CHAPTER TWO: THE BREATHING WALL
Daniel moved toward the panel, but Carol seized his forearm.
“If you open it too quickly, they’ll scatter through the house,” she said.
He pulled free and stood between her and the opening.
“Who’s they?”
Carol did not answer.
The sound behind the metal became louder.
Daniel crouched and spotted three tiny feathers caught beneath the tape.
He had owned this house for nine months and had never heard birds in the kitchen wall before.
He reached for his phone and called the county animal services number saved from a previous encounter with a stray dog.
The dispatcher transferred him to a wildlife officer named Priya Santos.
Priya asked him to describe the sound, the panel, and the room.
She told him not to open the hatch until someone could inspect it safely.
“Keep the room closed and reduce noise,” she said.
“If there are animals inside, panic will make this harder.”
Carol stood with her back to the broken window.
Her hands shook so violently that she had to hold them together.
“You called wildlife services,” she said.
“There are birds behind my kitchen wall.”
“They’ll take everything.”
“Everything what?”
She stared at the cabinet as though it might answer for her.
Daniel pulled a sheet over the broken window to keep the house from filling with insects.
He placed the chair on the patio, where its bent frame scraped across the stones.
Carol watched every movement.
“My sister painted this kitchen,” he said, mostly to give himself something ordinary to think about.
“She complained that the wall behind that cabinet smelled of cedar.
”
“It’s a lining,” Carol replied automatically.
Daniel turned around.
“You know what’s behind there.”
She looked toward the alley separating their houses.
“Your contractor put in the panel.”
“The renovation was finished before I bought the place.”
“The contractor was my nephew, Lewis.”
The name sounded familiar.
Daniel remembered a young man in a clean blue jacket who had once stood on Carol’s porch carrying a narrow wooden crate.
He had introduced himself as Lewis Mercer and said he worked with injured birds.
He had asked Daniel to keep the patio floodlights off at night because bright light disturbed wildlife.
Daniel had refused after someone tried to open his garage door one evening.
“Lewis built an animal shelter in my wall?” he asked.
Carol took a breath.
“He said it was temporary.”
“When did he say that?”
“Before you moved in.”
Daniel stared at the newer screws holding the metal panel.
He remembered the rattling he sometimes heard near the refrigerator when the house was quiet.
He had blamed the ice maker.
“What birds are they?” he asked.
Carol opened her mouth, then closed it.
Outside, a white delivery van passed slowly along the alley.
Carol flinched so hard that Daniel noticed.
“Who’s in that van?” he asked.
“Don’t look,” she said.
Daniel looked anyway.
The driver wore a yellow cap and had no company markings on the doors.
The van continued without stopping.
When Daniel faced Carol again, her expression had changed from fear to calculation.
“I need to call Lewis,” she said.
“You can call him after you tell me what he did.”
“He isn’t going to answer me now.”
“Why not?”
“Because he knows I broke your window.”
