The Sparrow (The Returned)

THE SPARROW

A Prequel to
The Returned

Jason Mott

www.harlequinbooks.com.au

In
this
short
story
by
Jason
Mott
,
author
of
The Returned,
one
determined
couple
seeks
to
reunite
a
young
girl
with
the
father
who
thought
he
had
lost
her
forever
...

When Heather and Matt Campbell find ten-year-old Tatiana Rusesa on the side of the highway, she is thousands of miles away from her village in Sierra Leone. She hasn’t seen her family in almost two decades, not since she and her mother were killed by rebel soldiers. Now Tatiana has inexplicably returned, a lost orphan with no place to call home.

As the world dives deeper into uncertainty and chaos, Heather is determined to save Tatiana and help her find her way back to her family. But how much is she willing to lose to protect a girl she doesn’t even know?

Learn
how
the
mysterious
reappearances
begin
in
The First,
and
don’t
miss
Jason
Mott’s
unforgettable
debut
novel
,
The Returned,
from
Harlequin
MIRA
,
a
moving
tale
of
a
family
navigating
this
unusual
new
reality
and
given
a
second
chance
at
life
.

Contents

The Sparrow

Excerpt

About the Author

Copyright

A couple in their twenties found her just outside Michigan, standing at the edge of a busy highway, watching the cars pass with a look of fear and helplessness. She wore a white, flowered dress, and her dark hair was pulled into pigtails with small beads dangling from the ends. She was dark-skinned and small and beautiful. When they asked her how she got there, she only replied that she did not know. “It’ll be okay,” they told her again and again. “We’ll get someone to help you.”

It had been happening this way for a couple of weeks now. People who had once been dead were suddenly showing up alive, alone and far from home. It began with a man in North Carolina named Edmund Blithe almost six weeks ago, who had inexplicably shown up for work exactly a year after he had been tragically killed in a bus accident. Since then, the numbers had multiplied each day. It was in the thousands now, and no one—not even the government—knew where they were coming from or what to do with them.

They were on their way home from visiting Matt’s mother just outside Saginaw. Heather was the one who noticed the girl, just off the highway, standing in the cold and darkness like a ghost. Her name was Tatiana, and, instead of calling the police or the news stations, they brought her home. As much as Heather and Matt were intrigued by it all, as much as they watched the television and the internet for all the latest developments, they never thought they would encounter the Returned firsthand.

“What are we going to do with her?” Matt asked his wife as they stood in the doorway of their bedroom, whispering. They watched Tatiana eating a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Now and then the child looked around, taking in her surroundings—an antique wooden dinner table, a large, fancy-looking coffeemaker on the counter, a ceramic pitcher holding various cooking utensils. The girl still appeared to be afraid, though she had stopped crying.

“We’ll figure something out,” Heather replied.

“Where do you suppose it’s from?” Matt asked. “Africa? That’s what I’d guess by the accent.”

“
She
,” Heather corrected. “And does it matter?”

“No, of course not,” Matt said. “I’m just, well, curious.” His leg fidgeted from all the energy he was holding in. “Can you believe we’ve actually got one of
them
—one of the Returned—sitting at our kitchen table?”

Heather finally took her eyes off Tatiana. She looked Matt in the eyes. “We’ve got a child in there, Matt. That’s what we’ve got. Don’t talk about her like she’s something
.
” But he hardly seemed to hear her.

“We’ve got to talk to it,” he said. “We’ve got to find out what it remembers. Where it’s been.” He took Heather’s hand. “Just think of what our lives will be like if we were the first ones to have answers about the Returned.” His eyes were wide and bright, like those of a child eager to unwrap a gift.

“She’s a child,” Heather replied, taking his face in her hands. “She’s away from her parents and surrounded by strangers, Matt. That’s the only thing we need to think about.”

Later that evening, after Tatiana had eaten everything in sight—cereal and ice cream and frozen pizza—the three of them sat together at the kitchen table. Heather and Matt were on one side, both of them smiling at the Returned girl as if they were being interviewed for a job. Heather played with her hair. Matt shifted position over and over again, unable to get himself settled.

“You’re from Africa?” Matt asked finally.

But before Tatiana could answer, Heather intruded. “Are you still hungry? There’s some pizza left.”

“No. Thank you,” Tatiana said. In her lap, she wrung her hands nervously.

“How old are you?” Matt asked. Then, immediately, “That’s a fair question, isn’t it?” He aimed the question at Heather.

“I am ten,” Tatiana said. Her eyes shifted from Matt to Heather and back again. She was smart enough to know that there was tension between the two of them. They were behaving the way her parents behaved when they were fighting and did not want Tatiana to know.

“And where do you go to school?” Matt asked.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Heather asked, speaking loudly, as if to drown out her husband. “We want to help you find your family, but we’ve got to at least know who we’re looking for.” She smiled as she asked the questions, trying to make the young girl feel at home. “We’ve got to know a little about the people who love you.”

* * *

“It will be all right,” Tatiana’s mother said. But she said it too often for the child to believe it.

It was 1994, and Tatiana was not allowed outside. Now and again she could hear gunshots ringing in the distance, the sound of large trucks moving back and forth, the sound of fighting. Many of the neighbors had already fled to family members in places more stable than this. But Tatiana’s mother refused to leave. She lived in front of the television now, searching for her husband.

At breakfast Tatiana’s mother flitted about the kitchen nervously, moving back and forth from the stove to the window, as if expecting something or someone. Tatiana sat at the kitchen table and swung her small legs back and forth and watched her mother. There were three places set, even though Tatiana’s father had not been seen for several days now.

“Did you finish your math problems last night?” her mother asked.

“Yes,” Tatiana replied.

“Good. Even if the school is closed, that is no excuse not to learn. Never forget that.”

The school had been closed for almost a week now as the country fell deeper into chaos. But Tatiana’s mother was resolved that her daughter should not suffer. These times would pass, she believed. And once they did, normalcy would return. It was the only way the world could be, wasn’t it?

Throughout breakfast the empty place where Tatiana’s father should have been was like a whirlpool, quietly consuming any semblance of solace or comfort from the house. Tatiana’s mother had bags under her eyes each morning, and she drifted through conversations as though her body were speaking all on its own. Most mornings, like this one, she hardly spoke at all.

The tension was making Tatiana’s head hurt. “When is Father coming home?” she asked.

“Soon,” her mother said without hesitation, as if she had long ago submitted to the inevitability of the question. “He is working extra hours, Tati. That’s all.”

Tatiana chewed her food slowly, debating how much she felt she could press the issue. Outside a truck passed by, bringing with it the acrid smell of burning diesel, an odor that lately seemed to penetrate every corner of Tatiana’s small village.

Neither of them spoke, and, long after the truck was gone, Tatiana could not help but linger in the silence it left behind, hoping it would be broken by the sound of her father’s key turning in the front door.

“When do you think he will be home?” Tatiana said finally—when the silence had not delivered her father. “I wanted to work on our story.”

“I could help you with it,” her mother replied.

“But it was one of Father’s stories,” Tatiana lamented. Her mother nodded but would not look her daughter in the eyes.

For all of Tatiana’s life, her parents had been creating stories with her. Fables and tales of adventure and magic. It began even before she was born, when her father would press his hand to his wife’s rounded belly and whisper. The stories always began the same: “Once...when the world was very young...” Tatiana’s mother would tease him, asking why he didn’t begin with “Once upon a time,” the way everyone else did. His reply was simply, “Because every fairy tale begins that way. I want her to remember me differently. I want our stories to be special.”

Tatiana and her parents took turns with the narrative, each one adding their own characters, their own twists, their own touches. Her mother’s stories were usually happy tales about princesses and love. And while the stories Tatiana created with her father often involved love, as well, they were different—the love always harder to keep.

Their latest tale was about a woman—raised by a family of sparrows—who fell in love with a man born in the boughs of an acacia tree. The two of them grew up together—the girl flitting from branch to branch, the boy giving chase. Sometimes she promised to fly away, taking flight and disappearing into the horizon. But then the boy would climb to the top of the acacia and sing, not unlike a sparrow, to bring her back to him.

Each night when Tatiana’s father tucked her into bed, they would add another scene, another detail. But now it had been four days since Tatiana and her father had worked on their story. It was his turn and, each night that he was not there, Tatiana feared the adventure would end.

Tatiana’s mother reached across the table and pinched her ear playfully. The child grinned, but still she hesitated. “I promise to tell the story as your father would,” she said. “How does it begin?”

Tatiana looked down at her breakfast plate in silence. After a moment, she said softly, “You would tell it well, but not the way he did.”

“No,” her mother replied. “I suppose I wouldn’t.” She then began a soft, slow weeping. “He will return to us,” Tatiana’s mother eventually said. “And when he does, I will never let him go. I promise you.”

* * *

They had managed to keep her secret for nearly a week. Heather was missing days from work, and Matt spent most of his workday scouring the internet for news of the Returned. All the while, the child slept nights on the couch in front of the television, wrapped in the Disney princesses sleeping bag Heather had picked up from the store. Heather had also bought several weeks’ worth of clothes, doing a surprisingly good job of guessing the child’s sizes. Seeing the mountain of shopping bags piled near the front door, Matt asked her how long Heather expected the child to be with them, but Heather only replied, “Until she’s gone.”