Winter Sparrow by Estevan Vega Page A

down at the piles of mire and clay that the earth had borne.



MARY WOKE TREMBLING. Through a crystal blur, she studied her hands, checked her forehead. Temperature was normal. Then why was her heart racing? She noticed the unsettled veins lingering on the surface of her forearms. Curious. They strangely danced up and down, as if they found a dark rhythm hidden somewhere inside of her.
She heard the breathing of a man, but she didn’t recognize him. More peculiar still: What was she doing lying next to him, in this bed, in this room? She had never been so reckless as to go to bed with a…
“Stranger,” Mary’s lips concluded. The word was claustrophobic behind her teeth. But when she uttered it, a chill sang through her bones.
Mary examined her garments: an elegant, white gown with an alluring cut at her sternum, enough to warm an imagination. Matching metallic bracelets fit tightly around both of her wrists.
Where did these come from?  
What was a dream, and what was real? She began making a mini list in her head, positive she had been wandering the countryside and the woods last night. At least, she was mostly certain that it was last night that she had been driving. And then…
Memories flickered like dying candles in her mind. She stepped out of bed, placing her feet on the floor. Mary felt the uncomfortable slush of mud and sinking earth beneath her feet, could sense the very souls of the rocks she had walked over, as if she were there again. The sticks and dried-up roots that sought to trip her in the isolated dark. The weather was terrible, wasn’t it? Yes, that was a fact. But where was she coming from? Had she been speeding? Had she slammed her head against the dashboard? Was that why the details were so fuzzy?
Mary quietly glided across the open bedroom floor and found the closest hanging mirror. “Get the facts straight, Mary. Just get them straight.” She tugged at her eyelids, massaged her temples, smacked her cheeks, anything to jolt a memory, to understand why she was here and who that man was in the bed. Her belly felt empty. But not a hungry kind of empty; it was a lacking, tired, painful sensitivity that spread through her entire body.
“You took some pills last night.” That was clear. If she could get past that and the stumbling-around-the-woods bit, perhaps she’d be a little closer to getting a grip. “Okay, you took a lot of pills last night. And you wound up in bed with some guy you can’t remember.” Mary frantically pulled at her wiry hair and caught the shimmer of the bracelets once more out of the corner of her eye. “I hate bracelets.”
The back of her mind spoke louder: But they are exquisite, aren’t they?
“Must’ve thought I was pretty good.” She felt a little bit of shame when that statement ran off her tongue. Dad would look down on her for this, she knew it.
Dad. Just call Dad. Ask him for advice. But a memory came all of a sudden, along with a gray picture. It was them—her and Jamie—standing, arms-locked, in a cemetery, listening to some droning preacher attempt to offer some encouragement when he claimed that Dad’s failing heart was all a part of God’s plan. Oh, and the hell that followed must have been a sick part of the divine plan as well.
Dad’s dead. Oh no. Please no. She’d somehow had a lapse. Somehow had forgotten that he had died. That Mom had died. What was wrong with her? Mary blinked, and with a faint tear, she washed away another fragment of the past.
“The past is the past,” she mouthed. “I do remember that.” When she repeated it to herself, she heard a man’s voice. Mary’s gaze stretched across the ornate room, to the bed where the mysterious man lay, so soundly in his dream. It must’ve been beautiful, whatever he was dreaming about. You told me that the past was the past. Of course, Jamie has been telling me for years, but when you spoke it to me…Yes, when I heard you say it, I believed.
Mary wanted to shout her revelation, let