Hello, Little Sparrow by Jordan Jones (ebook audio reader txt) 📗

I would give it all up again if my family came back together.

The elevator was shaky on the way back up and the balcony’s air felt more brisk than ever. The air farther out looked more inviting, as the city’s lights appeared as dimmed fireflies searching for their way.

The wind blew slightly, and I began to wonder if the wind would also jostle me in the air like it did poor Madison. Would I land where I intended?

The pavement below felt hard under my feet walking up to the building and didn’t feel so inviting.

In fact, it felt painful. It felt hard and unforgiving.

For this, I was glad.

I didn’t want to jump tonight like I did most nights, though I wasn’t sure exactly where the optimism came from. I dug deep inside, but couldn’t find anything keeping me from purposefully falling off the ledge.

I wanted to step back down onto the safety of the balcony floor beneath me. I wanted my bed, and I wanted something comfortable under my head.

I wanted to find what motivated Madison to complete what I couldn’t bring myself to do.

Chapter Three

Brooks Ingram looked through his windshield at Covey Bridge. The freezing rain had stopped for the time being, but he knew it could start up again at any moment.

The bridge held an important place in his heart; one that he wouldn’t soon forget.

The girl, the fall. It was all too familiar.

Brooks gritted his teeth through his cleanly shaven beard. His glasses slid down to the end of his nose where he liked them. That way he had to angle his head up in order to look down on people.

He enjoyed being able to converse with people he knew more than, and he made it a point to make it a point. Brooks had been in the crowd the morning before, surrounded by people wanting to get a glimpse of what happened to the poor young girl.

That’s all the morning paper had confirmed. She was female and very young, though there were no indications of what exactly happened. There were rumblings in the crowd that the girl had accidentally fallen to her death; other’s said she jumped. Either way, it affected Brooks more than anyone else in that crowd.

That included the child’s mother.

He watched as she cried uncontrollably with detectives nearby to console her, unsuccessfully. She was making a mockery of the situation. She could display her sadness, of course, but Brooks thought it was disrespectful to the child who lay at the bottom of the creek.

Mother was taking the entire spotlight from her poor daughter as the restless crowd grew more curious and anxious. That wasn’t what good mothers did.

Brooks had watched from down the block with binoculars as the medical examiner team fished her body out of the creek and used a pulley system to bring her to the top. Luckily, she was covered by the time she was in view of his seclusion, or his mind may have gone a different route.

The mother weeps and wailed at the astonishment of the crowd. Brooks noticed one of the detectives handing her something that made her wail even more.

It was quite a movie-esque performance. The woman’s name was Kay Maise, and Brooks had seen her and Madison at a gas station nearby nearly one month ago. Even before that, he saw her husband’s picture in the newspaper, fighting for the shortest possible sentence on criminal sexual assault.

Brooks didn’t know the entire story; the paper did its best to keep the dirty details under wraps, but Brooks was also no dummy.

The reason Brooks came back to the bridge was unknown to him. He felt a certain catharsis standing in the crowd for that hour. Nothing he did could bring him down.

He didn’t know why the emotion ran roughshod through his body, making his legs twitch and sending chills down his spine. It was such an awful moment, but he immediately found peace.

But, he knew why today.

Today was different. The peace that came over him was not only present, but intensified.

Brooks harnessed it. He let it overtake him.

Brooks felt both love and hatred, feeding into his innermost being simultaneously as one. It festered there throughout one sleepless night as he tossed and turned and fought it. He knew it wasn’t something he could beat given all he’s been through, and it eventually became something he didn’t want to beat.

“Your memories don’t have to stay so clear, my boy,” his father had told him, with one hand on his shoulder. He didn’t understand at the time, but he saw everything now. The misdeeds of his father and Uncle Samuel rushed back into his amygdala and he gripped the steering wheel much harder.

It was fear.

Fear kept him from remembering all of these years. Brooks didn’t learn to hate his father and uncle, but was definitely confused. It might appear to be a waste of emotional resources given that their deeds were done. Their punishments were handed out.

Why was the satisfaction not passed down a generation?

Brooks adjusted his rearview mirror and saw a police car directly behind him. He sighed and rolled down his window for the approaching officer.

“Good morning, officer,” he smiled.

“Morning,” the officer said. She was taller than average, and her olive skin contrasted with the surrounding whiteout.

“I was just about to leave.”

“Did you know the girl?” the officer said. Her nametag read: Hammel.

“Not exactly,” Brooks said. He certainly didn’t know her, but he felt her. How to describe that, he didn’t know.

“Yeah.” Hammel looked down the road towards the bridge. “The station is taking it pretty hard right now. Especially those that were at the scene.”

“I’d imagine,” Brooks said, trying to sound sympathetic. The last thing he wanted was to take