When the Smoke Clears

As she made her way toward the dense hedges abutting the front porch, which hid the entry to her secret retreat under the house, she caught sight of something she had not noticed on her previous excursions: rows and rows of Aunt Miriam’s tall preserve jars were lined up along the underside of the porch. There were dozens of glass containers stacked neatly, one atop another, and Talia wondered what purpose they served. She reached over and picked one up carefully. It was filled with something white, and when she shook the jar, it gave a soft rattling sound, like broken eggshells in a glass. It was a sound she would never be able to erase from her memory. She strained her eyes in the half light to see what the jars held, but her mind would not acknowledge what was coming into focus. She only remembered the crushing horror of recognition that followed. Uncle Gus’s trophies. As an adult, she sometimes still dreamed of those rows and rows of glass jars and the hundreds of tiny sparrow skulls they held.

The lighthearted tinkling of birdsong brought Talia back to the hospital’s second-story fire escape, where she stood with her back against a brick wall, collecting herself. Below her, in a small rose garden, somebody was smoking, watching her suspiciously through the metal grate of the stairwell. “You all right?” the woman croaked as Talia pushed off the wall, blinking the light of day out of her eyes.

“Not really,” Talia answered bluntly, leaning over the rail, looking down at her.

“Few people here are.” The woman took a drag of her cigarette before nodding at a bird’s nest on the lip of a stone pillar above Talia’s head. “Watch out. Babies just hatched—and they’re sparrows. You know about sparrows, right?”

Talia blinked back at the woman, speechless.

After coughing into her arm, the woman added, “Sparrows fiercely protect their young.”

Talia gave her a silent nod and took a wide berth around the pillar, scooting back in through the open fire exit. It had felt like she’d been outside for an hour, but she was surprised to see she’d been there for under ten minutes, and Dr. Frankel was seated at the ICU desk, reviewing Aunt Miriam’s records, waiting for her return.