The Bird Hotel

by Joyce Maynard

I couldn’t bear her sympathy. Worse yet, her pity.

Even when something very sad happens, even when someone dies, the birds don’t stop singing.

But the two of them were in that young and endlessly hopeful stage of love I remembered, when all you want to do is make the person you love happy.

“I read one time that in every couple there’s usually one person that’s more in love than the other,” he told me.

Tragedy struck—often, and with ferocity sometimes, as depicted in the painting that hung on the wall of La Llorona. But after it was over, people got on with their lives. They were always ready to work hard.