The Eagle Kite

Liam has known the truth for three years—since the morning he broke the eagle kite and smashed it into the sand. The kite was a present from his father, and it would never fly. . . . That morning he’d seen Daddy on the beach at Springton. Someone was with him. The memory lay curled in Liam’s mind, barely stirring for months at a time. He’d never told anybody. In one sense, he’d never told himself. Now his mother tells him that Daddy is sick—from a blood transfusion. Maybe she believes it, but Liam doesn’t. “We all die,” his father says to him. “I’ll die sooner.” “Sooner,” Liam echoes. Philip Cormac has AIDS. And only he and Mrs. Mottley, the woman who looks in on him at the cabin in Springton to which he’s retreated, will say the word. One Thanksgiving Liam is seized with a desire to be with his father. Unsure why he’s come, he finds in Philip’s face—so like an eagle’s now in its gauntness—and in his rusty voice and in his very life, the long-buried answer.