Hello, Little Sparrow

by Jordan Jones

  “Sometimes it’s hard to act on what we truly believe through all the fog.”

  LT Anderson would soon make it public that the Nightstalkers caught me on that night two January’s ago. He did so reluctantly, but bravely.

  As I gained my strength, the public’s perception of me grew sour, then indifferent.

  “Time will always heal this,” my father said when I called him. He told me he loved me and I never got to speak to him again.

  Vivian asked why I went public with something so horrifically embarrassing after stopping a vengeful psychopath. She still didn’t understand after I told her.

  I didn’t feel the need to explain myself to her any longer. What I thought could rekindle wasn’t there, nor would ever be again. I didn’t blame her.

  Katherine cried and promised me she would “be better. I punished you enough for this.” I immediately told her after I was caught, thinking it’d mitigate any fallout, but she soon blamed me for everything wrong in her life up until now.

  “You are honorable,” she told me while redressing the bandages on my abdomen. “We need to change this thing around; both of us.

  I was discharged a month later in late May. I visited the grave of the man I killed after tracking him down for nearly four months.

  His headstone only read:

  B. Ingram

  1984 − 2025

  Harlow told me it was to keep the vandals away.

  “It’s over,” she said, putting her arms around me from behind. She rested her head against my shoulder. The sins of my past were dealt with and Harlow seemed to glow at the prospect of starting anew.

  “Did you get to read his bio in the paper?” I asked. “His sister jumped off a bridge much like Madison did. She fell to her death in the same way…probably for the same reason.”

  “How would he know about Madison being abused?”

  Philip was a known child abuser in Lincolnshire. Like Brooks’ father, we found out that Philip was much the same.

  And, they were both dead.

  LT Anderson informed me about the scene at the nursing home, and Morelli being tied to a chair in his house, dying of a heart attack. I owed him everything.

  “He was there the day Madison jumped to her death off Covey Bridge,” I said. “The crowd formed and Brooks was among them. It had to have triggered something in his mind to do what he did.”

  “All those years dormant,” she answered. “And just like that, he rose from the ashes. Like a phoenix.”

  I placed a small wooden bird on top of his gravestone that most resembled what we knew him by.

  “No, Kris,” I answered while playfully and gently pushing her away. “On that day he rose like a Sparrow. Gliding gracefully across the yard.”

  We turned and I put my arm around her waist as we started back towards the car. Clouds were rolling in and rain was imminent.

  Harlow turned and took one last look at the grave. She let out a sigh and gave a sorrowful smile.

  “Goodbye, Little Sparrow,” she said.

  About the author

  Jordan Jones was born and raised in rural Illinois. He earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Illinois. Jordan has worked to develop his writing craft while working fulltime as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. He is a Christian, a father and husband to an amazing family of three.

  Want to read more?

  Jordan has written one other book at the time of this publication. Order Jordan’s first book What Fragile Lives We live on Amazon today!