When Sparrows Fall (10 page)

A young woman, drenched with rain, jaywalked between a pickup and a car. In a brown parka and worn jeans, with a phone to her ear, she dodged puddles in a gamey, cheerful way that made Miranda smile.

Her wish list kept growing. A cell phone. Jeans. And instead of a cape, a parka. A red one. Once Mason had moved away, she would go on a shopping spree for herself and for the children.

She never had extra money, though, and she’d have even less when the checks from the church stopped coming. She didn’t even want to think about her medical bills.

Miranda squinted at the local paper her roommate had left folded up on the corner of the bed. It was no use trying to check the want ads for work until
her vision cleared. She’d never dreamed that a concussion could cause so much trouble.

Footsteps approached her room. There was a light knock, and a dark-haired, dark-eyed man entered, wearing a rumpled raincoat. She knew him immediately—yet she didn’t know him. Although he bore some resemblance to the idealistic young man who’d come in search of family, years ago, this Jack carried himself with an intimidating air of confidence.

Speaking with him on the phone had been awkward, but this was worse. She couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say. Couldn’t think of a blessed thing to
think
, except: This was Jack “Tsunami” Hanford, and she was in trouble.

Laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. “Hey, Miranda. Remember me?”

“Hello, Jack.” The room resumed its merry-go-round routine. “Thank you for everything. Thank you so much.”

“Glad to help. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been run over by a freight train.”

“The kids can’t wait to have you back. They’ll want to pamper you half to death.”

“That sounds good. I’ve missed them.”

“I can imagine. They’re great kids. Very well-behaved. Never having been the sole custodian of a passel of young ’uns, I’m grateful for that.”

Despite his education, he still sounded like a country boy. In fact, he sounded very much like Carl, whose southern accent had once charmed a lonely Ohio girl.

Still at a loss for words, she bit her lip. She hadn’t imagined facing Jack in person.

“You weren’t supposed to show up unless I died,” she blurted. “Not that dying would have been a better outcome—” Seeing his frown, she stopped. “You don’t think I
meant
to fall, do you?”

“The thought occurred to me. Did you?”

“Of course not. I must have fainted.”

“Miranda, if you’re depressed, it isn’t anything to be ashamed of. It’s—”

“I know what it is. But I’m not depressed. Not now.”

“I want to believe you.”

“Please do. I want to stop talking and hurry home to my babies.” She waited, holding her breath. If he believed she was suicidal, and if that rumor somehow reached DFCS.…

He slid his hand inside his raincoat. From a shirt pocket, he extracted a slender black pen and a paper. “First, we have business to tend to.”

She exhaled. “What kind of business?”

“You need to sign this.” He unfolded the paper and held it in front of her.

To her unfocused vision, it was only a block of his cramped and nearly indecipherable writing followed by a list of some sort in Rebekah’s neat penmanship. The lines wobbled and blurred. “What is it?”

“This authorizes me to obtain emergency medical attention for the kids if the need should arise. Rebekah listed names and dates of birth, and I understand they’re a healthy crew with no allergies or medical conditions. Is that correct?”

“Yes, but why would you need this? You won’t be staying more than a day or two.”

“I’m not quite so optimistic. You can’t even drive yourself to the store. Or to your checkups with various and sundry physicians.”

“I’m still not sure it’s a good idea.”

“I would only use it in an emergency. For instance, if Rebekah whacks off a finger with one of those butcher knives she’s always slinging around.”

“But—”

“Or if Jonah does a face-plant into the wood stove.”

“Yes, I suppose—”

“Sign, please.” He placed the paper on the tray table beside the bed and offered the pen.

She wiggled the battered, swollen fingers that extended from the sling. “I can’t grip a pen.”

“Yes, you can.”

With a pleasant smile, he placed the pen in her left hand. She considered tucking the pen right back in his shirt pocket, but that would have required reaching inside his raincoat.

“Come, now,” he said. “Don’t argue about signing a simple form that deals with the short-term when you’ve already named me as the children’s guardian.”

“But that won’t go into effect unless I die.”

“And you’ll live for another seven decades or so, I hope.” He gave her a boyish grin and tapped the pen with one finger. “Please cooperate with me.” His grin faded. “God forbid that I should ever need this paper, but you’re living proof that accidents happen.”

She lowered herself into the chair. “You’re right. I should be thanking you instead of arguing.” Despite the way the room rotated around her, she made the pen connect with the paper and produced an ugly, crooked scrawl.

Jack reclaimed the pen and paper. “I’ll run down to the pharmacy and pick up your ’scripts.”

“My what?”

“Prescriptions. Might be a while.”

“I don’t need the prescriptions.”

“Wrong.” And he was out the door.

seven

J
ack’s sleek black convertible was lithe and sure on the curves, but Miranda wished he would slow down. He navigated the slick roads in the pouring rain as if he’d driven them all his life.

Of course he did. He was mountain-bred like Carl.

The fall must have jostled some memories out of hiding. She kept remembering the first time she saw Carl’s blond head bent over his books between classes. The oldest student on campus, he’d towered over the boys her age, not just in stature but in maturity. When the news came, he’d helped her buy a plane ticket. He spoke with her professors, drove her to the airport, and picked her up when she came back from Auntie Lou’s funeral. He’d been a fortress.

Miranda hadn’t known, then, that a fortress could be a prison.

Rain on the windshield made blurry stars of oncoming headlights, but then the wipers cleared the glass and the lights became sharp white knives slicing into her. Blurry stars, then brutal knives, they alternated every two seconds, but she had to keep her eyes open.

Jack hadn’t spoken since they’d turned onto the county road. She gave him a cautious look and knew he was unaware of her discomfort. He tapped a rhythm on the steering wheel in time to some private song, his mouth graced with a faint smile.

Her muscles clenched with panic. She would never be able to explain him to Mason—or vice versa—and Mason would show up soon. Even before her accident, he’d rebuked her for procrastinating. She hadn’t listed her house or called a handyman. Her excuses had worn thin.

The car swooped through another pass, making her feel as if she were in a blender. She clung to the black leather seat with her left hand and turned slowly toward the rain streaming down her window. With the slightest movement, pain hammered her.

“Could we clear up a few questions?” Jack asked.

“We could try.”

“Why did you name me as guardian?”

“It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t die.” Too late, she realized her answer was both flippant and illogical.

“Yes, we’ve already established that you didn’t die—thank God—but why me, a divorced curmudgeon with no experience in raising children? And you don’t know me. We’ve had only one conversation, nine years ago. A conversation that ended with Carl ordering me off the property.”

“I’ve always been sorry about that. We were going through a rough time, and … he wasn’t quite himself.”

“I’m happy to know that wasn’t the real Carl, but back to my question. Why me? Why not your own relatives?”

She pictured her mother’s pleasant, uncomplicated face. Her honey brown hair in a classic, simple style. Her closet, jam-packed with expensive clothing and shoes.

“I don’t have any relatives who are fit to take care of the children,” Miranda said.

Jack murmured something, but she didn’t catch it.

Wooded slopes, silvered by the rain, whipped past. Woozy, Miranda faced forward again, into the violent brightness of the oncoming lights. She leaned back against the head rest but couldn’t decide if it was better to brace against it or try to relax her muscles.

“Why didn’t you discuss it with me first?” he asked.

“I thought I would call as soon as … as soon as things … well, soon. But then I fell.”

“You changed your will only a couple of weeks ago. Were you expecting a calamity like your fall?”

“No, but I might have brought it upon myself. I’d been taking a lot of walks to the cliffs.”

“What inspired you to change your will though?”

“The previous guardians are moving out of state.”

“And you decided the children would be better off with me? A stranger to them and nearly a stranger to you?”

“After Carl asked you to leave, when you started writing to him … your letters made me feel that I knew you, at least a little.”

From the corner of her eye, she caught the swift movement as Jack turned toward her. “You read my letters?”

In rebellion. In secret. If Carl had known, he never would have believed that she thought of Jack only as a brother. A brother who made her smile.

She nodded, and a jolt of pain hit her skull. “I read them.”

“Did Carl?”

“Only the first one. I wish he would have given you a chance.”

“After he told me to stop writing, did my persistence cause any trouble?”

She hesitated. After that first letter, Carl had told her to write back and tell Jack not to bother. She’d obeyed, written the note, but Jack’s letters hadn’t stopped coming until she’d told him Carl was gone. Maybe they’d saved her sanity.

“No,” she said. “There was never any trouble.”

Now, though, trouble sat in the driver’s seat. And he was staying under her roof.

Approaching a passing lane, Jack swung the car to the left. He overtook a slow-moving UPS truck, a brown blur in the rain-speckled glass. The car swept back to the right lane, far too close to the deep ravines. If he lost control of the car … if she never made it home.…

What if they
both
died, mother and guardian? DFCS would take the children. Like they’d taken the Padilla children in Rabun County. In that case, though, the parents were alive and fighting to reunite the family.

“Slow down!” She clutched the seat with her left hand.

“Sorry. I’ve got a lead foot sometimes.” He reduced the car’s speed.

She still clung to the seat.

Jack turned right at the blinking yellow light that signaled Larkin Road. For a little while, there was no sound but the hiss of tires on wet pavement, backed by the rhythm of the wipers and the drumming of the rain. In the strained silence, she wondered if half her nausea was caused by nerves.

“You never called me when Carl died,” Jack said. “You only wrote a note, weeks after the funeral.”

“I’m sorry. I should have let you know, right away, but I must have been in shock. Then Jonah was born, six weeks later. I still remember the flowers you sent, though, and your note was so kind. You said you wanted to help.”

“And I could have helped, if you’d returned my call.”

“You called me?”

“I left a message. You never responded.”

“But there was never—oh! You must have called just before Gabriel destroyed the answering machine. You know how four-year-olds are. He kept taking things apart. Toys and clocks and gadgets—and the answering machine.”

Jack laughed. “That doesn’t surprise me. The little devil. I wonder how many messages you lost.”

Not many. The phone seldom rang, then or now. But life might have been very different if she’d known Jack’s offer of help had been more than polite words to accompany the flowers.

They reached the last bend of Larkin and, she hoped, the end of the interrogation. There was her mailbox. Her driveway. She braced herself against the bumps and jolts of the rutted gravel, but tensing up only made it worse. Finally, the car rounded the last curve, and the lights of the house blazed like gold in the gray of the storm.

Jack braked to a gentle stop and killed the engine. Rain made a steady patter on the roof of the car. “I should have brought an umbrella.”

“I don’t care if I get wet.”

“Good, because you will.”

He climbed out. The slamming of the door was like a slap to her aching head. She fumbled for the latch. Before she could locate it, Jack was there, opening the door. She gulped fresh, rainy air and prayed her stomach would settle.

“Well.” He rubbed his jaw. “This might prove to be difficult.”

It would. The steps to the porch might as well have been Mount Everest. Leaving the hospital, they’d had a wheelchair, the help of an orderly, and no steps to deal with.

She flexed her right ankle, and pain shot down to her toes and up her calf to her knee. She clamped her lips closed.

Bending over, Jack slid a hand under her knee and nudged her bad leg so it faced the opened door. The forced intimacy was awkward, but she moved her good leg into the rain, her foot onto the muddy ground.

“Let’s get your feet planted,” he said. “There. Now, raise your arms a bit. Can you, with the sling?”

“Yes, but what—” She yelped as he pulled her to her feet.

“Sorry.”

She fought to keep from blacking out. She wanted to focus on the house—her goal, her refuge, her whole world—but Jack was inches away, blocking her
view. His lips were moving, saying something, and they’d doubled themselves. Two mouths, two noses, four eyes. Her eyes crossed as she tried to bring the two Jacks into one.

“Good thing you’re about as big as a peanut,” he said. “And good thing I picked up your prescriptions.”

A fat raindrop hit her cheek. “I don’t need prescriptions,” she said between clenched teeth.

“I beg to differ.” He scooped her up, one arm under her knees, one around her torso.