator, available food options, Connor’s bedtime routine, which was to be strictly started at eight-thirty, and finally, where to find the gun in the event of a trespasser.

The nearest police station was over an hour away by car, so it was common for citizens in the area to own a gun, but her sister-in-law owning one was news to her. Her brother had been against having a gun in the house, but considering Lyra was a single mother now, living on her own, in the middle of nowhere, it made sense that she would have purchased one for protection.

Diana listened patiently, nodding her head even though she found Lyra’s rant dull and unnecessary. As a former detective, she had been placed in all sorts of dangerous situations. She was confident she could handle a little babysitting.

Just when she thought Lyra would talk forever, the doorbell rang.

“He’s early! Lord, help me, I haven’t even finished my make-up,” Lyra announced with horror. “Could you be a dear and get the door, so I can finish getting ready?”

Diana nodded, waiting until Lyra cleared the steps before opening the door to a man she instantly recognized.

“Pastor Gavin, well this is a surprise,” Diana commented. The last time she had seen or spoken to the pastor was at the police station when he was a person of interest. He had admitted to seeing her brother the day before he went missing and naturally, questions followed. Of course, the interview, like so many before, only led to dead ends and the only useful thing Pastor Gavin could offer were prayers.

“Detective Crenshaw,” the pastor acknowledged. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you were returning to Arizona.”

“Quite the opposite actually,” Diana replied, observing Pastor Gavin with new eyes. He wore an impeccable gray suit with a dark green tie that could easily compliment Lyra’s dress. Whether or not it was purposefully done, Diana could not tell, but from the way he fidgeted with straightening his tie and patting down his pleated pants, he appeared to be nervous. “I’m here to babysit my nephew. I assume you’re Lyra’s date?”

“Yes, well, it appears that way,” Pastor Gavin replied, clearing his throat, and looking away.

Diana invited him in, and Pastor Gavin took a seat on the couch in the living room. An awkward silence passed between them as Diana continued to discreetly observe him. The fidgeting continued until Lyra appeared, greeting the pastor with a kiss that seemed a little too familiar for a first date. Connor followed close behind, his hair still wet from the shower, but his muddy clothes replaced with a clean pair of red-striped pajamas. He stopped beside his aunt, wrapping his arms around her, giving her a big toothy grin that made the ache in her chest more pronounced.

As soon as Lyra and Pastor Gavin said their goodbyes and drove off, Diana and Connor took advantage of their newly gained freedom. The evening was spent feasting on a dinner of leftover homemade pizza and blackened tiramisu, playing video games, and watching football, despite Lyra’s rules. By the time nine-thirty struck, Connor succumbed to sleep despite his attempt to stay up and Diana found herself lifting his little body and carrying him upstairs to his bed.

Carefully tucking him in, she kissed the top of his head and lingered a moment more, wishing more than anything that her brother were here to witness such a precious moment.

“Where are you?” she whispered, knowing there would be no answer.

Tears threatened to swallow her, and she quickly turned to leave when a loud creak from the floorboard below her foot squeaked. Diana froze, certain Connor would wake, but when the boy showed no sign of movement, she turned her attention back to the floorboard.

Turning on her phone’s flashlight, she looked closer at it, noticing that an imperceptibly small hole just big enough for a finger had been drilled into it. It reminded her of the one in her brother’s old bedroom that they both used as a hiding place for things they didn’t want their parents finding. Without another thought, she knelt and tested the edge of the floorboard, discovering what she suspected. It was loose.

Diana slowly peeled the floorboard up, revealing a bigger hole just large enough to hold a small metal box. She didn’t hesitate to reach down and grab it, before gently placing the floorboard back in place and tiptoeing the rest of the way out of the room. She raced down to the living room and set the box on the table, hardly able to breathe as she opened it.

Newspaper clippings greeted her, drawing her eyes to each headline that all had the same thing in common. They were all about her brother. Some of it was praise dating back to his high school football days when he had the potential to go pro before he injured his ankle, while more recent ones were about his coaching career. Ignoring the tightness in her chest, she clawed through the rest of the box, until a large envelope caught her eye.

She removed the envelope from the box, along with the papers it housed, revealing several legal documents. She read her brother’s will, which she noted had been updated only six months before he went missing and did not mention Lyra’s name once. Almost everything was entailed to Connor with the exception of a few personal items and a small amount of money. Her chest constricted at the sight of her name and even more so, when she read that he was leaving her his favorite Cardinals football jersey. He swore it carried good luck and always wore it the day before a big game. It meant everything to him.

Using the house’s vile odor as an anchor to the present, she calmed herself and flipped to the next document which included a life insurance plan, investment information and contact information for the lawyer who had drawn up all the records.

Diana put the documents down, a revelation burning like a pit in her mind despite the room’s severe drop in temperature. During the investigation, the house had been searched and her brother’s family’s finances had been thoroughly scrubbed. The will on file had come from a different lawyer and was entailed mostly towards Lyra, with no mention of Connor. At the time, Diana had simply assumed he never got around to updating it. Never in her wildest dreams did she think she would find a hidden one in the floorboard of her nephew’s bedroom. But why was it hidden there, where no one but she might think to look?

Another smaller envelope revealed itself behind the larger one with her name emblazoned in a sloppy script that could only belong to her brother. Shivers ran down her arm as she reached for it, taking care not to hastily rip the envelope open despite her curiosity. She pulled out a handful of pictures and suppressed the urge to gasp as she flipped through each image. Similar to the newspapers, these too had a theme.

Lyra at a farmer’s market with Pastor Gavin. Lyra with Pastor Gavin at a fundraiser. Lyra and Pastor Gavin bicycling through a park.

All of the images started as relatively innocent, until the last one, which explicitly showed Lyra and Pastor Gavin locked in a lover’s embrace inside of a car. Turning the back of the photo, her brother’s handwriting once again appeared with a date from three years ago. If Lyra’s cheating was surprising, then her brother’s knowing of it was even more devastating to her.

The cogs in Diana’s brain began to work in earnest as she tried to piece together this new information and what it meant. Douglas had updated his will but told no one. Douglas knew Lyra was cheating but told no one and if Lyra was still going out with Pastor Gavin, then clearly the affair had never stopped. She recollected her encounter with them from earlier cross-referencing them with previous interviews, noting with revulsion, how the signs had been there all along, only she had been too pained to see them.

Red filled Diana’s vision as she thought back to all of those restless nights studying her brother’s case file and coming up empty when the answers had been there all along. She was a hand’s breath away from reaching for her cellphone to dial the police, when she realized how abnormally tight her skin felt. Shivers wracked her body as the temperature of the room dropped several significant degrees and with horror, she realized, she could see her breath.

Slight movement from the kitchen caught the corner of her eye, but when she turned there was no one. Everything was just as it was, until it wasn’t.

A vision appeared before her, like the ones she used to get when she was a heartbeat away from solving a particularly difficult case. Muddy footprints littered the floor, and based on the sizes, one set was male and the other, female.

Just as quickly as the vision came, it was gone and Diana felt herself moving, no longer paralyzed from the cold.

Scrambling through one of the kitchen’s drawers, she grabbed a flashlight before collecting the gun duct-taped inside one of the top cabinets. She checked the weapon to make sure it was locked and loaded before pulling on her shoes and proceeding out the back door into the night.

The humid autumn air was a welcome balm healing her from the hours she spent encapsulated inside. Crossing her arms, she held her flashlight out with her left hand and aimed the gun with her right, as she moved across the yard. She almost slipped in a particularly muddy area, but thankfully, she was close enough to a very large log to steady herself.

The one her nephew had affectionately dubbed "Old Stumpy."

She peered closer at the log, remembering her nephew’s comment from earlier about the log recently sprouting moss. The mud was clearly fresh as well, but considering there hadn’t been rain recently, it shouldn’t have been.

A trill whistle had Diana snapping her neck to look up, breaking her from her reflections. A red cardinal stood perched upon a branch, before disappearing deep into the wood. Taking it as a sign, Diana stepped across the invisible borderline that separated the property from the woods, hoping her prediction was correct. That somewhere, not too far, was a water source and her brother was guiding her towards it.

She jogged to catch up to the bird, whose dark red feathers glowed in the night. The color reminded her of blood, and a sense of foreboding had her pushing her feet faster, despite the uneven ground that covered the soles of her shoes in thick mud. Just as the cardinal disappeared from sight, the wood opened up, revealing a bog that stretched as far as the eye could see. As she approached it cautiously, a rich earthy odor assaulted her senses, reminding her of a dank dog or the way the house smelled. Like wet cotton.

She strategically placed her flashlight on a nearby rock with the gun beside it, before diving headfirst into the bog. Icicles surged through her veins, piercing the core of her bones, momentarily immobilizing her as her head emerged above the surface. She allowed herself thirty seconds to get used to the temperature before forcing herself back underneath, desperately scouring the murky dark waters with only the beam of her flashlight to guide her ascent. Using her hands, she located the bog’s floor and followed it until it dipped further than she could reach. Coming back up for air, she splashed as she calculated, estimating that the bog’s floor had to reach at least six feet. She knew she would be putting herself in danger should she try to venture deeper, but she had come too far to stop now.

Her brother was here. She could feel him. And she was not about to abandon him when she was so close to uncovering the truth. Taking several deep breaths, Diana prepared herself for the deep dive, vowing not to come up for air until she found him.

*****

Two years and two months later, the “not knowing” no longer haunted Diana. Douglas Crenshaw finally had a grave. A real one, lined in satin to keep out the chill and amidst other gravestones, so he wasn’t alone. Considering where his body had spent its first two years, this odd thought comforted Diana as she stood across his gravestone trying to forget the night, she found him.

The bog had preserved enough of the body for police to confirm that Douglas had died of a gunshot wound and the bullet matched the ones loaded in Lyra’s gun. The gun was tested for fingerprints, and aside from her own, Lyra and Pastor Gavin’s came back as a match. With all the evidence stacked against them, it wasn’t long before Pastor Gavin broke down and confessed. He claimed that Douglas was threatening to divorce Lyra, expose the affair and destroy his reputation and out of anger, Lyra shot him. He was merely the accomplice. It would be months until a trial, but with her old position re-instated, Diana was going to make sure they both got a nice long sentence.

A soft whistle pulled Diana from her thoughts and brought her back to the present where a red cardinal hopped across the top of her brother’s headstone.

“Looks like you got a visitor,” a cemetery caretaker commented, catching her off guard. She had seen him working around the area but didn’t expect him to start a conversation.

“I guess so,” Diana agreed politely.

“He must have been dearly loved,” the caretaker continued.

“The bird?” Diana asked, confused.

“The deceased,” the caretaker replied, nodding towards the gravestone.

“Oh, yes he was,” Diana replied, clearing her throat.

“He’s closer than you think, you know,” the caretaker added. “Cardinals appear when loved ones are near.”

Diana nodded gratefully, her chest expanding at his words. In a gesture of respect, he tipped his hat towards her before meandering down another aisle full of graves.

Diana glanced at her watch, noting it was nearly time to pick Connor up from school. With a final look at the gravestone, she turned, inhaling sweet notes of petrichor. The refreshing scent filled her senses while she walked away and for the first time in a long time, she felt like she could breathe.