Page 3 of Butterfly Effects
“No.”
That was typical of the kind of family cuckoos were generally attached to when it came time to hide their young. They didn’t always have time to scout well enough to be sure—Angela herself had grown up with two sets of grandparents—but when they could, they left the babies with couples who had no strong familial ties outside each other. It helped with questions like “Why didn’t you tell us you were pregnant” and “Why doesn’t the baby look anything like you in the pictures.” Still, it stung to know that was the case for Sarah. If she’d already had an existing family, they might have been able to help her reunite with them.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah. Did you want syrup? Or ketchup?”
Sarah hesitated. “Can I really have ketchup if I want it?” she asked.
“I always put ketchup on mine.”
“She does,” confirmed the man. “Has for as long as I’ve known her.”
“Then ketchup, please,” said Sarah, in a prim voice. “I like it better.”
“Most of us do,” said the woman, and reached for the ketchup. She exchanged a look with the man as she did. “There’s something I need to discuss with you, once you’re finished eating your breakfast, all right?”
“All right,” said Sarah. She took the bottle, squirting thick red paste onto her waffle like it was frosting, pausing, and then adding another layer. She set the ketchup aside, picking up her fork. “Is it about me not being human? I heard you last night.”
The woman flinched. “I’m sorry, Sarah. We thought you were asleep, but we still shouldn’t have been talking about you.”
“It’s okay.” Sarah shrugged. “But what’s a cuckoo?”
Silence settled over the kitchen table, heavy and uncomfortable, and for a long moment, no one seemed to know what to say. Then the younger of the two girls piped up:
“A cuckoo is our grandmother, Angela Baker, and she makes the best spaghetti sauce in the whole world, and likes to do math so much she made it her whole job, and our mother says she’s one of the best people ever to keep us from jumping off bridges during summer vacation, and so if you say anything mean about cuckoos, you’re saying it about our gramma and I hate you.”
Angela radiated amusement. “Thank you, Antimony, but no one is saying anything mean about cuckoos right now. Sarah was only asking what we are. And Sarah, we’re just a different way of being people. We can be nice and kind or cruel and mean. We can be anything we want to be.”
“Gramma wanted to be an accountant,” said the boy, proudly.
“Yes, I did, Alex, and I’m a very good accountant, thank you. We don’t see faces like humans do—we see minds. That’s why Drew’s wearing the charm that keeps you from looking at his mind too hard, because sometimes when we look at people’s minds, we change them. It usually happens when we’re scared, or when we’re talking to strangers. We make them think they already know us, and then we change their memories so they remember knowing us. That’s what happened to you when people started trying to take you home. You were scared, and that just made it worse.”
Sarah’s eyes were huge. “I don’t want to change people’s minds.”
“That’s good, because people can get hurt that way. A lot of cuckoos don’t care about hurting people, but I do. I care a great deal.”
“I don’t want to hurt people,” said Sarah. “How do I not do that?”
“I can help you,” said Angela. “But you’ll have to stay here if you want to learn.”
“I don’t live here anymore,” said Drew. “I was just back to housesit. So you won’t be putting me in any danger of having my mind changed.”
“You can’t change my mind,” said Martin.
“We’re going home next week,” said Alex.
“If I stay here, I can learn how to be a good cuckoo and no one’s going to take me away?” asked Sarah hesitantly.
Angela nodded.
“Yes,” she said.
Sarah looked around the room, then back to Angela, and nodded decisively.
“Then I’m staying here, and you’re going to teach me,” she said. “And I’m never going to hurt anybody.”
One
“Promises are always important. Promises to children are the foundations of who we are. Make them carefully, if you’re going to make them at all.”
