A Little Bird: A Novel by Wendy James

Author:Wendy James [James, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2021-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

Wal guides us back along the river, about half a kilometre north, to one of the widest sections of the river, known to locals as Sandy Bank Beach.

He walks out a metre or two into the dry riverbed, digs into the dirt with the heel of his boot. “I can’t remember exactly, but it woulda been somewhere around here. The drought wasn’t nowhere near as bad that time. It wasn’t this dry.”

When we were kids, this part of the river was a popular picnic spot, an unusually straight section of what was typically a meandering river, shaded by the surrounding bush, a grey sandy area that was reminiscent of a real beach, at least if you were a kid with a bucket and spade. The water here was calm and relatively shallow—and there was usually a vast expanse of water. It’s more than fifty metres to the steep bank on the other side of the river. But now, the current is sluggish, the water muddy, a trickle that’s barely a metre wide, the surrounding riverbed dry and crazed. You can walk across the river from bank to bank.

“It doesn’t make sense. Why would she have come out here in the middle of winter?” Arthurville summers are hot—but winters can be freezing. And the temperature is even lower out near the river.

“Maybe she was meeting someone?”

“But why would she take off her brooch?” It doesn’t make any sense.

I look down at the brooch, as if it holds the answers.

“Maybe she didn’t take it off. What was she wearing that day?”

In the beginning, when it was assumed she’d disappeared, I’d had to tell the police details of what Mum was wearing, and it came back now without any effort. “She had a pair of black jeans, her Doc Martens, a navy woollen beret—with the brooch attached on the side—and a dark-green turtleneck.

“She was wearing the brooch on her beret—I’m sure of that. In winter, she wore the beret every day.”

“She could have taken it off later in the day. Lost it.”

“I suppose it’s possible.” I can hear the doubt in my voice.

“And then someone might’ve picked it up. Taken the brooch.”

“What—and then lost it themselves?” Shep’s suggestion is plausible, but I don’t believe it.

“You reckon you found this ten years or so ago, Wal?”

“Give or take a couple a years.”

“D’you reckon it had been in the water long?”

“No idea. There’s been a bit of damage, so coulda been there awhile. Or it might’ve been damaged before it went in the water.

“I reckon it was caught up under these rocks.” He gestures to a rocky section a few metres into the riverbed. It was once submerged, but is now fully exposed, the bed around it bone dry. “You can’t see it, but there’s a ledge right in the middle there. I reckon the brooch came from further upstream when the current was stronger and got stuck. I’ve found a few other bits and bobs in there—nothing valuable—some pottery, glass, bottle tops, that sort of thing.

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