Miracles and happiness are a lot like each other in many ways. It is difficult to predict what will trigger a miracle. Some people go their entire lives full of persistent darkness and never feel the need to seek out a miracle. Others find they can exist with darkness only for a single night before they go hunting for a miracle to remove it. Some need only one miracle; others might have two or three or four or five over the course of their lives. Happiness is the same way. One can never tell what will make one person happy and leave another untouched. Often even the person involved will be surprised by what makes them happy.
And it turns out that owls find both miracles and happiness irresistible.
There was plenty of happiness to be found the night the Sorias finally celebrated Antonia’s and Francisco’s birthdays the following year. Marisita and Daniel danced on the stage that Pete had built, lights twinkling over their heads and rose petals swirling under their feet. Marisita wore a blue dress she had never worn before. After having to wear a wedding dress every day for over a year, she had vowed that she would never again wear the same clothing two days in a row. That night after the dancing was done, she would sit at the kitchen table with Antonia as she had every night before, tear the seams out of the blue dress, and sew herself a new one. Daniel held her fondly as they danced, and his hands bore eight more tattoos: eight closed half-moon eyes just below his open spiders’ eyes, to remind him of what he had learned during the hours that he could not see.
Antonia and Francisco had just finished dancing, and now they exchanged gifts while Judith looked on with joy. Antonia presented Francisco with a small box. When he opened it, he discovered a shapely, night-black rose. It was not quite as perfect as the one he had been hoping to breed, but that was because she had fashioned it out of the ashes of the box truck. Francisco kissed his wife in delight, and then he retrieved a large box from the table behind him. When Antonia opened it, she discovered a black-and-white collie puppy. It was not exactly the same as the one he had owned when he met her all those years ago, but this one had a bigger smile. Antonia said, “I love dogs.”
Pete and Beatriz had yet to dance. Currently, they both sat on the blackened wire mesh platform of the radio telescope, looking down at the festivities from above. From here they could see Marisita’s family joyfully chattering near the stage (Max had remained in Texas with his anger for company), and they could also see Joaquin demonstrating the use of the turntable and speakers to one of Marisita’s younger sisters. His bag was already packed beside him; he was headed to Philadelphia that summer, but he’d promised to stay for the party. He was on his way to becoming Diablo Diablo even during the daytime, and the Sorias couldn’t have been more proud.
“I’m happy,” Beatriz told Pete. It was a sentence she wouldn’t have thought to say out loud only a few months before.
“Me, too,” Pete whistled back.
Above them and below them, owls began to cry out. They lifted from the rooftops and soared off the edge of the radio telescope, and Beatriz and Pete hurriedly descended to discover the source of the commotion. All of the Sorias watched as a pair of headlights slowly pulled up beside Eduardo Costa’s beloved stepside truck. Owls careened toward the newcomer, some of them landing on the vehicle itself. Owl talon on metal is not a fortunate combination, and the sound is equally unpleasant.
The lights turned off. It was a large farm truck with the words double d ranch painted on the side of it.
This was Darlene Purdey, the owner of the rooster Pete had repurposed the previous summer. Deprived of her prize fighter, she had shifted her focus from hosting cockfights to searching for the two young people who had taken him from her. After all this time, she had finally tracked them to Bicho Raro by means of a classified ad—the Sorias had listed Salto for sale in the newspaper, and Darlene had recognized him from his description alone.
Now she climbed out of the truck, a shotgun hooked over her elbow. She was no less bitter than she had been the night that Pete and Beatriz had burst onto her ranch. Darkness had only continued to layer on top of her existing grief until now she could barely move for it. All she did was sleep, and look for General MacArthur.
“I’m here about a rooster,” she snarled. She swept her free hand over herself, attempting to clear the chaos of owls away from her. Some of the smaller birds had settled around her feet, flapping and trilling. They barely moved when she nudged the toe of her boot at them.
“Lady,” Eduardo said, “you look like you need a miracle.”
Darlene snapped, “Yeah, have you got any of those lying around?”
The Sorias faced her.
“Yes,” Daniel said. “We do.”