I was gonna leave John. You're surprised because we seem so happy. My Grandmother was born here. She lived here all her life. She used to tell us kids this place is chosen. The Good Lord pointed His finger down on the final day of creation "You. The Jarden of Eden." We didn't believe her, but she said there was a way to prove it, a way to make your wishes come true. You take a bird, you put it in a box and you bury it. Anywhere in the woods is fine. And you wait. You wait three days, you come back, dig it up, and if it's alive, right then is when you make your wish. Little girls believe all sorts of things, but I knew pretend when I heard it. Birds living in the ground for three days is pretend. Making wishes is pretend. The Good Lord is pretend. And then on October 14, people went away from everywhere except here. That was real. That happened. My Grandma had been dead for 10 years, but she was right. This place was chosen. And about a month ago, I was walking out to my car and I saw it. A sparrow right by the driver's side door lying there like it was trying to get me to help it. It was dehydrated. Almost dead. You think I nursed it back to health, Nora? Depending on the size of the box, a bird can survive 20 hours. Anything over 30 hours is medically impossible. And like I said, this bird, it didn't have anything left. So I waited the three days. I jogged out to the woods, I dug up the box, and I made my wish before I opened it. I wished that my kids would be okay if I left. Because they had no idea I needed to go. No idea what it's like to pretend. Michael, he has his faith. He'd be fine. But Evie, she wouldn't understand. It would break her heart. So I wished that she'd be okay without me. I opened up the box, the bird flew out. And the next night my daughter was gone.
Well, Erika, that's just...that's quite a stretch. Your logic, I'm sorry, it's a little all over the place, don't you think?
Well, what do you think?
You wanted to leave your husband. Okay, so why didn't he go? Why didn't you? disappeared three years ago. Did you wish them away, too? Because that's a lot of birds to bury, Erika. That's a flock of epic proportions. I get it. I felt the same as you. I, I felt responsible for losing my children. I thought it was my fault. But I moved past it. I evolved. Because that's pathetic. Terrible things happen in this world. And the only comfort we get is that we didn't cause them. So I'm sorry, but Erika, this had nothing to do with you.
Did they depart or did they die?
What?
Your children. You said you lost them. Did they depart or did they die?
They departed.
More from this episode
All quotes from this episode →More The Leftovers quotes · These quotes come from Wikiquote's The Leftovers pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.