For the Forest of a Bird Read Online Free PDF Page A

home.
    Everything
, what a magical word. It left no room for hunger, for wanting. Nella’s father would be here with her, back with her, and there would be no gap of aching, no moments of feeling that the world belonged to everyone else and she was near-invisible.
    She said the word aloud and Matthew looked at her, but she did not disappear in his stare.
    â€˜I must get things ready,’ she said and she did not wait to witness Matthew’s surprise, but turned and went to the little room. The floor had to be swept, the mattress aired, the blankets washed. She was already making a list of things in her head that she must do when she walked to the window and looked outside. Strange, it had never occurred to her before but the window of this little room faced the creek. Beyond the slate roofs and iron fences, the brick chimneys, the creek flowed.
    How she longed to reach out to it, to touch it, to whisper to it – no, to speak aloud – that her father was coming home, he really was coming home.
    And with that, she could no longer rest within the bounds of herself; she could no longer concentrate on cleaning or sweeping or washing. She knew that she must see her father.

    How quickly Nella rode to the hospital and what a dishevelled picture she must have presented when she got there, but she did not care. She leapt up the lino stairs two at a time, passing visitors with flowers tight in their hands and young doctors with their pressed white coats. She heard her footsteps echo on the hardened floors and felt her reflection mirrored back at her from every polished surface.
    She was amplified, that was it. She was a million things, everything. She was a profusion, the bursting forth of all things she’d always kept so small inside.
    It will be just as it was, she said aloud. She was turning the corner now beyond the stairwell, entering the long passage of the cardiac ward. She was heading toward the little glass window that was the nurses’ station and soon she would be approaching bed seventeen, her father’s.
    So, Matthew knew everything. That made it better really, that her father had told Matthew, that Matthew had visited their father – that he had wanted to visit their father. It had all worked out perfectly really. If Nella had told Matthew that she was going to bring their father home, how difficult it would have been. But somehow things had worked out with a sense of ease, as if . . . what? As if this really was exactly how it was meant to be, after all.
    He told me everything
. Nella heard Matthew’s words again. How perfect.
    Nella was at her father’s bedside now . ‘Everything,’ she said. She thought of the feather let go in the wind. She saw her father’s eyes closed now, sleeping. And she looked around. A metal dresser, a wooden cross, a card with a corella on it. How curious – only Nella knew of her father’s love for corellas.
    She reached across, knowing that she shouldn’t, knowing that surely it was wrong to read her father’s private correspondence, but she couldn’t help it.
Dear . . . 
she saw the unfamiliar handwriting but before she could read any more, her father spoke.
    â€˜Nella,’ he said.
    She turned to him. She saw his green green eyes. He was looking straight at her. She could tell he was happy.
    â€˜Dad . . . you’re . . .’
    He smiled at her.
    â€˜You’re . . . alive . . .’
    â€˜Yeah,’ he said. ‘Of course I am. I’m not going anywhere just yet, you know.’
    He laughed, she laughed too. How well they knew each other.
    And then she said, ‘Well, except for one place.’
    He tilted his head a little and looked at her more closely.
    â€˜You’re not going anywhere except for one place,’ she explained.
    He looked curious, a little puzzled.
    â€˜Actually,’ Nella said. ‘Matthew told me. I