Free The Language of Sparrows by Rachel Phifer

Apparently, she found what she was looking for because she put down the remote and leaned forward to watch the woman broadcaster. What was it she found so captivating?
    April thought the broadcaster was speaking Italian at first, or maybe Portuguese. Then she caught the ribbon of text trailing at the bottom of the screen—Bucuresti. Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
    April almost had the sense Sierra understood what the woman was saying, the way her eyes blinked in sync with the rise and fall of the broadcaster’s voice. Her daughter already spoke French and Spanish. Who knew? With Sierra’s abilities, she might be picking out some of the words. Romanian belonged to the same family of languages.
    She put down her sponge. A simple warning wouldn’t turn her daughter from this man. Like her father before her, when something captured her attention, nothing would distract her. Food and rest, not to mention companionship, would take far, far distant seconds and thirds until she mastered her subject. And clearly, the one and only subject on her mind right now was this old man from Romania.
    She sat on the couch beside Sierra. Her daughter’s ever-present notebook lay by her side, but instead of writing alphabets of the ancient world, Sierra used the familiar letters April knew. Boxed-in words with loops and accent marks filled the page. It didn’t take a genius to know what she was doing.
    “Picked up much Romanian yet?” April refused to let Sierra see the wave of hysteria coursing inside.
    Sierra gave her a shy smile. “A little.”
    When the news program switched to Bulgaria, Sierra put the notebook away and got ready for bed.
    But at one in the morning, April found her sitting in the corner of the living room next to the tiles, reading with the aid of her book light.
    April sat down beside her. “What are you reading?”
    Sierra looked up at her, blue smudges under her eyes. Without a word, she lifted the book, a thick leather volume. April strained to see it in the dim light. It wasn’t in English. Romanian? Where could she have possibly found a book in Romanian?
    April sent her to bed, but it was almost two before the sounds of Sierra tossing and turning in her bed quieted, and April could fall asleep herself. When Sierra came out of her bedroom in the morning, she moved like a zombie. Her oatmeal sat untouched on the kitchen bar.
    When she trudged off to school, April sank onto the couch, looking at the tiles. Sierra never mentioned them. April saw her glancing at them from time to time, but she couldn’t fathom what was in her daughter’s head.
    It was time to do something about the empty middle. She would take care of it before she went to work. Dragging the large center tile from the coat closet, April took it outside. She laid the cream ceramic on the balcony and kneeled beside it.
    Dipping her paintbrush in ebony acrylic, she hovered just above the tile. She wanted loose lines to match the feel of the running letters that would surround it. Black and bold, yet abstract. With her thickest brush, she painted the outline of a woman and child and then a symbol of water on both sides. She didn’t fill them, leaving the impression of a large hieroglyph.
    When it was dry, April hung it and stood back from the completed project. Sierra could make of it what she wanted. April had conveyed her message, not in empty words, but in images. Her daughter would see it every day when she came into the apartment.
    They were in this together. The waters might rise high, but they would surge over them together or not at all.
     
    On April’s afternoon off, she went for a run. Back at home, she took out her camera, but she couldn’t bring herself to take one picture. She found herself pacing around the apartment. Her daughter needed light, and April couldn’t give it to her. Somehow this man, Luca Prodan, had provided something Sierra needed though.
    On a whim, April logged on to the Internet. There was no phone number for