by Meg Moseley
An obedient wife, forbidden to tell her surviving children about their late brother. Forbidden to grieve aloud for her son.
Jack stood, spilling the kitten onto the floor, and pulled the porcelain angel from the high cupboard. “Does this have something to do with Jeremiah?” He set it before her, half expecting a rebuke for having mended the wing against her orders.
She placed her fingertip on the hairline crack. “Last Christmas, I bought seven of these and put six of them on the mantel. I didn’t know what to do with this one, so I hid it in the cupboard.”
“I’m very sorry I broke it.”
“It’s all right, Jack. It’s only a … a thing.”
“When are you going to tell the other children about Jeremiah?”
The color drained from her face. “First, the children. What’s next? The newspapers? The world?”
“Why would the world care? No, just tell the children. Before somebody else does. How hard could that be?”
“Hard. You have no idea.”
“Still, shouldn’t you come clean?”
She studied the angel in a stony silence that sent a prickle down his spine. Perhaps she wasn’t telling him the whole story.
A minute or two late for supper, Miranda stood in the hallway and peeked around the corner. The one dark head among the blond ones gathered around the table, Jack was about to say grace. With his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, he joined hands with Rebekah and Gabriel.
Jack’s quick smile landed on Martha and became a warning glance. She was squirming.
She ceased wiggling. Holding perfectly still, she gave him an angelic smile.
He closed his eyes. “For these and all Your gifts to us, we thank You, Lord Jesus. Amen.”
“Amen,” the children echoed, simultaneously opening their eyes and dropping each other’s hands.
Martha picked up her spoon and examined her reflection in it. “Uncle Jack?”
“Yes, Miss Martha?”
“If my daddy went to heaven, and if babies come from heaven, and if Jonah came from heaven after my daddy went there—” She sucked in a melodramatic breath. “Then they knew each other for a while.” She grinned, pleased with herself for figuring it out.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but babies don’t come from heaven.”
Martha lowered the spoon and studied him. Miranda could almost hear the dangerous question forming in that little blond head.
“Where do they come from?”
All the children trained their attention on Jack. Timothy laughed softly.
Jack cleared his throat. Picked up his fork. Put it down. Stumped by a simple question from a four-year-old, the brainy professor stared at the ceiling. He swallowed.
Any other time, Miranda would have laughed, but she couldn’t enjoy it. She couldn’t enjoy anything until she’d told Jeremiah’s story.
Jack was right. If she didn’t tell the children, Mason might. Even if she told them, he could still supply the ugly details, but at least the children wouldn’t have been completely blindsided.
“Babies … ah … well.” Jack scratched his chin. “Most often, babies come from a conflagration of desires. Gabriel, would you please start the bread basket? Thank you, sir. Rebekah, how’s that new quilt patch coming?”
Rebekah launched into a detailed description of her troubles with her slant-star patch, and Miranda slid into her chair without anyone taking much notice.
Martha gave Jack a puzzled frown. “What’s a con … con … that big word you said?”
“A conflagration? It’s a fire. A big one, like a bonfire. We’ll have another bonfire sometime, and maybe your mom will be up to joining us.” He gave Miranda a friendly smile.
She nodded, feeling strangely detached from him. From the children. Even from herself. As if she didn’t know anymore how to act. Who to be.
Just be Miranda Ellison Hanford, she told herself. Widowed mother of six.
No. Seven. And if she could be honest about it, even with the children, it might help her remember where she’d come from, how she’d arrived at this time and place. How an ordinary Ohio girl came to be in a mess like this. Maybe that would help her find a way out.
There had to be a way out. A way that didn’t put the children at risk.
She took a careful breath, mindful of her ribs. “Children, there’s something I need to tell you. You’re not to share it with anyone outside the family though. This is our business and no one else’s. Our family history.”
Jack set down his fork. He picked up the saltshaker, then the pepper shaker, and scooted them around like chess pieces, his food forgotten.
Timothy had also abandoned his supper. He put his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands. His wary expression told her he remembered more than she’d given him credit for.
twenty-five
Jack’s sleep shattered into shards of garish orange noise. His nerves shot in an instant, he sat up, throwing off his covers in the dim light of early morning.
The cacophony came from the coffee table. From his phone.
“Gabriel! You little devil!” He fumbled for the phone and sent it into blessed silence. “Hello.”
“Hi, it’s Yvonne. Sounds like I woke you. I’m sorry. I thought you were an early riser.”
“The little barbarian. The little—no, not you. Gabriel.”
Jack smelled coffee. That meant Miranda was up. Sure enough, she and Timothy sat at the table, talking in low voices.
“Hold on a second, Yvonne.” Jack wrapped the quilt around his bare shoulders, unfastened the deadbolt, and stepped onto the porch. The mountains were still streaked with fog and nearly blended in with the pale sky.
“Sorry about that,” he told her. “Last night, Gabriel discovered the joys of messing with my phone. He set it to the most obnoxious ring tone imaginable—at the highest volume—stop laughing. I want to go back to bed. Except I don’t have a bed. I only have a couch and a kitten that wants to sleep on my face all night.”
“Well, that sounds like fun. Seriously, Jack, is everything all right? Somehow I missed your message until now.”
“Long story. Everything’s pretty much okay now.”
“You sure, hon?”
Jack paced the porch with his feet freezing on the damp, rough planks as he answered Yvonne’s questions. Yes, Miranda was doing fine; she was cutting her ties to Mason. Yes, she might try Yvonne’s church someday.
If it were up to him, though, he would steer Miranda away from any church that encouraged its members to spout impromptu prophecies.
Once Jack had extricated himself from the conversation, he set his phone to a civilized vibrate setting and sat in his usual rocker, his feet like blocks of ice.
His brain was frozen, unable to make sense of anything. Why had Miranda kept quiet about Jeremiah for so long? After Carl’s death, she could have told the children about their brother. In fact, they might have noticed Jeremiah’s grave marker when they’d buried Carl.
Jack rubbed his chin, considering. Jeremiah’s remains might have been cremated. Carl’s too. Maybe there were no markers.
The church’s mass move was also odd. Jack couldn’t understand it unless Mason believed his own hype about hearing from God. Or wanted control or money or kids to molest. In an isolated church that revered authority figures, the potential for abuse was staggering. Even if it was “only” psychological abuse, all those families were at risk.
Jack went inside. He grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it on, then wandered past the table and into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.
“Mornin’,” he said.
Timothy said nothing.
Miranda’s smile trembled, but it held. “Good morning. I’ve been telling Timothy more about Jeremiah.”
Jack directed his question to Timothy. “May I join you?”
After a moment’s hesitation, the boy nodded.
Jack sat at the head of the table, between them. He played with half a dozen of Martha�
�s paper hearts while Miranda gave Timothy a rundown of his big brother’s life and times. Jeremiah’s personality. His habits. His likes and dislikes. The way he’d loved ketchup and hated mayonnaise.
“Like you do,” she told Timothy. “Maybe you learned that from him. In looks, he resembled Jonah, with the gray eyes that don’t look blue until he’s wearing a blue shirt.”
It was like watching a morning begin, going from darkness to full day. A light dawned inside Timothy, softening his countenance.
“Jeremiah loved everything about the outdoors,” Miranda continued. “He loved to cut daylilies from the yard and put them in a jar for me.”
“All this time, I thought I was losing my mind.” Timothy wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. “But I knew I remembered him. I knew it. He fell. And we cried and cried. It was all foggy in my mind, though, and I was afraid to ask you.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I should have told you, years ago.”
“Yeah, you should have.” Timothy pushed back his chair and headed toward the stairs.
“Timothy, wait.” Miranda’s shoulders sagged as she watched him go.
“He needs time to adjust.” Jack reached for her hand. “Listen though. Hear that?”
“Maya, Maya, Maya,” Martha sang upstairs.
Except it was Miah, and Timothy didn’t tell her to shut up.
Jack squeezed Miranda’s hand. “I still have questions. Lots of questions.”
She frowned. “Can’t they wait?”
“Please, just one. Not about Jeremiah. About Mason. If you’ve been a troublesome member of the church, why does he want to drag you off to the boonies? Why does he want the whole church to move?”
She freed her hand from his, ran her forefinger back and forth across her chin. The sound of toe tapping came from under the table. “Does it matter?”
“Maybe. Here’s a theory. Sex, money, and power are the forces that drive nearly every conflict on earth. Out of those three, I’d bet on sex. Could he be running from some scandal? And maybe he wants one-hundred-percent compliance, even from troublemakers like you, so this won’t happen.”
“So what won’t happen?”
“What we’re doing. If a few of his sheep stay behind, they might put their heads together, compare notes, and realize their shepherd is a scoundrel. There goes his gravy train, right off the track. Forgive the mixed metaphors. And what if—”
“You said you had one question. You’ve asked about ten. You’re done.”
“No, Mrs. H., I’ve only asked three, and you’ve given me zero answers.” He waited, giving her a chance to speak.
She shrugged.
“Fine,” he said, “but if I catch Mason at anything that has even a whiff of criminality to it, I’ll call the cops so fast it’ll make his head spin like Ezekiel’s wheels.”
It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that her face paled.
After another long school day and a weary evening, Miranda longed for her bed. Jack wouldn’t follow her there with his endless questions.
All the children were down for the night except the youngest, who’d tumbled from a kitchen chair and bumped his head. After a long, drawn-out howl, he’d snuggled up on the couch with Jack and a handful of picture books. Jonah had finally fallen asleep, and Jack carried him cautiously across the living room.
Almost too tired to smile, Miranda managed it anyway. “Don’t worry. He’s out until morning.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” She looked from Jonah’s slumbering face to the arms that held him. Jack’s shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing his wrist bones and a portion of the dark hair on his arms, a particularly masculine beauty that sent a shiver to her stomach.
But he would soon return to his own life. Back in Chattanooga, he wasn’t Uncle Jack who blew bubbles with the children and sang goofy songs in the shower. He was R. Jackson Hanford, PhD, who felt right at home in a lecture hall, addressing scores of students instead of wrangling, one on one, with six. His nephews and nieces.
They needed his sanity and his craziness. His laughter and his love.
Discreetly, with one finger, she dried the corners of her eyes.
Jack leaned toward her and sniffed. “You smell good. I can’t quite identify.” He inhaled again. “What’s that scent?”
She ducked her head, hiding a smile. “A custom blend.”
Tonight, she’d tried three different fragrance strips from the hand-me-down magazines. One scent on each wrist, one on her throat. The combination must have bewildered his nose.
A clatter on the stairs proved to be Gabriel, followed by Michael, Martha, and Rebekah, all in their pajamas. Timothy brought up the rear, still fully clothed and holding a dog-eared paperback.
Miranda squinted at the book’s title. To Kill a Mockingbird. She’d loved it in seventh grade. She’d have to read it again sometime.
“We want to make sure Jonah’s okay,” Gabriel said. He came close and stroked Jonah’s messy hair. “He still doesn’t know about Jeremiah.”
“We’ll tell him when he’s old enough to understand,” Miranda said. “And I’ll tell all of you more about Jeremiah, as time goes on. You would have loved him. And he would have loved you.”
Rebekah wanted to know Jeremiah’s birthday. The archangels wanted to know exactly where he fell, and what time of year. Timothy only listened, but Martha asked more questions than everybody else put together.
“Was he a good reader, Mama?”
“No, Martha. He didn’t live long enough to become a good reader.”
“But I’m only four, and I’m a good reader.”
“Yes, but some children don’t learn to read as early as you did, even if they’re very smart. Boys often don’t read as early as girls do. Did you know that? But Jeremiah was a nature lover, like Jonah. Jeremiah always walked around with stones and sticks and even dead beetles in his pockets.”
Martha grimaced. “Ew! Dead things are bad.”
“No, they’re not,” Timothy said. “They’re like everything else. Molecules. Elements.”
“Like bread and grape juice?” Martha’s uplifted face held astonishment.
Timothy smiled tolerantly. “That’s a different kind of element.”
“And that’s enough questions for one night.” Miranda’s voice cracked from a combination of emotion and exhaustion.
“It is indeed,” Jack said, leaning against the wall with Jonah a dead weight in his arms. “It’s late, and y’all are turning this into another bedtime-avoidance ploy. Get to bed, the whole lot o’ ye rampageous rapscallions.”
The funny words took the sting out of the order, and the children trooped off to bed without argument. Timothy went too, although he was still five minutes from his new, later bedtime.
Jack remained against the wall, holding her baby. She didn’t know what she would have done over the last few weeks without Jack to carry some of her burdens.
“Thanks,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “It was getting hard to handle.”
“I could tell.”
She inspected Jonah’s forehead. “That’s quite a bruise.”
“And he milked it for all it was worth. Three stories, three times each, but it was fun. I’ve always loved Mike Mulligan.”
She lifted Jonah’s chubby hand and kissed it. He didn’t stir. “You teach literature on the college level, but you’re always talking about children’s books. Why is that?”
“That’s where everybody starts. Besides, the whole time I was married to Ava, I was surrounded by kids’ books. She bought them for her kindergarten classes. We both bought them for her niece and nephews. And for the kids we thought we’d have someday.”
“Someday, you’ll be a good father to some lucky children.”
“That’s what Ava thought when she married me. Or at least that’s the excuse she used when she decided to leave me.”
“You couldn’t have children?”
; “She could. I couldn’t. And don’t try to tell me it’s because I don’t tithe, darlin’. The fertility doctors said it might have been because my mumps vaccination didn’t take. Maybe that’s why I’m so stuck on wanting family connections. Because I don’t have any, and I don’t have real prospects of creating any.”
Jack couldn’t have children? How terrible. How lonely.
She plucked a cat hair from his shirt sleeve. “You have us. If you want us.”
Their eyes met in a silence that sizzled with questions. She held her breath, her fingers poised an inch from his shirt. What a fool. So forward.
“If I want you,” he said softly. “Miranda, I’m very fond of your whole family, but when it comes to you in particular, it’s a good thing there’s a two-year-old between us, acting as chaperone, or I’d be tempted to demonstrate how I want you.”
Her throat dry, her heart pounding, she managed a smile. “Oh, really?”
“Really. There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Sometimes, I get the feeling there are a few things you’re not telling me.” He raised his eyebrows. “True?”
She captured another cat hair and let it drift to the floor. “Don’t you like a woman to have a bit of mystery to her?”
“A bit, yes. Not a whole truck load. Good night, mystery woman.” He turned and carried Jonah up the stairs.
“Good night,” she called belatedly, then walked to her room and shut herself in.
She longed to be the kind of woman Jack would want. Her heart ached with the impossibility of it all.
She caught her reflection in the mirror above her dresser and grimaced at the baggy dress and unflattering braids. She could at least stop dressing like the kind of woman he wouldn’t want. When he’d called her clothing utilitarian, it must have been the kindest adjective he could find.
She opened her closet and saw Abigail’s sweater neatly folded on the shelf. The perfect color to bring life to Abigail’s face. Her sister in Nebraska knew her well.
Leaving the sweater where it lay, Miranda started yanking ugly dresses and skirts off their hangers, dumping them on the floor. She saved a few of the better skirts and shirts, but she was done with Mason’s rules about dress.