When Sparrows Fall (7 page)

She dropped her quilt to the floor. “We can’t get sticky fingers on the cuddle-quilt,” she explained. Then she sat across from him and devoured the cereal, milk dribbling down her chin. Finished, she let out a sigh of bliss. “That was yummy.”

“Told you so.”

“It tastes like sugar.” She grinned. “I like you, Uncle Jack.”

“I like you too.”

“Pastor Mason says sugar is bad, but he doesn’t come around much.” She scraped one last spoonful of milk from the bottom of the bowl. “I don’t think he likes us.”

Before Jack could process that, Rebekah came downstairs and greeted him shyly. The archangels arrived in the midst of a good-natured squabble, followed by Jonah in red pajamas, bumping his way down the stairs on his rump. Timothy came last, avoiding Jack’s eyes.

Michael inhaled noisily. “What’s that smell?”

“That isn’t a smell, son. It’s an aroma. The aroma of freshly ground Arabica coffee beans from tropical mountain slopes. At this hour, it’s my reason for living.”

Michael put his nose nearly in Jack’s coffee and inhaled again. “Can I try some?”

“Once your mother’s home, you can ask her if it’s all right.”

But Jack decided to have no scruples about sharing his sugar-coated cereal. Although Timothy only took a banana from the counter and left the room, the other kids enjoyed the unexpected treat. Martha had seconds. What would have been a week’s supply for Jack was gone, just like that, and he’d never had a bite.

He was an adult though. He had wheels. He could escape, any time he wanted, into a world that held Frosted Flakes and anything else his heart desired.

“Listen up,” he said when the children were about to scatter. “I need to run to Chattanooga, but I don’t want y’all to be home alone that long, so I’ve found a woman to stay for the day. Her name is Mrs. Walker, and I hear she’s a nice lady but she runs a tight ship. That means no misbehavin’, understand?”

Nobody argued. Rebekah wiped Jonah’s sticky face and hands and liberated him from the highchair. Without prompting, the other kids rinsed their bowls and started their chores.

Timothy fetched logs from the stash on the porch, stoked the wood stove, and tidied the hearth. The archangels swept and vacuumed. Rebekah washed dishes—there was no automatic dishwasher—and planned supper. Jack had never known a ten-year-old whose day started with planning a meal for a family.

At nine, a white car bucked around the last curve of the bumpy driveway. Jack stepped outside, pointing, to direct the driver to park behind the van and leave the Audi unblocked. She complied and climbed out. Silver-haired Yvonne Walker was seventy if she was a day, but she wore jeans and a bright red top. Her lipstick was as vivid as her shirt.

“Hey, there. Are you Jack? I’m Yvonne. Land sakes, but that’s a long driveway. I never even knew there was a house hid away back here.” Hauling an immense canvas tote bag, she sashayed toward him, chewing gum at a rapid rate.

He ushered her inside and introduced her to the kids. She had their rapt attention as she gathered them around the table and started to unpack her tote. First out was a romance novel with a garish cover.

“That’s for me. So’s this.” She pulled out a six-pack of Diet Coke.

Then, winning Jack’s heart forever, she produced what she called “entertainments.” Jigsaw puzzles, a Rubik’s Cube, Play-Doh … and books. Board books. Classic picture books. Seuss. Even a few easy chapter books. Jack could have kissed her wrinkled cheek.

With Yvonne firmly in charge, he could leave with a clear conscience. He settled behind the wheel of his car, an eBay bargain with low mileage and a defunct stereo. Within ten minutes, he’d blown through downtown Slades Creek, such as it was, and was headed northwest.

The mountains of Bartram County were very much like the ones he’d known as a boy in the next county. Each switchback curve held an interesting ravine or a waterfall or a glimpse of distant cliffs. The views were spectacular, but the pockets of poverty were heartbreaking.

The run-down houses and trailers of the mountains hadn’t seemed trashy when he was a child. Children were that way, though, oblivious to the concerns of the adult world. So the adults had to do the worrying for them.

His new worries accompanied him all the way to Chattanooga.

It was nearly eleven when Jack unlocked the back door of his cluttered bungalow. As always when he’d been away for a while, he half expected Ava to greet him with a kiss. Or with another round of tears and recriminations.

His briefcase still lay on the table, exactly as he’d left it. Already, it seemed as if his work belonged to some different world.

He hurried down the hall, past the room they’d envisioned as a nursery. Since Ava had left, it had become a catchall, a repository for junk and old dreams of a baby or two.

Weaving back and forth between office and bedroom, he grabbed clothes, toiletries, and the books and papers necessary to keep up on his committee work and his writing. He made several trips to the car, finishing with a battered paperback copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
and the cigar box from his desk.

Inside again, he fired up his laptop to check e-mail and the news. Doing the bare minimum, he finished quickly, then typed a few words into a search engine. Within minutes, he’d printed nearly forty pages of information about
certain circles of not-quite-mainstream Christians. Even at first glance, parts of it were highly disturbing.

About to drive away, the laptop and printouts stashed in the trunk, he remembered the Glenlivet and ran back for it. It should have gone in the trunk, but he tucked it carefully under the passenger seat instead.

It was a ten-minute drive to the tree-filled campus that was a second home to him. He nipped into the dragon’s lair, but Farnsworth wasn’t in her office. Grateful for small blessings, Jack loitered in the hallway and pondered his immediate future.

If he took a leave of absence, he’d be out for the rest of the semester. His colleagues would be great about covering for him, but he hated to impose on them. Who could cover for Miranda though? Timothy and Rebekah? Even if their mom came home in a day or two, they’d be shouldering burdens far beyond their years for weeks.

That settled it. He solicited the leave-of-absence paperwork from Farnsworth’s admin and nailed down some temporary workload arrangements, subject to change. With that process underway, he picked up a slew of work from his own office and ran for his car.

As he drove across the campus, a dark mood descended on him. He faced a long haul through the mountains, his destination a run-down log home on a lonely hillside. He’d be stuck there for days, maybe for weeks. He had no friends in Slades Creek. No adult company. Nobody but six sheltered kids. And, soon, their mother, who fasted so she could “hear God.” Jack couldn’t imagine hearing a personal message from God. It didn’t fit into his theological framework.

He tried to picture this Mason Chandler whose teachings Miranda followed. A stern, bearded figure like an Old Testament patriarch, perhaps, and equally devoted to rules. Not that rules were intrinsically bad.

Jack’s thoughts meandered with the winding roads. He recalled his search for coffee in Miranda’s cupboards. Instead of coffee, he’d found a container of St. John’s wort capsules. They might come in handy.

An hour and a half later, he reached Slades Creek, zipped through town
without hitting any red lights, and continued south. The sun was sinking toward the horizon as he turned onto Larkin Road, not quite a quarter mile from Miranda’s place, and passed a small herd of goats that must have belonged to her neighbors. White scraps of movement in the twilight, they looked more like ghosts than farm animals.

Yvonne met him at the door with her tote bag slung over her shoulder. “Those children aren’t being raised right.” She glared at him as if he were to blame. “They’re sweet, every last one, but they’re almost
too
good. My word, they’ve never seen a movie. Not even a kids’ movie. They don’t know any songs but Scripture songs. The girls don’t own jeans. They don’t even—”

“Shh.” He sent her a warning look over the box of papers in his arms. “I know, I know.”

She came onto the porch and planted her bejeweled hands on her hips. “Well, what do you plan to do about it?”

“I don’t know, but I’m working on it.”

“Work a little faster, hon.”

“I have to proceed carefully. We’re dealing with sincere religious convictions.”

“Being sincere doesn’t make ’em right. You know their mom’s in that strange church, don’t you?”

“Do you know Miranda?”

“No, but I’ve figured out which church she’s in. When my daddy was in his right mind, he never went around bad-mouthing other preachers, but he always said Mason Chandler had some strange ideas.”

“Such as?”

“Chandler is the Lone Ranger type. He doesn’t take orders from anybody, but he orders the men around, and the men order their wives around. Those poor women don’t have a thought of their own.” Yvonne leaned closer. “They’re not even allowed to
vote.
”

“Excuse me?” Jack set the box on the porch and straightened. “This is the United States of America. It’s a free country.”

“Not in some households. Look into it, Jack.”

“I will.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted a generous payment meant to keep her on his side.

Yvonne pocketed the money, thanked him, and hauled her tote to her car, where she faced him. “The kids never go anywhere, never do anything. Can you imagine
their
children?”

Hermits or rebels. Or worse.

“Say, did their mom happen to call?” he asked.

“No, nobody called. The phone didn’t ring. Not even once.”

The phone never rang, friends never stopped by, and Miranda would consider it a sin to escape into a soap opera or a romance novel. No wonder she popped St. John’s wort capsules, the earth-mother version of Prozac.

“Have you ever heard of homeschoolers who ban fiction?” he asked.

“No!” One hand on her car door, Yvonne stared at him. “One of my girls homeschooled her kids, and sometimes I thought she spent half her grocery money on paperback novels.” She nodded toward the house. “These aren’t your normal homeschoolers, hon.”

five

A
dream of tumbling down a mountainside woke her and slid away. Still half-asleep, Miranda sought something solid. Something that wouldn’t fall out from under her. Time slipped and slued, fishtailing like a car on ice, spinning her through the recent past in no particular order.

A roommate, snoring. A nurse, checking vital signs. Opening and closing the divider.

The rattles and clinks of food trays. Food smells. Doctors, asking too many questions.

She took a deep breath and gasped at the agony that knifed her chest.

“Hurts to breathe, doesn’t it?” A gray-haired nurse popped into view. “Broken ribs are the devil himself. Remember, now, don’t be afraid to mash the button for more meds. It’s controlled so you can’t overdose.”

“I’m … fine.”

She couldn’t remember what had happened. Yesterday? Or the day before?

A fragrance of flowers came from the other side of the divider. Sweet and light, like the girls’ violets—

The children! She had to call home. That’s what she had to do. Dial 532 … no, 352. No, it was.… The digits jumbled themselves in her head until she wanted to scream.

“Excuse me, nurse?” Her voice was rusty, her throat dry. “I can’t remember my own phone number. Could you find it for me, please?”

“That’s a concussion for you. Sure, I’ll track it down. Give me a few minutes.” The nurse left the room.

Miranda lay still. Tears seeped onto her cheeks. She couldn’t use her right hand to dry the tears because her shoulder hurt so badly that she couldn’t lift her arm. Slowly, she raised her left arm. It trailed an IV line. An ID bracelet rasped against her wrist.

A sob caught her in the ribs like a giant’s fist. She felt as if she’d been in a fight, pounded by some merciless bully. But what had happened?

Think
.

That was it. She’d been trying to think. Day after day, she’d gone to the cliffs, alone. Praying. Planning. The days blurred, and she couldn’t remember much about her last walk. Just that the sun had burned through the fog as she’d stood by the cliffs. Maybe, dazzled by the cloudy white sunshine and lightheaded from fasting, she’d fainted.

Who had the children? Nothing else mattered.

Jack had them. Because she’d written that letter and she’d changed her will. Because Mason planned to move the entire church to North Carolina. That was almost as crazy as some of Carl’s ideas, but Mason had warned her not to stir up trouble. So she’d dragged Jack into it. By now, he must have decided
she
was the crazy one.

She opened her eyes to convince herself that she was awake and in her right mind.

She hadn’t dreamed it. Mason had threatened her.

“Your visitor was a good-looking guy,” her roommate volunteered from the other side of the curtain. “Your husband?”

“No. My husband passed away a couple of years ago. That was his brother.”