When Sparrows Fall

by Meg Moseley

  The purring of an engine caught Miranda’s ear. Abigail’s car pulled around the curve in the driveway. Miranda’s heart leaped—but Mason was at the wheel. He was alone.

  She hid the magazine under her cape. Feeling like a turtle, she pulled her hands and arms in too so he wouldn’t smell the fragrance on them. Then she went cold all over. She couldn’t hide Jack’s car.

  Mason climbed out of the Buick, the wind whipping against his trousers. Paying no attention to the Audi, he gave Miranda a warm smile. “Hello, Miranda.”

  “Hello.” A heavy strand of hair fell into her face. She felt like a messy child who’d been playing with Mommy’s perfumes. And Mason—why was he pretending he didn’t see the unfamiliar car sitting there? Didn’t he see her scrapes and bruises?

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yes … you’ve heard about my fall?”

  “I stopped by when you were in the hospital. Jack filled me in.”

  Mason knew about Jack? Jack hadn’t said a word about it.

  Her pulse speeding, she gave Mason a casual nod. “I see.”

  Mason took the other chair, crossing his legs at his ankles. “Where is everybody? The van’s missing.”

  “Jack took the children to town.”

  Mason ruminated on that for a moment. “As you can imagine, I was surprised to find him staying here. I was even more surprised when he told me you’d named him as the guardian of the children.”

  “He’s a Hanford. He’s family.”

  “True, but I’m concerned about his influence. You haven’t been in church for weeks.”

  “That isn’t his fault. First, we had that bout of chickenpox. I had one contagious child after another for weeks. Then I fell. Then Jack came.” She took a quick breath. “How’s Abigail?”

  “She’s packing. She’s looking forward to the move. That’s what we need to discuss, Miranda.” He ran his forefinger over the weathered arm of her chair as if to point out that it needed a fresh coat of paint. “You’ll get a much better price if the place is in good shape. Have you taken even the first steps on the checklist?”

  Until that moment, she hadn’t recalled wadding up his list and tossing it over the cliffs. “No, I haven’t. It’s still hard to get through the day without dealing with anything extra.”

  “If you’d started the process before your fall, the place could have been on the market for weeks already.” He pulled two business cards from a pocket and handed them to her. “These folks will put you on the fast track.”

  She squinted at the cards. One of them read Palisades Properties. The other one advertised a handyman’s services. Their numbers had been on the checklist.

  “Miranda, I still sense a certain resistance,” he said. “You don’t want to be the last one to sell and move, do you?”

  “No.” She didn’t want to sell and move, period.

  “Then you’d better get busy.”

  Why was he so determined to make her move? Some reckless impulse dropped the question onto her tongue. “Is Nicole moving?”

  “You let me worry about Nicole. You need to worry about Miranda.”

  No sign of nerves or guilt. He was so smooth—or he was innocent.

  He stared off into the distance for a long time, then spoke softly. “I’m sure you don’t want to face the elders again.”

  She shook her head. Robert Perini was the only tender-hearted man among them. She’d squirmed on a hard metal chair while Mason scolded her and the other men sat still and silent as a jury. Tiny, colicky Jonah had cried until Abigail took him to the back room, but he’d still refused to be comforted. Miranda’s aching breasts had leaked milk as she’d endured what she remembered now as the Inquisition.

  All because she’d refused to give up her camera.

  Mason stood, towering over her, the late sun catching a faint sheen of perspiration above his upper lip. “Ever since you lost your husband, you’ve leaned on the church for a great deal of support. Financial support, moral support. If you stay behind, you’ll be on your own.” His silvery eyes bored into her. “That will be difficult if DFCS starts poking around. I hope it won’t go that far, but it could.”

  Stunned, she stared up at him. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all, but I’ll always do whatever my conscience requires, even if it means exposing someone’s wrongdoing.”

  She hesitated, her pulse racing. “What if my conscience requires that I expose yours?”

  “Who has the most to lose?” he shot back.

  Then he was guilty—of something. An innocent man wouldn’t have responded that way, wouldn’t have to calculate who had the most to lose.

  Miranda couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe.

  His nostrils flared. Then his face softened with a sympathetic smile. “It’s happening again, isn’t it, Miranda? The mixed-up thoughts. The topsy-turvy emotions. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself in trouble again.”

  About to argue, she stopped herself. If he thought he could manipulate her into confusion and compliance, he might leave her alone a little longer. She could buy time by playing along.

  She hung her head so he couldn’t read the contempt in her eyes. “I need to examine my heart.”

  “You do indeed. I’ll be praying for you, Miranda.”

  “Thank you.”

  She watched his shiny black shoes until they turned in the long grass and moved toward Abigail’s car.

  Long after he’d driven away, Miranda sat there, weighing her risks and responsibilities. They were many. If she was meant to stay in Slades Creek, she would pay a high price.

  She tore both business cards in half, then in quarters, a task that became painful when one of the nearly healed cuts on her right hand broke open again. Some of the pieces were smudged with blood when she tossed them into the wind.

  Facing a cold breeze, Jack led Miranda’s brood out of the library and tucked her library card into his wallet. He’d picked up applications for the kids in the hope that she would sign them. If he’d thought ahead and brought proof of Miranda’s residence, he could have taken advantage of having the same surname and signed the forms himself.

  Everybody climbed into the van. While the engine was getting its wits together, he turned on the heat, buckled his seat belt, and checked in the mirror. “Ready to roll, troops? Everybody strapped in?”

  “Yes sir,” five young voices chorused, drowning out the irritating roar of the heater’s fan.

  Jubilant with the success of his mission, he pulled the van out of the tiny parking lot. The vehicle was stuffed with kids and books. Lord willing, none of the books were godless trash, but it was hard enough to keep track of five kids without inspecting each selection.

  He glanced at Timothy, riding shotgun. At the last minute he’d nearly stayed home, but he’d been unable to resist the lure of free reading materials.

  “What did you find?” Jack asked.

  “Science. History. Mostly history.”

  “You want to be more specific?”

  “World War II. Stuff like that.” Timothy conveniently neglected to mention the psychology and anatomy books between his feet.

  Ah, the joys of adolescent curiosity. Jack could guess which chapters Timothy would read first, far from his mother’s supervision.

  “I noticed you weren’t in the children’s section,” Jack said.

  “The good history books are in the adult area. You have a problem with that?”

  “Absolutely not. I don’t believe in the strict policing of reading choices, nor do I approve of censorship, for the most part. I believe in digging for the truth. If you earn it, you own it.”

  Timothy nodded.

  Encouraged, Jack went on. “My dad was a history buff, and I have dozens of history books that belonged to him. I’d be happy to share them, if you’re interested.”

  Timothy shrugged.

  “Uncle Jack,” Martha called. “I love going to the library, but it
would’ve been more fun if we were in your pretty car.”

  Jack looked in the rearview mirror. Hugging a brightly colored book, she sat in the middle seat with the archangels and smiled out the window at the passing sights.

  “Y’all wouldn’t fit in my car, sweetie. It only holds four people, and the ones in the backseat had better not be very big.”

  “Oh. But sometime I want a ride in your—” She shrieked. “Look! A palm reader’s sign. I hate palm readers.”

  Jack laughed as he cruised through the intersection on the yellow light. She’d seen the red Don’t Walk hand.

  “That’s not a palm reader’s sign, Martha. It’s connected to the traffic light, and it warns people on the sidewalk when the light’s about to turn red.”

  “Oh. Good, ’cause palm reading is bad. That’s divination, and it’s wicked.”

  How could a four-year-old know a word like “divination” but remain ignorant of basic sidewalk safety?

  Down the street, she cried out again. “A blimp! I love blimps.”

  A gray, blimp-shaped balloon flew high above a car dealership. Behind the tether, a jet carved out a white trail against the sky. The tether and the jet trail appeared to be on the same trajectory, but the jet kept going, soaring free. The balloon’s line jerked and arched and pulled back, attached to the earth. A fake, it was going nowhere.

  On the outskirts of town, Jack looked in the mirror. Michael and Gabriel had already dug into Kidnapped and The Borrowers, respectively. Martha had opened one of the Berenstain Bears stories and was tracing the words with her forefinger.

  The kids were reading, unfettered by ridiculous rules. That was the first step toward cutting the tether and setting the family free.

  “Gabe, how’s your book so far?”

  Gabriel nodded furiously without looking up and turned a page.

  “I loved the Borrowers series,” Jack said. “I remember reading in the closet with a flashlight and wondering if there were borrowers in the walls.”

  Martha looked up. “What are borrowers?”

  “Smart little people, a few inches tall. They hide in old houses and borrow things from big folks like us.”

  She gasped. “In our house? Where?”

  “I’m afraid it’s only a story,” Jack said. “Make-believe.”

  “Oh.” The disappointment in her voice was pitiful.

  “But we can pretend …”

  “Yes! I love to pretend.”

  “I’ll read it to you when Gabriel’s finished with it,” he offered.

  “Okay! Uncle Jack, I’m so happy because you came to stay with us.”

  “And I’m happy to be staying with you,” he said over a ridiculous lump in his throat.

  Martha clutched her book to her heart and let out a sigh of bliss. Behind her, with the backseat all to herself, Rebekah swayed with the motion of the van, engrossed in a paperback copy of Jane Eyre. Jack hoped Miranda wouldn’t fuss over the fact that Mr. Rochester had fully intended to enter into a bigamous marriage. It would be difficult reading for a ten-year-old, but if Gabriel could comprehend that horrible chapter about earthworms, surely Rebekah could enjoy Charlotte Brontë.

  Jack hadn’t forgotten the youngest child either. Among other titles, Jack had grabbed The Book of Jonah by Peter Spier, partly for the shared name and partly for the cover art, a fantastically scary fish sure to thrill Jonah when he woke from his nap.

  If Miranda wanted to throw a fit, she could throw a fit. She could even confiscate their finds, but the kids had spent the afternoon glorying in the treasures of a public library without their mama looking over their shoulders, and they wouldn’t forget it.

  “Almost home,” Jack said. “And we’ll watch it hit the fan.”

  “Watch what?” Timothy asked. “Oh. That.” His mouth curled into a mischievous grin, and for one little moment, they were allies.

  sixteen

  Jack ran up Miranda’s steps with the pharmacy bag in his hand and stopped on the threshold to savor the change wrought by yesterday’s trip to the library. Overnight, the noisy household had become a place of quiet, book-induced rapture.

  Finished with the day’s schoolwork, the kids had returned to their pleasure reading. Timothy had taken his haul upstairs the night before, but the rest were headquartered in the living room.

  Jonah lay on his back with his feet propped up on the coffee table, humming like a contented little bumblebee with the Spier book a few inches from his face. The archangels were sprawled on the rag rug. Rebekah and Martha, absorbed in Brontë and Seuss respectively, snuggled together on one end of the couch, while their mother took the other end.

  Only Miranda wasn’t reading. She stared into space, oblivious to Jack’s return. For the last twenty-four hours or so, she’d been gloomy, her eyes haunted with something he couldn’t name.

  What had happened in the last twenty-four hours? Not much. He’d pledged, in writing, that he wouldn’t report her to anybody, and he’d led the library excursion. As far as he knew, that was it.

  “I’m back,” he said.

  She jumped, touching her fingertips to the hollow of her throat. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Closing the door behind him, he lifted the plastic bag higher. “I have something for you.”

  “If it’s another pain prescription, I don’t need it.”

  “It’s not.” He squeezed in between her and Martha, who ignored him in favor of Seuss, and pulled the photo envelope from the bag. “Your camera was beyond help, but we saved the film.”

  “Oh, Jack, thank you!”

  Warmed by her enthusiasm, he hurried to extract the pictures from the envelope. “Tell me if I’m going too fast.”

  The first few photographs were outdoor group shots of the kids, so well posed that they appeared to be candid. In the best of them, Jonah lounged in one of the Adirondack chairs with his siblings gathered around him, all of them glancing toward the camera as if it had just happened to catch their attention.

  “A great shot of a great family,” Jack said.

  “They’re pretty wonderful, aren’t they?” Miranda said wistfully. “Such beautiful girls, such handsome boys.”

  “Stop talking, Mama,” Martha said, turning a page. “You make it so I can’t think.”

  “Yeah, don’t talk about us,” Michael said. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Jack wadded up the photo receipt and bounced it off of Michael’s head. “Listen up, young ’uns. Your mother and I plan to go on talking. And embarrassing you. If you don’t like it, you’d better leave, because it’ll only get worse.”

  The archangels exchanged irritated glances and got to their feet. Martha huffed and slid off the couch. Rebekah followed, still reading. The two boys and two girls took to the stairs with their books. Only Jonah stayed, still humming.

  “Worked like a charm,” Jack said.

  Liking the cozy setup, he didn’t scoot over to the space the girls had vacated. Miranda didn’t move either. Their knees knocked against each other, their shoulders touched. She sighed, and her shoulder moved up and down against his.

  “Okay, ’fess up. Ever since I took the kids to the library, you’ve been wallowing in gloom. Are you afraid I didn’t vet their choices adequately?”

  “No. If you think they’re good books, I’ll trust your judgment.”

  “You trust me?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “Yes,” she said, finally. “I do.”

  “Good. Then you can tell me why you’re moping.”

  “I’m not moping.”

  “Let’s call it worrying, then. Are you paranoid about trouble with the authorities?”

  She was watching Jonah with a faint frown. “Because we homeschool? It’s not paranoia. Even when we’re completely legal, they keep a close eye on us just because we buck the system.”

  “And this has troubled you for quite some time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Then you still haven’t explained
the recent increase in moping. What’s that about?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, a little too briskly.

  Jack bit back another question. He’d segue into flattery instead.

  He moved on to the next photo. “Your kids all have the same chin. Even in the girls, it’s sort of pugnacious. It shows up in pictures more than it does in real life.”

  “The Hanford chin.”

  He ignored that. “They have your eyes. Very pretty eyes.”

  She ignored that.

  “You seem to know your way around a camera,” he said. “I like the way you used tree branches like a window frame in this one.”

  “I’m always looking for frames.” Her voice came alive, and this time her animation was genuine. “I like any kind of window. An actual window or something in nature. I love to watch the vignettes in the frame change as I move.”

  “You must like off-center shots too or you wouldn’t take so many of them.”

  “I do. They wake up the eye in ways a centered, symmetrical shot can’t.” She looked up.

  Squashed close together as they were, he had to twist his head down at an odd angle to see her. But it was worth it. She gave him a shy smile that very nearly demanded a kiss.

  Trying to talk himself out of that idea, suddenly he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d been trying to worm out of her. “I don’t like too much symmetry either,” he said, afraid he’d be babbling like an idiot in no time. “I like random, irregular things. Appaloosas. Crooked tree limbs. Stories that don’t have neat endings, that leave doors open, that make me think about possibilities.”

  “You’re funny. Next picture, please.”

  He complied, feeling like a fool but glad that he’d made her smile. “This is a good shot of Timothy.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Timothy hadn’t smiled, but he’d met the eye of the camera squarely, as he looked at people when he spoke to them. Jack was still working on that. He was in his thirties before he’d learned he made a habit of looking at eyes instead of looking into them. A subtle distinction, but it made a difference.

  He continued flipping photos. A pine with a twisted trunk. A hawk in the sky. A shaft of sun turning a cobweb to a string-art creation of light. Then, five shots of a vivid mountain sunset, the sun lower in the sky with each click of the shutter.