by Meg Moseley
“Be a gentleman.” Jack’s voice carried clearly over the wind. “Gentlemen don’t treat ladies that way, and they don’t say ‘Shut up.’ ”
Timothy glared at him. “You’re always telling us to hush up. What’s the difference?”
Jack shrugged. “Good point.”
Miranda made a megaphone of her hands. “No more roughhousing, Timothy, and no more smart remarks. Do you hear me?”
He nodded. Folding his arms across his chest, he watched Martha’s back while the swing straightened its course.
When the swing had slowed, she bailed out, her cape ballooning behind her and her dress flapping. She landed with a thud, windmilled her arms to catch her balance, then faced Timothy and planted her hands on her hips. “I’m nice to you even when you’re ugly,” she screamed. “Uncle Jack says we have to be nice to you, ’cause you’re different.”
Timothy shot a furious look at Jack. “Yeah, I’m different. Glad you noticed, Jack.” He stalked inside the house, the door slamming behind him.
Miranda turned on Jack. “What were you thinking? That was a terrible thing to tell his sister!”
“Hold on, now. One night, around the fire, the other kids started calling him a grouch. It bothered me, so I asked them to be kind. Now Martha has given a slightly inaccurate quotation, taken a wee bit out of context, and we’ve got the wheels comin’ off this chariot.”
“We certainly do, thanks to you.”
Jack spread his hands wide. “Timothy has been hostile toward me since I showed up. Why would I deliberately say anything to make it worse?”
Miranda hesitated, weighing the likelihood that he’d been misquoted. “You wouldn’t, but for a man who earns his living with words, shouldn’t you choose your words more carefully so you can’t be misquoted?”
He opened his mouth then shut it again. Eyes on the ground, he nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” Miranda watched Martha chase Gabriel’s bubbles, her spat with Timothy already forgotten. “I’m sorry Timothy and Martha ruined a nice afternoon by scrapping with each other. That wasn’t your fault.”
“I guess it’s natural for siblings to clash.” Jack let out a short laugh. “The one time I spoke with Carl, he picked a fight with me.”
“I wish he hadn’t.”
“Well, it’s too late for me to get along with Carl, but I’d like to get along with Timothy, at least.”
The sadness in Jack’s voice made the decision for her.
The younger children were upstairs, asleep or reading. Jack, grumbling about some kind of deadline, sat in the living room, his fingers flying over his laptop’s keyboard. And Timothy stood in the doorway of Miranda’s room, his hands curled into fists and his chin tilted with the belligerence she knew so well. No doubt he expected a rebuke and a loss of privileges, at the very least.
He was nearly a teenager. Any day now, he’d want to start shaving.
Seated in the bedside chair, Miranda attempted a smile. Timothy didn’t return it.
“Come in and close the door, please.”
He obeyed and resumed his stubborn stance. So much like his father, but without Carl’s unreasonable harshness.
She recalled Carl’s heavy hand on her back, shoving her into Mason’s office while the little ones clung to her legs and cried. If only she’d disobeyed.
If only, if only.
“You’re the oldest,” she said. “I need to start treating you differently.”
His face tightened but he didn’t reply.
“Starting tonight, you may stay up until ten.”
His eyes narrowed as if he expected a trap. “But what’s my punishment?”
“None, this time. You bear more responsibilities than the younger children, and you’re old enough to enjoy more privileges too.”
Timothy scuffed a toe across the rag rug. “I thought you were going to punish me.”
“I should. You were mean to your little sister. You were rude to your uncle and to me.”
He hung his head. “Martha drives me crazy. She’s always bugging me. Always saying these weird things …”
“She’s four. Show her some grace. I know you love her, so start acting like you do.”
“Yes ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Now, about your attitude toward your uncle.”
“I know, I know.” Timothy’s voice cracked. “He’s Father’s brother.”
“Half brother. I’m going to explain the situation. It’s not something to share with your brothers and sisters though. Do you understand?”
Timothy raised his head. “Yes ma’am.”
She moved to the bed and patted the quilt, signaling him to sit beside her, but he ignored the cue. “All right. Your grandfather left his first wife, your father’s mother, for another woman. Jack’s mother. Your grandmother spent the rest of her life feeding her hurt and hatred to your father, and I believe you picked it up from him. But is that fair? Is Jack responsible for his parents’ wrongdoing?”
“No ma’am.”
“When you were three, he stopped by to meet your father. They’d never met, which was ridiculous because they lived in neighboring counties. But your father wouldn’t speak with him.”
Timothy’s forehead wrinkled. “Not at all?”
“Just long enough to ask him to leave. Jack didn’t give up though. He wrote letters. Your father read the first one and told me to write back, to say that if any more came, he would throw them in the trash. I gave that message to Jack in a note, but I tried to be polite about it. His letters kept coming. When each one came, I read it and hid it, in case your father changed his mind someday. Jack wrote for years, and your father never knew.”
Timothy’s expression turned smug. “I knew though. Remember when I said I was old enough to walk down to the road and get the mail? And you said I wasn’t?”
She nodded, remembering a small, quiet boy who never asked for much but didn’t give up once he’d set his heart on something. “You were eight.”
“You finally gave in, but you told me not to stand there and look through it. Just to grab it and take it to you. But I always looked, and I noticed you acted funny whenever there was a letter from this guy named Jack. Like you were hiding a big secret.”
“It was an innocent secret. I saw Jack as a brother. I hoped your father would relent and want to know him after all. But even after I stopped hoping for that, I kept reading the letters. They brightened my life. Can you understand that?”
After a long, doubtful pause, Timothy nodded. “I guess.”
“He wrote for seven years, until I let him know your father had died. Then there was one more note. A sympathy card. Jack offered to help, but I never took him up on that offer—until the poor man suddenly found himself in charge of six children. He dropped everything to come when you called. Don’t throw his kindness back in his face.”
“Why didn’t you pick somebody from church?”
She ran a finger across a seam of the quilt. “We might not always be part of this church, but Jack will always be part of the family. He’s your father’s brother. How would you like it if somebody treated Michael the way you’ve been treating Jack?”
Timothy looked toward the most recent family portrait, the one that had captured Michael’s irrepressible grin. “I wouldn’t like it.”
“All right, then. Please work on your attitude.”
He met her eyes. “I’ll try.”
“Thank you. I trust you to make an honest effort. I think you and Jack have a lot in common, actually, and that may be why you clash.”
Timothy indulged in the hint of an eye roll but didn’t argue.
She pointed toward her closet. “In the back, on the highest shelf, you’ll find a box that’s labeled ‘sewing scraps.’ If you’ll get it down, you can look through Jack’s letters with me.”
Timothy found the box and brought it to the bed. She pushed the fabrics aside—scraps from a dozen different projects�
�and revealed neat rows of envelopes, carefully slit at the top.
“I kept them in chronological order, in case your father ever wanted to start at the beginning and read them all.”
“I think he would have been mad that you opened his mail.”
“Maybe, but it was my mail too.” She chose an envelope at random. “See? They were all addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hanford.”
She checked the postmark. It was dated three days before Carl’s last Christmas, when he’d finally loosened up enough to allow wrapping paper that depicted Santa Claus. Poor Carl. Maybe he’d had the scent of freedom in his nostrils, but he’d died before he could pursue it.
Timothy started with the first letter.
Jack might not have approved. He might have wondered what had become of the letters, might have assumed or even hoped they’d gone straight to the landfill, as Carl had threatened.
She glanced at the closed door and pictured Jack sitting in the living room, writing on his laptop. Unaware that someone still cared about the words he’d penned years before.
Each letter had been a shaft of sunlight shining through a crack in the walls Carl had built around his family. Carl had never relented, but Jack had kept hammering away at those walls.
Timothy’s new bedtime came and went as he and Miranda browsed through the letters. Jack must have decided to pretend that Carl’s hostility had never existed, because most of the messages were upbeat and friendly. Occasionally, though, there were a few lines that hinted of loss and sadness.
Finally, Timothy read the last one, the sympathy card, and looked up. “This one’s sort of sad,” he said slowly, as if he were weighing every word. “It says, ‘I wish I’d had a chance to know my big brother.’ ”
Miranda nodded, unable to speak.
After a long silence, Timothy stuffed the card back into its envelope and dropped it on the bed. “Jack’s still a bossy bully.” He left the room before she could reply.
She ran her fingertips across Jack’s return address and then across Carl’s name, scrawled in that messy penmanship. “I wish you’d known your brother, Jack,” she whispered. “You might have changed him.”
If Jack had come in time, he might have changed everything.
nineteen
Miranda sat on her bed, leaning against the wall with a pillow behind her back and a sick lump of dread in her stomach. Her unexpected visitor might bring up a variety of unpleasant topics. The move. Those suspicions about Mason. Miranda’s own secrets—except Abigail didn’t know those, did she?
Abigail’s footsteps signaled her return from the kitchen with the tea tray. She set it carefully in the place she’d cleared on the bureau.
Hardly aware she was doing it, Miranda framed a mental shot of Abigail, her face in three-quarters profile and her hands moving busily over the tea things. A portrait of a woman who’d spent her life serving others. Even her austere dress and old-fashioned crown of braids spoke of practicality.
“I don’t remember,” Abigail said. “Do you take anything in your tea?”
“No, thank you.”
Abigail poured Miranda’s tea into one of the bone china cups from Auntie Lou. “There you are.”
“Thank you.” Grateful to be free of the sling, finally, Miranda took the cup and saucer in both hands and studied Abigail. It was a rare woman who looked anything but drab when she went gray. Mason was several years younger than his wife, and the age difference had become more apparent recently.
After pouring her own tea, Abigail closed the bedroom door and sat in the chair beside the bed. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you any warning.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s good timing.”
Jack had left for Chattanooga with Michael and Gabriel. Jonah was napping, Timothy and Martha were reading in the living room, and Rebekah was upstairs, practicing on her recorder. No one was within earshot. Still, Miranda was glad Abigail had shut the door.
“I wish I’d known about your fall sooner,” Abigail said. “I thought you stayed away from church so long because the children were sick. I should have checked on you.”
“How did you find out?”
“About your fall? Your brother-in-law stopped by a few weeks ago and told me—and then Mason told me. He hasn’t mentioned it to anyone else, as far as I know.” Abigail looked over the rim of her teacup. “He’s afraid the ladies will bring meals, and you’ll infect them with your opinions. I put a bug in Wendy Perini’s ear though. Don’t be surprised if she shows up.”
“Please, Abigail, don’t do anything that will get anyone in trouble. Has Mason decided I’ve gone off the rails again?”
“Not exactly. He’s just afraid you’ll speak up against the move, and he’ll have a mutiny on his hands. You don’t intend to move, do you?”
“No.”
“I can always rely on you to be honest. That’s why I’ve come to you, our black sheep.” Abigail started to lift her cup to her lips, then lowered it to the saucer instead and stared out the window.
Trying to grasp Abigail’s ominous words, Miranda fidgeted against the headboard and nearly spilled her tea.
A blue jay flew past the window, squalling, and the noise jolted Abigail out of her reverie. “I’m afraid I have some bad news about my marriage.”
It was true, then. Wanting to cry, Miranda ducked her head in an awkward nod. “I’m very sorry.”
Abigail gave her a puzzled look. “You act as if it isn’t a surprise.”
“I’ve seen a few clues.”
“Do you know who the other woman is?” Abigail’s voice was flat and lifeless.
“I have a hunch.”
“Nicole?”
Miranda nodded again, her throat sore from holding back the crying jag that ached to be released. She imagined Nicole in the apartment she shared with a fluffy black cat. The red geraniums in the window box. The bright white Priscilla curtains. Nicole at the window, her dark eyes searching the sidewalk as she waited, not for the husband she’d thought God would send her someday, but for an older man. Another woman’s husband.
“Does Mason know … that you know?”
“Yes,” Abigail said. “He claims it was Nicole’s fault. She looked for ways to be alone with him, to entice him. I don’t believe it for a minute. This isn’t the first time he’s stumbled. In Nebraska, years ago, there was a similar situation. The elders there confronted him, but he would rather change towns than change his heart. And he expected me to forgive him and tag along.”
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“Neither do I,” Abigail said with a cracked little laugh.
She rose and returned to the tea tray, where she stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea, the spoon clinking against the china. She took a second spoonful of sugar, and that was as startling as her new frankness. Abigail’s kitchen hadn’t held sugar in years, unless she, like Miranda, had a secret stash of it.
“Does anyone else know?” Miranda asked. “The elders?”
“I certainly haven’t told them. And it’s over now. Nicole has left the church. She’s going to her parents’ church again, and her father told Mason to leave town if he wants to keep it quiet.”
Miranda clattered her cup down on the saucer. “What? That’s why he’s uprooting the whole church? And the church will go on thinking he heard from God, when he only heard from Nicole’s daddy?”
“That’s an interesting way to put it.”
“Well, is it true? Is he moving so he can hide his sin?”
“That’s part of it.” Finished stirring her tea, Abigail sat down again. “It would be awkward to run into Nicole, of course, but I think she’ll keep quiet for the sake of her own reputation. And I’m not going to talk about it. But the affair isn’t the only reason for the move.”
“What’s the rest of it, then?”
“He’s tired of the home-church setup.” Abigail balanced her teacup on her knee. “He wants the legitimacy of having our own building. A lar
ger, more conventional church. People ignore a church that has only a few cars in the parking lot, but crowds collect crowds. If he can move the whole flock, he’ll be well on his way.”
“So he’s moving the whole church? Even me, when he knows I don’t want to go? That’s the part I don’t understand.”
“He’s made a commitment to buy a building there. You own a big piece of prime acreage, free and clear. If you pay a tithe on the sale price of your property, there’s his down payment.”
“I don’t believe it.” Miranda rubbed her face with her hands, as if that could erase the conversation from her ears.
“Thirty years ago, I never would have believed any of it.” A sad smile played on Abigail’s thin lips. “When we were first married, Mason was a gem. Some men are, you know. But I wasn’t able to give him children. He was sure it wasn’t his fault. He was righteous. He prayed, he studied the Word, he tithed, he did everything right. Therefore my barrenness must have been my fault.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
“No, but he does. Or he used to. I’m not sure what he believes now, because he can’t claim to be the blameless one anymore. Now, of course, I’m long past the childbearing years.” Abigail lifted her hand to pat her gray braids. “I’m old enough to be a grandma. Oh, what does it matter? I’ve forgiven him—and I have to forgive him again every time I think about it—but I have scriptural grounds for divorce.”
“You’re leaving him?”
“I’ve started packing, right under his nose. He thinks I’m preparing for the move.” Abigail’s mouth tightened. “In all the years of our marriage, he has hit me twice. I don’t intend to provoke him into a third time. One of these days, I’ll load my boxes into my car and drive. By the time the church starts asking questions, I’ll be gone.”
“Will he still move to McCabe without you? Will the church follow him?”
“Probably not, once they know their pastor preys on innocent young ladies.” Abigail shifted the cup and saucer to her other knee, sloshing tea on her skirt. She didn’t seem to notice.
“But they might not find out in time. They’re putting their homes on the market. They’ll find buyers. They’ll quit their jobs. That’s not fair to them.”