When Sparrows Fall

by Meg Moseley

  She touched the bedclothes to anchor herself. Thank God, she was home. She had proof: The worn quilt beneath her fingers. The comforting smell of wood smoke.

  The headache that woke her thudded in time with her pulse. She wasn’t as groggy as she’d been in the hospital, but she felt dull, like a knife that had lost its edge.

  Inches away, a soft sound startled her. She held her breath until she recognized Rebekah’s sigh, heavy with sleep. Of course. Jack had said he would ask her to stay—

  Jack! Miranda’s eyes flew open on pitch-black that whirled around her.

  He was in the house. Sleeping on the couch?

  She conjured up his expression as he’d sat beside her bed. Kind but stubborn.

  Stubborn about what? He’d said something about strawberries. Apple trees.

  Applesauce. Jack had insisted she eat it.

  There was always a man telling her what to do. Carl, Mason, and now Jack, just when she had the scent of freedom in her nostrils.

  She crinkled her nose, remembering. The applesauce had tasted wrong, somehow. Another aftereffect of the concussion. Her taste buds had gone awry, along with her vision and her sense of balance.

  At least her ears still worked right. She lay motionless, testing that assumption.

  Familiar night noises reassured her. The wind in the trees, the occasional creak of the old house.

  And footsteps. Someone was pacing in the living room. Back and forth, back and forth. It wasn’t Timothy’s nearly noiseless tread. It was Jack, then.

  She raised herself on her left elbow, inch by excruciating inch. The headache hammered her skull. Across the dark room, the blurred amber digits of the alarm clock wavered. She couldn’t read the numerals.

  The footsteps came closer, slow and steady like Carl’s pacing on the long, haunted nights when he couldn’t sleep. Except Jack was lighter on his feet.

  “Jack? Is that you?”

  The hall light blazed. Rebekah moaned and flung an arm over her face but didn’t wake.

  “Miranda,” Jack said quietly. “Are you all right?”

  Shielding her eyes with her hand, she could make him out. Half in the light, half in the shadow. Her vision played tricks on her. Jack seemed to advance and retreat, edge closer and retreat again, all the while standing motionless in the doorway.

  She squinted to conquer the sickening sensation of movement. “What time is it?”

  “About three.”

  “Why are you up? What are you doing?”

  “Waiting on you, madam.”

  “You’re up in the middle of the night?”

  “I’m working. Doing some research. Sometimes I walk around. It helps me think.”

  “At three in the morning.”

  “Yes.” The half of his mouth that was visible eased into a tolerant smile. “In a house full of kids, the daylight hours don’t provide a lot of peace and quiet.”

  Of course. He’d changed his routine, disrupted his work, to accommodate her.

  She lowered her hand, her eyes adjusting to the brightness. She needed to thank him, but she would only break down and make a fool of herself.

  In the silence, Rebekah sighed again in her sleep.

  “I’m sorry,” Miranda whispered.

  “Don’t be. It’s normal for kids to be noisy.” Jack leaned against the door jamb, bringing his whole face into the light. “Do you miss him?”

  “Who?”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. He nodded toward the wall where the family photos hung. “Your late husband.”

  Heat flooded her cheeks. “Oh. I—yes, of course.”

  “I’m sure. Can I bring you anything?”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “I’ll talk to you in the morning, then. Holler if you need anything.”

  The light went off. He retreated down the hallway, his footfalls softening when they reached the rug in the living room.

  The house was so quiet that she could hear the ticking of the mantel clock as it crept toward morning. A day closer to seeing the church move out of town—but why the entire church?

  Miranda eased herself down again and hugged the cuddle-quilt. Jack had removed his belongings from the room, but the scent of his aftershave still lingered on her pillow, teasing her. As if she could think about a man that way now, with the future tangled up with the past and her family in the middle of the snarl.

  So far, Mason held all the advantages, including the fact that she couldn’t make sense of his game. If he wanted to move away, that was fine, but she didn’t understand why he insisted on taking the whole church. Even a family that didn’t want to go.

  No one in the church would side with her against the move. Of all the women, Abigail had the most gumption, but she was married to the man.

  Not Wendy or the other elders’ wives. They would be loyal to their husbands, who were loyal to Mason.

  Lenore? She didn’t have a lick of sense.

  There was Nicole. Being single, she didn’t have to worry about a husband’s loyalties, but she’d always put Mason on a pedestal. Sometimes she acted like an infatuated teenager, although she was in her thirties. No, Nicole wouldn’t fight the move. She’d probably volunteer to help Mason and Abigail pack.

  Leaning her cheek into her pillow, Miranda inhaled that teasing scent again. Jack couldn’t help. He wasn’t part of the church, and he wasn’t even a friend. He’d come only because she’d drafted him. She could no more confide in him than she’d go to the police. If he heard the worst of it, he would probably be a good citizen and save her the trouble.

  She inhaled, racking her ribs with agony. She exhaled, and the wind picked up as if her exhalation had breathed life into it.

  There would be more rain before morning. Falling through leaves and branches. Running down tree trunks. Soaking into the rocky ground.

  Carl had said the memories would fade. As if what they’d endured together could drain away like rainwater and be forgotten.

  But she would never forget that day, and neither would God. Even if He condemned their decision, surely He remembered why they’d made it. It was a strange consolation. That puzzled “Who?” was pretty good evidence Miranda didn’t miss her late husband, no matter how hard she’d tried to back-pedal. For some twisted reason, that cheered Jack immensely. He caught himself whistling as he moseyed back to the kitchen.

  At the table, he tried to remember details of the two notes she’d mailed him, penned in those elegant italics. The first one had said Carl wanted him to stop sending letters and cards; all future correspondence would go straight into the trash.

  After Jack had continued the letters and cards for another seven years, Miranda’s second note had explained Carl’s accident. Her message had been short and devoid of emotion, and Jack had assumed she was frozen with grief. It might have been apathy instead.

  Judging by Carl’s reading materials, he’d held some odd beliefs. Those beliefs were echoed in some of the articles Jack had found on the Internet.

  On Miranda’s shelves, he’d also found her college yearbook. He opened it and browsed, paying extra attention to the photos of Carl and Miranda. Carl looked like a solemn and well-scrubbed missionary, the type that rang doorbells on Saturday mornings, while Miranda had the fresh-faced look of a young college girl, her hair long but unbraided. She might have worn long skirts even then, but the photo showed her only from the shoulders up.

  By the time he neared the end, he’d concluded that the typical Eastburn student might not drink, dance, or smoke, but probably wouldn’t be afraid of fiction or pharmaceuticals either. The school didn’t appear to be a magnet for crazies.

  Someone was breathing over Jack’s shoulder. He nearly slapped the yearbook closed, then decided not to. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  He turned and met Timothy’s chilly stare. Dark circles hinted at ongoing insomnia for him. A Hanford trait, perhaps.

  Jack released his breath. “Doesn’t anybody in this household have
normal sleep patterns?”

  “Eastburn is the college my parents went to.”

  “Correct. Why are you up at this hour?”

  “I heard somebody talking. Is Mother all right?”

  “She hurts all over but won’t admit it.”

  “She’s not a whiner,” Timothy said with a note of pride in his voice. He pulled out a chair and sat on the edge of the seat. “Why are you looking at her yearbook?”

  “Call it research.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m looking for anything that might help me understand what your folks were like in their younger days. Which groups and clubs your mom belonged to, for instance.”

  Timothy’s gaze iced over. “Why are you obsessed with her?”

  “I’m not obsessed.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Timothy scraped his chair back, a raw, grating noise. “I knew I couldn’t trust you. I knew it.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, son.”

  Fists clenched, Timothy rose. “I’m not your son. Stop trying to be my father.”

  “I’m not. I’m still adjusting to the idea of being your uncle.”

  Timothy padded away on bare feet, making no noise until the stairs creaked beneath his weight.

  Obviously, he respected his mom. Like a well-trained guard dog, he commanded respect himself. And, being the alpha male of the pack, he resented the newcomer.

  Jack rubbed the tense muscles of his neck. “Don’t blame me, buddy,” he said. “I didn’t volunteer for this gig.”

  He continued reading the papers he’d printed at his house. If he were a normal homeschooler, he’d be furious with the few who gave the whole movement a bad name. Not all homeschoolers were nut bags, but many of the nut bags in a certain off brand of Christianity were homeschoolers.

  The fringe elements weren’t unified. Some groups were more extreme than others. Many of them were nearly mainstream except for eschewing much of modern technology and requiring beards. Or forbidding them. Others maintained Web sites and discussion boards that gave a clear picture of their teachings, and some of those teachings turned Jack’s stomach.

  Some deprived women of higher education and the right to vote. Some favored white supremacy, couched in patriotic terms. The common denominator was a focus on the home. Homeschool, home church, home birth—with the father as the absolute ruler of the household. He was the patriarch, and woe to the wife or child who defied him.

  Miranda, a bride at nineteen, would have been no match for a despot ten years her senior.

  Too tired to think, Jack put away the books and papers and shut off the light. He lay on the couch and wrapped himself in an old quilt Rebekah had rounded up for him.

  No sound came from Miranda’s room. She must have gone back to sleep, or she would have been calling his name, wanting to know why she’d heard voices in the kitchen.

  Come to think of it, he and Miranda had spoken quietly so they wouldn’t wake Rebekah. If Timothy heard them from upstairs, he must have been awake already.

  Jack could sympathize with anybody who couldn’t sleep. He’d endured many a night of wrestling with his regrets. He’d spent months, years, blaming himself, his father, God, and Eleanor Hanford. But none of it would bring her back from the dead.

  Sometimes, he thought he’d made peace with the facts, yet something still wasn’t settled inside him or he wouldn’t so often have asked God to embrace a woman who might have stepped outside His mercy.

  It couldn’t hurt to ask God to take pity on a troubled soul. Like Luther, Jack regarded it as no sin to pray for the dead. Luther, though, had believed that a time or two would suffice.

  Dear God, if this soul is in a condition accessible to mercy, be Thou gracious.…

  Deciding, once again, that the Almighty was outside of time and could sort out the prayers of mankind and answer from eternity as He saw fit, Jack turned toward the window and its patch of black sky. He prayed for his mother first, then for his father, gone for years now.

  Jack prayed for the living too, including Ava. And he prayed for Timothy and Miranda. Especially for Miranda.

  Birds woke in a blue gray dawn before Jack ran out of prayers.

  ten

  Miranda stretched out a trembling hand to brace herself against the kitchen counter. The wooziness was not going away as quickly as she’d led Jack to believe.

  Thursday had flown by in a whirl that left her shaky on the inside. Unsettled, disoriented. Like a stranger in her own home, she’d watched Jack supervise the children’s work, settle their quarrels, and answer their questions.

  Today, she saw even more of his influence. Here in the kitchen, it was Frosted Flakes and frozen pizzas. In the living room, it was his books and papers. And the Dr. Seuss book he’d given to Martha.

  Miranda hadn’t seen a Seuss book in years, but now, every time she glanced at the silly illustration on the cover, the jaunty rhymes popped into her head. Not that there was anything wrong with Seuss. Or with Shakespeare, Jack’s other favorite.

  He was full of contradictions. His southern accent and folksy sayings betrayed his mountain roots, but then he would quote a line from Hamlet or throw a ridiculously long word into a simple conversation. Even if she hadn’t had a concussion, he would have made her dizzy.

  For now, all the commotion was in the backyard, where Jack was teaching the children a variety of raucous outdoor games. Carl wouldn’t have allowed them to play before they’d even started their schoolwork, but she saw no harm in it. They sounded happy.

  The glass carafe of Jack’s coffee maker still held a few inches of cold coffee. Its very blackness was enticing.

  She couldn’t use her right arm, still in the sling. With her left hand, she lifted the carafe to her nose and inhaled. She hadn’t tasted coffee since she was nearly nineteen. She’d owned a bright blue mug, personalized with white letters.

  Nobody was watching her for once. Nobody would know. Nobody but God, and somehow she doubted He would care.

  She could have reheated the coffee easily enough if Carl hadn’t forbidden microwaves. As it was, though, she’d have to pull out a pot and heat it on the stove. She was too wobbly to accomplish even that simple task. It was too much.

  The carafe suddenly seemed to weigh ten pounds. Afraid she would drop it, she clattered it back down and gripped the edge of the countertop so she wouldn’t fall.

  She couldn’t stand up to a fruit fly. She would never be able to stand against Mason. It would be far easier to give up. To move to McCabe.

  God might have arranged her fall to humble her and show her He was on Mason’s side. The Bible said God sided with widows and orphans, but maybe she wasn’t godly enough.

  “Please, God,” she said softly. “Tell me what to do. Speak to me. Speak.”

  It sounded like a command given to a dog. She made a silent apology to the Lord, then strained to hear His inaudible reply.

  Nothing.

  Her prayers never went anywhere. They were locked inside her skull, never escaping to fresh air, much less going all the way to heaven.

  Still gripping the countertop, Miranda looked up at the homemade wedding gift she’d grown to hate.

  A wife who’s always neat and sweet.…

  Being “sweet” had been her undoing. If she’d stood up to her husband, she wouldn’t have found herself under Mason’s thumb.

  Moving slowly, she reached for the plaque and curled her fingers around the edge of it. With one upward yank, she pulled it from the nail. She dropped the plaque into the trash. It landed, hard, on an empty juice bottle, but neither of them cracked.

  She wouldn’t crack either. She couldn’t afford to.

  Outside, Martha shrieked. “Ollie-ollie over, I’m home free!” she screamed.

  Miranda’s breath caught in her throat. Home. Free.

  To be both home and free—that would be heaven. That was what she wanted for her children. No matter what Mason threatened, she couldn’t uproot them from
her land.

  Jack walked into the kitchen, breathing hard from running races with the archangels, and started a fresh pot of coffee. The last one in, he wasn’t in the mood to “do school,” as the kids called it, but he didn’t buy Miranda’s claim that she was up to handling it. She only wanted to take charge again because she didn’t trust him with her children’s education. And no wonder.

  Her tidy domain showed the gulf between their lives. The children’s penmanship-practice scriptures decorated the fridge; earlier, he’d proofread an article for publication that would have curled Miranda’s hair right out of its braid. Chaucer wasn’t for prudes.

  She limped into the room with Martha tagging along, gave Jack a wan smile, and settled into her chair. “Time for school.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wait until Monday?” he asked. “What’s one more day?”

  “It’s one more day toward meeting the state’s requirements for the year. Martha, love, would you like to ring the bell?”

  “Yessss!” Martha fetched a fist-size brass bell from one of the lower bookshelves. Holding its clapper still with one hand, she tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs, then shook the bell into a clangor that sent Jack’s blood pressure skyrocketing.

  “School!” she screeched. “Time for school!”

  “Holy smokin’ Moses,” Jack said, his ears still ringing after the bell had quieted. “Miranda, please tell me y’all don’t start every day with that racket.”

  “Only when everybody scatters right after breakfast. I’m sorry. Our house must be much noisier than yours.”

  Her anxious expression prodded him into a little white lie. “I don’t mind.”

  The other children popped out of nowhere to assemble around the table. Jack huddled over his coffee while Miranda drafted Timothy to open his Bible and read aloud from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

  With only half his mind on the familiar verses, Jack pulled Miranda’s dog-eared Bible from the center of the table. He’d flipped through it once before and perused the neat notes in the margins. None of them appeared to be the ravings of a religious fanatic.