Thornbird

Chapter Seven Free the Sparrows

seven

Free the Sparrows

By the time I get home, I’m on the verge of a panic attack.

The walk through the woods back to the truck and subsequent drive didn’t calm me one bit.

I kept replaying every word Zed said, wondering how someone could find such glee out of tragedy.

An event that ruined my life is now popcorn material for a bunch of sickos on the internet.

I run inside and slam the door, then lean against it and let out a sigh of relief.

“Whoa. What’s up with you?” a voice says as I’m kicking off my muddy shoes and shrugging out of my flannel.

I look over and find Connor peeking into the hall from the kitchen.

“Ah, nothing. I just…”

“Got chased by a bear?” he supplies, grinning.

I lift a brow. “Are there bears around here?”

“Some. But they stay away from people. Jazzy saw one. Like, once. Or so she thinks. But you know her. Drama queen. She can’t get over it.” He holds up the spoon in his hand. “Breakfast?”

I nod and follow him into the kitchen. He’s wearing his gym clothes and, as usual, looks like he just rolled out of bed. I’m starting to learn that’s his style—the whole “don’t give a crap” vibe.

He plops onto one of the stools at the cedar island and drags his full cereal bowl in front of him.

Cereal sounds right up my alley. Maggie has been cooking us all these big, hearty breakfasts before school, but I’ve only caught a few pieces of cold bacon from most of them on account of my nightmare-induced, crack-of-dawn-photo-taking schedule. I’m more of a cereal girl, anyway.

I grab a bowl from the pantry and Connor passes me his carton of Cheerios. “Where’s Aunt Maggie?” I ask.

“It’s Saturday. That’s, like, prime time for a real estate agent. She’s always doing house showings on Saturday mornings.”

“Oh. Cool. What about everyone else?”

“Jazzy is at cheerleading. Mom dropped her off. Dad’s in his office doing some paperwork, but he’s leaving for the home soon.”

“The home?”

“Yeah, the Anders Home. He counsels at-risk youth there.” Connor eyes me. “Any big plans for the weekend?”

“No. I don’t even know anyone yet.”

“Well, they all know you. You’re the talk of the town. Everyone’s asking about the new girl.”

I stiffen. “Are they?”

“Yep. Big-time. A few of the guys on the football team were definitely checking you out.”

As much as I know I shouldn’t entertain this, I can’t fight my curiosity. “Who?”

“Just a few guys,” he says, being all obnoxiously vague as boys tend to be.

I don’t bother asking follow-up questions. It’s better that I don’t know anyway. That’s the story of my life. The less I know, the better. Which is why going to the cabin was a stupid thing to do.

You don’t want to see where the wife was offed? There’s still a bloodstain on the floor in the bedroom…

God. Who gets excited about something like that?

I’m pulled from my grim thoughts when Connor says, “Everything all right? You got real pale all of a sudden.”

I avoid his concerned gaze. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about…”

Thinking about how if I want to leave my past behind, living here isn’t the place to do it.

My mind is blank as to any excuse, so I simply end up staring into my bowl of Cheerios, dunking the O’s with my spoon.

“I get it. Thinking about your mom, right?”

I blink. I’m always thinking about her, but even more so now that I was steps away from the place where she met her gruesome end. But I realize he’s not talking about Gabrielle Thorn’s mother. Ryan’s mother passed away only recently, while I was in school in Switzerland. Tragic. Car accident.

“Yeah. I was thinking about the accident,” I lie. “I…Maybe if I’d been there, I would’ve been able to save her.”

His expression fills with pity, and I hate it. He shouldn’t pity me. I’m lying to him.

Fortunately the phone next to his elbow lights up on the counter, drawing his attention away.

I notice the name that flashes across the screen—Sam—and the accompanying caller photograph.

It’s of Connor in his football uniform, standing next to an even taller guy with dark skin and a turtleneck.

It was clearly taken on the sidelines after a game, since Connor’s face is sweaty and he’s wearing eye black. They’re both smiling.

I hide my own smile as Connor ignores the call. “You could’ve answered it,” I tease.

“Nah. We’re in the middle of something. I’ll call him back.”

“Who’s Sam?” I ask, thankful for the change of topic. “Does he go to school with us?”

“He goes to Brice, next town over. I met him at a party this summer and we’ve been hanging out. He came to see me play last week.”

“He’s cute.”

“I know, right?” Connor grins. “Mom would probably kill me if she knew.”

Somehow I can’t see that. While murder might run in this family, Maggie seems cool. “That you’re gay, you mean?”

“No, she already knows that. Everyone does. But the folks are a little iffy about us dating anyone at all. Ever since Jazzy met a guy online and invited him over and he wound up being a forty-year-old loser.”

My jaw drops. “Seriously?”

“Yep. She lost her phone for a year after that. Since then, it hasn’t been easy for either of us to date.

But everyone in school knows that we’re together.

He comes to my games, and I already asked him to prom.

So I think this one has sticking power. I just have to break it to my parents slowly, and then it’ll be all right.

” Connor pushes away from the table and carries our empty bowls to the sink.

“I’ve got to jet. I’m supposed to be at the field in fifteen. ”

“Football practice?”

He shakes his head. “Baseball with some buddies. Just a friendly game.”

“Have fun,” I say before going to Jasmine’s room.

Dan raps his knuckles on the door a few minutes later to tell me he’s heading out. I thank him for letting me use the truck and then listen to the sound of the front door creaking open and slamming closed.

Then silence.

I miss the silence. Gran and I could go a whole day without saying a single word to each other. We both liked our space.

I flop onto my bed, my mind once again returning to my childhood home. It didn’t look anything like it once did. Back then, it was warm, cozy, and full of love. Now it’s a cold shell, a place of despair.

Rolling over, I reach under the bed and pull out my suitcase.

I unzip it, then feel inside and grab the one thing I didn’t take out of it while I was unpacking.

It’s a large, square scrapbook with photos from my childhood and other little mementos.

A bright red lock of my baby hair. Drawings I did when I was little.

A hand-drawn map of all my birdhouses. A Mother’s Day card I made for my mom.

I’ve always had this book; I think Gran put it together for me after Mom died so I wouldn’t forget what she looked like.

I turn the pages, looking at my mother—holding me as a baby, taking my hand during my first shaky steps, running with me down the dirt path as I learned to ride a bike.

And my heart aches, because while I might know these angles of her face well, a two-dimensional photo does not a whole person make.

I’m missing so much. Not only that, but some of the photos are awkwardly shaped, not any sort of standard size.

There are shadows of another person that suggest someone was cropped out of them.

I don’t need to guess who.

Gran should’ve known better, though. You can crop a person out of a photograph, but that doesn’t expel him from your life. If only it were that easy.

I tuck the scrapbook into the zippered pocket of the suitcase and shove it back under the bed. Then I grab my phone and Google Free the Sparrows, the site Zed told me about. The first search result is: An online forum dedicated to finding the truth about the Gabriel Thorn murders.

Bingo.

I click on it and find a very active forum, with threads like Theories and Speculation, Gabrielle Thorn Sightings, Latest Thorn News, Victim Information, and on and on.

In the top corner of the site, it says: RainKing, ILuvGabriel, Tom89, and 179 other users currently online.

Wow, that many people are still actively involved in researching the case?

I gulp. If the world will never get past it, then how am I supposed to?

I should probably close out of it, but I can’t help myself. I click on Gabrielle Thorn Sightings.

Then I scroll down and find hundreds of entries. I’ve been everywhere from Niagara Falls to the Great Wall of China. I click on the most recent post:

^ Hey guys. I’m pretty sure I saw her, right in Starling, when I stopped there with my gf to check out the cabin.

My spine straightens and my heart nearly stops.

^ She was working the frozen yogurt counter. Had a name tag that said Dara. Tried to get her to admit it, but she said she had no clue what I was talking about.

^ I took a photo. WDYT?

I scroll down to a photo of a bleached-blond girl who looks nothing like me. Thank God. But if there are internet sleuths trolling around Starling, trying to uncover me, how long do I have before someone decides to put me under the magnifying glass?

The thought makes me shiver.

I close the page and click on the victim heading. A second later, six beautiful smiling faces stare back at me.

My throat burns. These are the innocent lives my father took.

I bite my lip, hard, as I study their appearance.

There’s no rhyme or reason as to why he picked these six.

They have varying hair colors, ages, body types.

My gaze is drawn to the last victim, Leah Devereaux, a pretty brunette who reminds me of my own mother.

It’s the way her lips curve with the merest hint of a smile, as if she has a secret.

Mom was guarded about her smiles too. Now I know why, I guess.

My gaze shifts to Anabel White, the fifth victim, whose son spoke at the press conference.

The first victim, however, is who the true-crime sleuths focus on the most, because she’s of Indian descent. I think I saw Lydia Singh’s daughter at the press conference, standing behind Benjamin White.

In Lydia’s section, there are dozens of links to various podcasts, including an episode recorded by the Rain King himself on Free the Sparrows.

I listen to the first minute before turning it off.

Seems like he plans to spend a whole hour hypothesizing about why the Starling Slayer chose a minority as his first victim, as if my dad was attempting to make some sort of social statement instead of just being a fucking psychopath.

Bitterness coats my throat now. I’m about to close the browser window when another heading catches my eye.

Thorn Prison Letters.

My brow furrows. Prison letters? Far as I know, Dad wrote only three letters from his prison cell, and they were addressed to me.

Curiosity getting the best of me, I click the link, which takes me to a main page with a pinned thread.

Photocopies of the letters Thorn wrote Gabrielle from death row. Source: The Case Against Gabriel Thorn, ABC documentary.

My breath gets stuck in my throat. How did ABC even get—

Prison mail is monitored, you idiot.

I exhale in a rush. Right. Of course. There’s no way law enforcement and the prison authorities would allow my father to send any mail without someone having gone over it with a fine-tooth comb first. What if he was disclosing the location of the bodies?

I suddenly feel stupid, because in the years since I tore up those letters, I honestly thought my father’s words were lost for good.

There were moments, when the nightmares came, that I wished I still had possession of them so I could reread each word and try to make sense of why Dad did what he did.

The top link takes me to another page. This one has three links.

LETTER #1

LETTER #2

LETTER #3

Once again, my heart is battering my rib cage. Taking another breath, I click the first link.