Free Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin Page A

She laughed that chattering laugh as I headed off toward the hotel with a sparrow’s quick steps and a light heart.
    Halfway back to the hotel I saw Mrs. Granger from room 304 with her small son. I smiled and waved hello, relieved that the sighting I’d been nervous about all day had happened after I’d said good-bye to Isabella. My luck had held.
     
    Isabella was true to her word. The very next afternoon as I sat with the Harringtons on the veranda, Avery brought me a note on a little silver tray.
    I’m out back. I want to take you flying. We’ll only be gone an hour. Please come?

    Flying?
    “The librarian has a new book for me,” I told Mrs. Harrington. “I’m going to go pick it up. I’ll only be out for a bit.”
    “Fine, fine,” she mumbled, and she returned to the crossword puzzle in the daily paper. She’d been at the thing for an hour and seemed to be making little progress.
    “Would you pick up some yellow thread for me in town?” Hannah asked. “I’ve run out.”
    “Of course.” I flashed her an innocent smile, and within two minutes I was out the front door and headed around to the back of the hotel to meet Isabella.
    She took me on the carousel. Exactly one week earlier, when I’d snuck off to the park on my own, I’d looked longingly at the carousel but decided against it. I felt too silly to ride it alone. Climbing aboard with Isabella the following Friday felt perfect.
    It was a drab, cloudy day, but the painted horses shone under the ride’s thousand lights as we climbed on. I tried to sit in a carriage seat, but she insisted I ride the over-and-under horse next to hers—a white horse with a red bridle and a swept-back mane that made it look to be in motion even when it stood still. I rode sidesaddle, both appalled by and jealous of my pants-wearing companion, who rode her horse like a man. The ticket taker started at the single red lightbulb fixed into the ceiling among all the clear bulbs and worked his way around to us. My change purse was on the bureau in my room at the hotel. “No free rides,” he said in a gruff voice.
    Thankfully, Isabella had the fare for us both. “I’m taking
you flying, remember?” she said. Then the Sousa march started up and the horses came alive.
    We flew.
     
    “My thread?” Hannah asked when I returned to the veranda.
    I’d forgotten. I remembered to pick up a library book only because Isabella asked on our way to the hotel what excuse I’d come up with. But I’d completely forgotten about Hannah’s yellow thread.
    She saw me falter.
    She glanced around. We were alone—her mother had gone into the lobby to listen to the radio. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re up to something,” she said quietly with her thin lips in a sneer.
    “Nonsense. I just left my purse,” I said, shocked that it was the truth that saved me. “I’ll go get it now and fetch you some thread, Hannah. I’m sorry.”
    I dodged her pointed glare and scurried off to grab my purse and run the errand, my mind buzzing the whole way into town. Hannah was suspicious. Mrs. Harrington, I could tell, had given me up for a lost cause and didn’t care what I did as long as I went to work in the mornings, stayed out of trouble in the afternoons, found my way back to the hotel by dinner, and went to bed at a “Christian” hour. In fact, she seemed to like that I was out of her hair most of the time and away from her impressionable daughter, who I could do nothing to improve and who could not, therefore, benefit from my company in the least. She would never have approved of what I was doing, so I simply didn’t tell her. She lived under the happy assumption that I spent my
afternoons walking at the lake or holed up at the library, and she didn’t bother herself about it much. Hannah was not so easily fooled. Though until she knew what to tell on me for, I didn’t think she would say anything to her mother.
    But if I snuck out every day and constantly risked