The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard

now.”
    “Oh! Hey, I hope she’s okay. Call me.”
    The next time he got asked, he was ready for it, even though every word of what he had to say hurt him like a stab in the gut:
It’s an open homicide investigation, and my dad won’t let me talk about it. I don’t know who she was. And I don’t know where the fuck Mitch is. He never said a word to me.

    A few weeks after Mitch left, on a day when Tom and Nadine had gone to Kansas City, Abby grabbed the keys to their house that Mitch had once given her, and sneaked into their home.
    She ran upstairs to his room, and found it just the same as it had been.
    Her photo wasn’t on his dresser where it always was, but she figured that could mean anything. Maybe he had taken it with him, which would be a good sign, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe Nadine got rid of it after he left.
    Abby obsessively searched every drawer in his room.
    She looked on every surface, checked under his mattress, and under his bed.
    She went through the pockets of all the remaining clothes in his closet, looking for a secret note he might have left her, an explanation, a solution to the awful mystery of his absence. She didn’t find that, but in the pocket of his best dress suit, she found a wrapped chocolate mint, which she unwrapped and ate. Then she buried her face in his clothing, breathing in his scent until she couldn’t bear to smell it anymore. On the bed, she lay on her back, then her side, then her stomach, trying to feel where he had lain.
    Abby didn’t find any note to her. She hadn’t had any mail from him, either.
    All of his yearbooks were still there. He hadn’t taken them, with their many photos of her in school activities, and of the two of them, caught in snapshots as a couple. In one, her favorite, they were in winter coats. Mitch had his arms around her in a bear hug, and they were both grinning at the camera, looking as if they could be happy forever.
    She had gone there, to his home, hoping to find something, some clue to why he left, or some indication that he had taken his love for her with him when he went, and that he still treasured her.
    She didn’t find anything like that, but when she slowly descended the stairs to the first floor, she found Mitch’s pet parrot, J. D. Salinger, in his cage. Mitch and Rex had named J.D. after the author of
Catcher in the Rye,
their favorite book their junior year, because they thought it was a hilarious name for a parrot. Abby was shocked to see that the poor bird had pecked half of its feathers out. She was shocked, but she understood it. If she’d had feathers, she’d have plucked them all out by now, too, out of her uncontrollable craving for the boy she couldn’t have.
    When she saw the awful state J.D. was in, Abby felt really angry at Mitch, so angry that she hated him. It felt really good to hate him. It felt good to see that there was another creature on earth who was suffering, as she was, and for the exact same reason. She didn’t want J.D. to hurt, but seeing him like that made her feel a little less crazy. Maybe she was only as sane as a half-bald parrot, but at least she knew that another creature was taking it as hard as she was. From that moment, Abby swore to rescue the parrot and love him back to happiness. Three weeks later, she got her chance, and stole him off the Newquists’ screened-in porch. It took a long time to bring J.D. around, but eventually his feathers began to grow back, his eyes lit up again, and his appetite came back. On a day when he nuzzled her hair and gently nibbled her earlobe without drawing blood, she knew it was going to be okay.
    The only thing about the bird that changed permanently was that he never squawked again, as he had used to do when Mitch was around. The parrot had a squawk that could rouse roosters from their perches, the judge had always said, but now the big red bird only made quiet noises, as if he was afraid of offending.
    “I don’t know what I did wrong, either,”