Not a Sparrow Falls

by Linda Nichols

  © 2002 by Linda Nichols

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-6009-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

  Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version ®. NIV ®. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.© Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. www.zondervan.com

  Scripture quotations identified KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Cover design by Ann Gjeldum

  Cover photo: Getty Images

  To Ron and Laurel Pentecost

  and the people of Clover Creek Bible Fellowship,

  who showed me the Christ of Calvary

  who still changes lives.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people gave me information and help for this book. Thank you all for your patience and time.

  J. W. Gregg Meister answered general questions about Presbyterian church government, as well as Keith Wulff, Coordinator of Research Services for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

  Lt. Daniel Pierce of the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department and Richard Folsom of the Nelson County Sheriff’s Department helped with information on law enforcement.

  Phillip Payne, Commonwealth Attorney for Nelson County, Virginia, patiently answered questions regarding legal matters, as did Debbie Giles at the same office. My husband, Ken, was also very helpful to me in clarifying the criminal justice process.

  Thanks also to the Virginia Department of Corrections for their information on prisons.

  I also want to thank my mother and all my Virginia relatives. In addition to loving me all these years, you answered my questions and helped with my research for this book.

  As always, I’m indebted to Jo Ann Jensen, Sherrie Holmes, Sherry Maiura, and Mae Lou Larson for their encouragement and critiques, as well as Bethany Maines, Kathryn Galbraith, Bill DeWitt, and Debbie Macomber. You are more than writing partners; you are friends. I would also like to thank Bridget Honan and the Wednesday night group for supporting me and encouraging me to keep on writing.

  As I wrote this book, my devotional life and my writing life became beautifully intertwined. The sermons of Jim Cymbala and the music of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, principles from Experiencing God by Henry Blackby, as well as insights from the leadership and people of Clover Creek Bible Fellowship wove into the tapestry of this story.

  I’d also like to thank my father for always believing in me and encouraging me.

  It has been a privilege to work with all the professionals at Bethany House Publishers. Thanks to Barb Lilland and Sharon Asmus for their insightful and gracious editing, as well as to everyone else who contributed to this book. I’m truly grateful to each one of you. You do your jobs with excellence.

  A truly generous person is one who gives to those who can’t return the favor. Nicholas Sparks has done that for me.

  Finally, I would like to thank Theresa Park, my agent and friend. Not only have you represented me with skill, intelligence, and dedication, but always with my best interests at heart. You encouraged and believed in me when things looked dark. I will never forget.

  Prologue

  Hattie didn’t know exactly what she was praying for. Or who. All she knew was that it had awakened her, this hard stirring, like a wooden spoon working and mixing up her insides. Years ago she might have ignored it and gone on back to sleep. Thought it was something not settling in her stomach, or some troubling of her dreams. But she had learned better. After eighty-some years of listening to the Spirit of the Lord, she’d finally gotten acquainted with His ways.

  She lay under the heavy layer of quilts and felt the chill of the room on her face. Time was, she might have slipped to her knees by her bedside, prayed silently in the dark so as not to wake Alvin. But Alvin had been gone for twenty years now, and she was so crippled up with arthritis she couldn’t even get herself out of the bed, let alone kneel on the hard wooden floor. The Lord knew.

  “Dear Jesus,” she whispered. “Somebody’s in trouble. You know who it is. You know what they need.” She prayed on and on and didn’t look at the clock, but by the time she felt a clearing in her spirit, yellow slats of weak winter sunlight were coming through the blinds and falling across her bed. She’d barely slept a wink, but it didn’t matter. At her age daytime and nighttime were one and the same. Sleep a little here, a little there, and she suspected that death would come along about like that. One day she would doze off in her chair and wake up in glory.

  She heard a clatter from the direction of the kitchen. The back door creaked open and closed.

  “It’s me, Miss Hattie.”

  “Good morning, Martha,” she called back. Her own voice sounded quavery and old, even to her.

  She heard the floorboards creak, and she followed Martha’s movements in her mind. Another door opened and closed. Martha was hanging up her coat. Metal on metal—the stove door opening. Then the sound of newspaper crackling and the clunk of stovewood on the sides of the grate as Martha made a fire. Hattie smiled. It would have been easier for Martha to flip on the heat, but she knew how Hattie liked a fire in the stove. Metal on metal again as the stove door closed. More footsteps, and in a moment Martha’s face was beaming over her. Her cheekbones were high, as if cut from some dark stone, and her eyes were almost black. As usual, her pretty mouth was curved into a smile. Martha was pretty and smart enough to have gone out into the world and done something important instead of taking care of an old lady. Hattie wondered if she was satisfied being a home health aide. She never asked Martha, though, afraid she’d put an idea into her head, and some morning another aide would come through the door instead of her friend.

  They went through their morning routine. Martha helped her dress, combed out her plait and rebraided it, wound it into a bun, and stuck it down with four hairpins.

  “I didn’t poke you, did I, Miss Hattie?”

  “No, darling, but it wouldn’t matter if you had. I’m not tender headed,” she answered and tried to help as best she could as Martha helped her to the bathroom and dressed her. She leaned forward while Martha buttoned up her dress and lifted her twisted feet as Martha worked them into her Hush Puppies and laced them up. Martha hummed. Hattie watched her hands, so quick and gentle.

  As blessed as she was to have someone to care for her, she wished again she could do more for herself. She was used to doing for others, not having them do for her. The faces of loved ones came into her mind. She couldn’t do anything for them either. She could only pray. She felt a heaviness settle under
her breast, but almost instantly she realized the truth. Praying was doing something. It accomplished more than she ever could have, even when her own hands had been quick and her legs strong.

  Martha helped Hattie into her chair, wheeled her into the kitchen, and parked her at the table. Hattie watched as Martha went about making their breakfast. She was singing, as usual. This morning it was “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

  “Would you like some sausage and gravy with your eggs this morning, Miss Hattie?”

  Hattie answered yes and thanked her.

  Martha put the sausage on to fry, then opened up the flour bin and shook a few cups of flour into the chipped mixing bowl. Hattie had never measured anything either. Martha added baking powder, salt, cut in some Crisco, then poured in milk. She mixed with her bare clean hands, just like Hattie always had. It took a touch to know when the dough was the right consistency. You couldn’t tell just by looking. Martha shaped it into a mound, dusted the top with flour, and rolled it flat with a clean glass.

  “We’ll just have hoecake instead of biscuits this morning, Miss Hattie, if that’s all right with you.”

  “That would be just fine, Martha,” Hattie answered but with only half her attention, for she was distracted again. She felt the burden return, the same pressure that had awakened her last night, only stronger now, and this time the call to pray came with a picture. She closed her eyes, and a scene appeared on that dark screen behind them.

  She saw a sheep alone in the desert. It lay on bloodied sand. Its neck was torn, and it was too stunned and wounded to cry out. A wolf was circling, teeth bared, eager to finish it off.

  Hattie felt a flash of anger, and words, loud and fervent, tumbled from her mouth. “Father, the enemy wants to destroy a child of yours. This one is hurt, Lord, with no one to help but you.” She’d been reading the book of Daniel last night before sleeping, and suddenly it seemed to be no accident. “Lord, you were the fourth man in the fiery furnace where the king threw your three servants, and not even a hair on their heads was singed. Father, when Daniel was put into that lions’ den, you sent your angel to shut the mouths of the lions, and he was delivered. Not a scratch on him.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Martha called out, agreeing in prayer from her post by the stove. “Nothing is too hard for you.”

  “You’re the same now as you were then,” Hattie cried. “Show us your power, Lord. Rescue this child of yours.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Martha agreed again.

  Hattie heard an egg crack against the side of the skillet, then sizzle as it hit the hot grease.

  “Your heart is tender, Jesus, and your arm is mighty to save,” Martha declared.

  Hattie’s eyes were still closed, but the picture on the dark screen began to change. A shadow moved between the injured sheep and the predator. As the figure became clear she could see it was someone young and strong and clothed in a dress so white it was blinding in the desert sun. It was her, she realized as the face came into view. She reached toward a beautiful golden scabbard strapped to her waist and pulled out a bright, gleaming sword. The blade flashed in the glaring sunlight and sliced the air as she threatened the wolf. He bared his teeth again, and his yellow eyes glowed with hatred as he slunk back into the shadow of the rocks. She watched for a few more moments, but the image began to break up, chunks of it dissolving into splashes of color and light.

  Hattie opened her eyes. Martha turned the eggs, slid them onto a plate, opened the screeching oven door, and brought out the golden hoecake. Hattie felt the tension drain from her. She was worn out, as though she’d fought a battle.

  Martha drained the sausage, and when they were each seated at the table with a hot cup of coffee and their breakfasts before them, Martha spoke, nodding as if she had just decided something. “I feel like the Lord heard our prayer,” she said. “He’s moving.”

  Hattie nodded, too. Her spirit had cleared. She was hungry. “Pass that damson jelly over here, if you please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Martha said, waiting until Hattie had a good hold of the jar before letting it go.

  Hattie ate until she was full, thankful she could still manage a fork. When they were finished, Martha wheeled her chair over by the stove. The fire was burning hot, crackling when Martha opened the door to add another stick of wood. The room was warm. Hattie felt herself become drowsy. Martha began singing again as she started on the dishes. “I’ve got a feeling everything’s gonna be all right.”

  Hattie smiled in satisfaction, closed her eyes, and drifted off.

  One

  “Will that be all for you, then?” The cashier, an old man with bifocals and a droopy gray moustache, gave her a curious look, but nothing more. Mary Bridget Washburn smiled just a little, not having to pretend to be timid, and cast her eyes down at the array of cough and cold preparations on the counter in front of her.

  “It’s the flu,” she lied. “Whole family’s laid out with it—my husband and children. I’m doctoring my mama and daddy, too.” She fingered the driver’s license in her pocket, one of the many Jonah had paid the fellow in Charlottesville to make for her. Sometimes they asked for ID when you bought this much stuff, even if you were paying cash.

  “Um-um.” He shook his head. “You don’t look old enough to be married, let alone have children.”

  Mary was thinking of what to say, but then realized he wasn’t expecting an answer. He rang up the sale and loaded the bottles into a bag.

  She just nodded and knew that once again her silky blond hair and wide blue eyes had done the trick. “Be twenty-five next birthday,” she said, the only truthful thing she’d told the poor man in the whole conversation.

  “Um-um,” he repeated again. “Don’t look a day over seventeen.”

  She held her breath until he had handed her the change from her hundred.

  “I thank you,” she said, forcing herself to look up. He looked right at her now, as if he’d suddenly realized what she was up to. She didn’t let on, just flashed him another smile. She felt the familiar surge of relief as the bells on the door jingled behind her; then she aimed for the sidewalk and looked for the truck, which was there for a change. Usually she had to kill time waiting for Dwayne to get back from his runs to the agricultural supply and hardware stores, but this time he was waiting for her. It was a good thing, for it was cold, even for Virginia in October. It would freeze again as soon as the sun set.

  Dwayne flicked his cigarette out the window and started the engine as she put the sack of cold preparations in the back, along with the bottles of antifreeze and drain cleaner and the two big tanks of anhydrous ammonia. She tried not to think about what they would become. She’d seen a picture once in school of a fellow who’d been on methamphetamine. First picture was normal. Next picture looked to be about ten years later, the third one taken when he was an old man.

  “These photos,” the DARE officer had said, “were taken six months apart. That’s what meth does to you.”

  Mary put that thought out of her mind. Tried to, at least. She climbed into the passenger side, and thankfully, Dwayne didn’t speak, just grunted and shifted the truck into gear, pulled out onto the street, and then aimed for the bypass and home. Home, she thought with a shudder. A rusting singlewide where they ate and slept, and an old, falling-down smokehouse out back where Jonah made the candy, as Dwayne called it. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the voice that asked her, louder and louder each day, what she was doing here.

  It’s not my fault, she argued with it. I’m making out best I know how. She certainly hadn’t graduated from high school, set down her cap and gown, and decided to begin her career in meth production. No. Like her grandmother used to say, it had been like boiling a frog, a gradual and easy turning up the heat until the water was rolling up all around her, and here she still sat. She reviewed the steps that had gotten her here. The good reasons she’d had to leave home with Jonah and take his offer of easy money. But as she justified her actions, she could hear her
mama’s voice, gentle but stern, cautioning even from the grave that there was no right way to do a wrong thing.

  If Mama were here, everything would still be right. Or at least not as bad wrong as it had become. But Mama was dead, and Papa was gone, her brother and sisters scattered. And she was here.

  For the time being, anyway. Over the last five years she’d lived more places than she could count. They’d been like nomads, picking up and moving on every time the law got to sniffing around. Sometimes their timing was bad, and Jonah or Dwayne would get picked up. They’d do jail time, then get out and be back at it again. She’d never gotten caught. Just lucky, she guessed. She supposed she could have left during one of their jail sentences. She could leave now, for that matter.

  She wasn’t a prisoner. Exactly. She could easily walk away any number of times during the course of a day, slip out the back door of one of the pharmacies or hardware stores while Dwayne waited out front in the pickup. Head for the bus station while he was making a sale. But where would she go? And what would she do once she got there? She couldn’t go home again, and even the thought of home—the word calling up the image of the old white clapboard house nestled in the hollow—brought a sharp stab of pain. She couldn’t go home. It wasn’t just an hour away, but a lifetime. No, after what she’d done and become, she couldn’t go there. And she had no money to start out anywhere else.

  The promised profits had never been delivered. She asked for money now and then. Dwayne would say ask Jonah, and Jonah would dole it out a twenty at a time. That was not counting the hundred-dollar bill Dwayne handed her every time she went into a pharmacy to buy cold medicine or diet pills. They must know that if she ever got her hands on anything larger, she would be off and gone.

  And then what? she asked herself wearily. She had no education. No skills besides buying ingredients for meth, and she was afraid of what would happen if she lived on the streets. That pressure had already started. The men who came to transact business with Dwayne were giving her looks, not to mention Dwayne himself.