Winter Sparrow (4 page)

It was hard to believe that it had taken them less than thirty minutes to walk through the mansion, but Mary was happy. After all, she’d ventured out past the dock and into strange waters. That was unlike her. A sense of bravery flooded in. Sitting at home in sweats and watching painful television wouldn’t have been nearly as invigorating as seeing the garden in full bloom, and still at the starting line of spring. She could only imagine how brilliant the flowers might look in the coming season.

“When can we start fixing it up?” she asked, like an eager child.

“I thought you didn’t like the place. It was dark and unwelcoming, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said with a slight nod, the smile still hanging on. “But that garden, Joshua, there was something about it that just…I can’t explain it.”

“Good grief, that’s all it took? If I knew it would make that much of an impression, I would’ve started the tour from the back.” Joshua shut the front door and fidgeted with the lock until he was sure it was secure. Mary stood on the porch, gazing out over what would someday be hers.

“Of course I left the light on in the foyer,” Joshua said sarcastically, searching for the key. With a mini flashlight pinched between his teeth, he struggled to find it.

Mary was taken from the porch for a moment. Her eyes drifted to the willow tree planted on the front lawn. Its roots stretched across the dirt-and-pebble driveway and a number of other spots around its formidable trunk. At first, Mary squinted to see what was carved at the center. She walked down the porch steps to get a clearer look. Joshua didn’t notice. He was busy jangling his keys and trying to break in out of frustration because the lock now refused to budge.

As she edged closer, the carving in the willow tree became clearer. It was a solitary word no one would raise a question about. A forgettable something, really. Nothing elaborate or poetic. Just simple, scratched into the bark. It read,
Once
.

Who put it here?
she wondered.

Just then, Mary glimpsed a shadow from the road that led to their future driveway, which she could see herself pressuring Joshua to get paved as soon as humanly possible. The shadow captured her glance when she touched the tree, felt the cut-up pieces that comprised the fragile, infant word. She swore she saw a face too with the shadow. It was a man with a soft complexion and a beard. A black hat kept his long hair neat and tucked. He had on a lengthy coat as well, and his teeth appeared yellow, glistening in the moonlight as he smiled at her from the road.

But then he was gone. Suddenly, a fog drifted in from the woods, and the chill forced her to blink. And shudder a little. She turned on the spot and saw Joshua coming closer.

She reached for his arm.

“What’s got you all jumpy?” he asked.

“It’s awful dark out here.”

“Yeah. Looks like we’ll have to get used to that,” Joshua said. “Hmm, did you notice our voices echo out here too?” Without awaiting a response, he repeated, “Echo!”

“Stop it,” she demanded.

“Why?”

“Because you never know who could be out this time of night.”

Tell him, Mary. Tell him what you saw. Tell him you saw a man, well, what looked like a man, with long hair and a beard and a black hat and…

That is what you saw, isn’t it?

“I got cold all of a sudden, Joshua. I want to head back now.”

“Okay,” he said, embracing her. “Let’s get you warm.” He unlocked the car with the keyless entry device.

Mary immediately went for the passenger door and sank into her seat, fastening her belt as tight as it would go. Joshua walked slowly, however, intensifying the tension inside her.

Just tell him what you saw.

Mary shut her eyes and pictured the garden. Maybe her mind had invented the man in black. Her mind had invented things and ideas before, so it wasn’t all that strange, was it? An imagination could be a dangerous thing, a very dangerous thing, the years had taught her.

Joshua opened the driver’s side door and slipped into his seat. He started the car and backed out. Mary looked out the window as a branch scraped the front hood. She couldn’t help but feel saddened by the carving there in the heart of the willow tree. In a matter of seconds, they were backing out of the driveway, leaving the property of the mansion, and heading back to the city.

THERE WAS CHANGE AGAIN IN
the air. The June sunlight invaded her apartment, and the heat started to get to her. At least, Mary blamed her anxiety on the heat, an appropriate scapegoat.

She was glad to admit she sensed something a little more alive in herself lately. Her mind often returned to the garden and the beauty it held. It wasn’t that her doubts about the mansion itself had evaporated, because they hadn’t fully. But with these winds of change came confidence and ambition. She was closer to accepting the future, even if part of her—most of her—feared it.

Maybe Joshua’s constant imagination about what the mansion
could be
kept her mind running in circles.

A collection of cardboard boxes lined the walls of her cramped bedroom. The beaten, pulled-open worlds seemed to act as mirrors, reflections of the way she had been dealing with it all up until today. Week upon week she had been second-guessing the decision to move the wedding up a few months so they could begin working on the mansion together and be rid of the expenses of renting separate apartments. She’d already been convinced that calling the property anything other than a mansion was a gross understatement. But the open boxes, which she was prepared to fill with all of the important things inside this room—in her life—still lay barren. Unaccomplished. Unfulfilled.

Mary massaged her temples, wondering what should go into the boxes first and which items belonged in which box. Did she have to categorize them with black marker before filling them or after filling them? Was it appropriate yet to label boxes
Mary’s Stuff
and some
Joshua’s Stuff
? After all, some of his college t-shirts had found their way into her dressers, and several of his movies had wandered into her collection during their brief engagement. But he hadn’t forgotten any of these things, she was certain. He’d left them behind on purpose so that one day he could come back for them, with her here to greet him as his bride.

He was that shameless romantic most girls read about in what she liked to call “fever novels” because all of her pathetic friends—both of them—fell victim to the simplistic writing and predictable plots offered by the long-winded sagas. She’d never be a victim of the typical, boring lullabies, even if she truly did adore the
idea
of love.

Mary whispered Joshua’s name just to gain focus. For some strange reason, reminding her heart of him ushered in a bit of peace. If he were here, he’d know what to do. He’d know how to arrange the items into the boxes; he’d categorize everything the proper way; he might even misplace certain things as his way of checking to see if she were actually present or if she’d mentally checked out because moving in together as husband and wife might allow for certain unintentional complications to creep into the relationship.

“It’s gonna be all right. Stop freaking out. There is no reason to doubt, not anymore. I love you.” Joshua murmured these serene comments to her just then. Sure, the syllables escaped from
her
lips, but it was exactly what he would’ve said.

If she could, she would paint something. But not before tucking her collections and the stuff she hardly used but still believed she wanted into the boxes neatly so they’d be ready to transport to her new home.

She started with the picture of Little Sis and herself. It had been taken at the beginning of her sophomore year of high school, after the move. Mary was not ready then to embrace a new world of students, teachers, and troublemakers who’d spout off vicious nicknames she’d eventually identify with come junior year. It was the students’ way of leaving their mark on her, she imagined, their way of living forever inside her. She eventually painted some of the kids too, as creatures doing dreadful things. Ugly, scorned images. In fact, sophomore year ushered in the darkest memory, when one of the malicious creatures wounded her.

The creature, more adequately described as a senior boy, had gotten too rough in one of the locker rooms. It was a mistake being there at night. She shouldn’t have been so naïve to think he actually had feelings for her after a semester’s worth of ridicule. Groping her chest came first. He rubbed her crudely, like a greedy kid in a candy store, snickering the whole time and saying he couldn’t find her breasts beneath the fabric. Harder and harder he squeezed her underdeveloped chest, until her skin felt raw. After he obtained satisfaction, he dropped his mouth from hers and started to pull at her chilled neck with his teeth. They were like scissors.

She didn’t show Mom or Dad the bruises. She didn’t tell a soul. Not with words anyway. But she painted it. And it was a sad painting. It was a splattered, morbid mess that told the story clearly, that embodied every bit of unhappiness and displeasure she had endured. What she had been forced to live with.

The emotions were taken somewhere far away, she hoped. Farther away than the distance of time she now existed from her beloved sister. The space this photograph made real again. “Thanks, Sis,” she said sarcastically, “for bringing the memory back.”

She was wrong to blame Jamie, and she knew it.

Over the years, Mary imagined the painting put up in some secret room where no children were allowed to play. Where no love was permitted. It was a dark place, the way this one was starting to feel now that she’d called such a memory out of her nightmares again. Now that the photograph of her sister started to bend in her grip, the frame ready to snap. She imagined a plume of smoke stretching across the painting she had created out of the tormented chambers of her heart. She named the painting “Past” and didn’t bother filling in any details for the enchanted buyer. The man who purchased it claimed the piece possessed such life, such tenacity and brilliance and raw emotion.
Like the fever novels
, she mused when he’d given her the compliment, along with a two thousand-dollar check.

Of course,
he
didn’t know that the picture had been the offspring of one of the worst nights in her life, birthed in immeasurable pain. How could memories do this? How could they get away with causing so much heartache? Where were the judges who let this atrocity occur? Where were the school kids? Where were the angels and saints?

Where was Joshua?

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She wasn’t wearing much: some ripped jeans, a loose tank, no socks. She pinned up her hair like a prisoner, locks pulled back from misting eyes. Mary didn’t notice that the picture’s glass had cut her hand until she decided to answer the call.