Winter Sparrow Read Online Free

planned to marry. The man now leading her through dimly lit, cobwebbed halls and grand banquet rooms she couldn’t ever picture filling with enough legitimate houseguests. The bedrooms were located on the second and third floors, along with a number of bathrooms, great and small.
“You might be able to fix a leaky pipe, Joshua, but do you really think you can keep a place this size clean?”
“Can we do a rain check on that answer, baby?”
Mary ran her fingers through her hair, checking for webs. “That’s what I thought.”
“I’m only kidding. Once you sell those masterpiece paintings of yours and make it big, we’ll just hire a maid.”
It was odd how their voices echoed off the walls. They were so narrow but still capable of dragging human sound anywhere they wanted. Did these walls view them as intruders or was that just her subconscious looking for a way out?
Rain check on that answer, Mary , she told herself, slightly curious as to where her fearless fiancé would take her.
Being led somewhere with a blindfold was one of those things girls tended to fantasize about during adolescence. There was something romantic about not knowing which way to go, about listening to the sound of nothing but your footsteps and someone else’s voice. But here she had no blindfold. The gentle strokes of her feet atop the tired, outdated carpet runner weren’t a peaceful sound. Instead there was Joshua’s luring and the glass shelves she surmised once housed weapons too heavy for her to carry. But she was thankful there weren’t any grizzly bear heads covering the walls.
“Almost there, my love.” Joshua’s sweet whisper took her from her worries, such listless distractions. Wherever was he taking her?
She lost count of her steps. She lost count of how many times she let slip an anxious breath. She ignored the fact that they had to wander nearly the entire lower half of the mansion to find the location her fiancé was looking for.
Finally, they arrived.
Mary paused when she saw how awestruck Joshua’s face was. How perfectly still each muscle in his jaw sat or the manner in which he took his next breath.
He fumbled around the dank-smelling room, more like an afterthought garage. It resembled a metal cage.
When the outside lampposts flashed, her eyes followed the light.
“Isn’t it unlike anything you’ve ever seen?” Joshua asked before she had the chance to speak.
Even when the opportunity presented itself, she was at a loss for words. Her eyes were fixed on the circular garden outside. By far, the most lovely and peaceful scene of the entire property.
“But how can this be?” she asked. “Everything about this place is so dilapidated, ruined. But this little garden…”
“Little?” Joshua said, turning on the remainder of the outside fixtures. It looked like Christmas, the grand, artificial glow warring against the night. Other sections of the enormous structure surrounded the garden, which sat at the center of everything.
After he unlocked the rickety door, Joshua let her walk the brick-laid path his father completed many years before. “What’s the first word that comes to your mind?”
“Breathtaking,” Mary responded without hesitation.
“I thought you’d like it. My father believed that as long as the garden remained intact, everything else would fall into place.”
“But it didn’t, Joshua,” she argued, still unsure how it was that so much brilliance could be confined to such forgettable mansion walls. “His home became ugly.”
“Time tests all things. But I think it was always meant to be mine.” He grinned. “Ours. I can restore it.”
He hadn’t made an oath to do so, but oaths weren’t necessary; Mary knew by Joshua’s tone that he meant what he said. She walked inside the garden. She was home. Here and in her youth. She was fourteen and tomorrow. Flowers of every variety and shape and color reached up out of the dirt like resurrected, painted souls. The fireflies had returned,