When Sparrows Fall (33 page)

Tears like rivers. Eyes like deep wells of sorrow. And more than sorrow.

She’d lost a child, that was plain, but he couldn’t understand why her grief was mixed with so much fear.

The children were all in bed—Rebekah’s worries relieved, Martha’s tears dried—and Miranda had finally stopped shaking, at least on the outside. The wind snarled at the windows. Timothy, then Jack, had stoked the fire, but she was still cold in spite of the blaze.

Curled up in Carl’s chair with the cuddle-quilt, she met Jack’s worried
look. The poor man had waited all evening for her explanation. He sat in the center of the couch, his hands gripping the edge of the cushion.

“I’ve been praying about how much I could tell you,” she said. “Or whether or not I should tell you at all, but Timothy isn’t our firstborn.”

Jack nodded, eyes narrowed as if in cold-hearted calculation.

“Jeremiah,” she said, the name familiar to her heart but foreign to her tongue. “Jeremiah was our first child. When he was five years old, just after we moved here, he fell from the cliffs.”

Horror dawned on Jack’s face. “Oh, Miranda.”

She closed her eyes and recalled the familiar scripture. “ ‘If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying?’ But I couldn’t, even though I only had three lambs then. Two by my side. One at the bottom of the cliffs.”

“What happened?”

“It was late afternoon. I was upstairs, getting Rebekah up from her nap. I heard the front door slam and I knew Jeremiah had run outside. Twice before, he’d gone all the way to the cliffs by himself.

“I hurried to get jackets and shoes on Rebekah and Timothy. We went after Jeremiah, calling his name. We’d had some rain, and everything was muddy. We tracked his footprints past the barn. Through the clearing. Through the woods. I carried Rebekah and I tried to make Timothy hurry. We followed Jeremiah’s footprints to the edge of the cliffs. I didn’t let the little ones see, but—”

She opened her eyes. It was easier to look at Jack than to see the scene that still burned on the inside of her eyelids. “He lay at the bottom. So still. I couldn’t leave Timothy and Rebekah alone at the top of those tall, slippery cliffs. They might have fallen too. And I couldn’t take them down with me. You’ve seen how steep it is. And how far it is from the house. Tell me, what would you have done?”

He studied the floor. “I don’t know.”

“I had to make a choice. I abandoned one lamb on the mountain to be sure the others would be safe. I ran back to the house, carrying Rebekah and dragging Timothy. Carl was just getting home from work. He ran all the way to the cliffs, but it was too late.”

“Oh, Miranda,” he said again.

With her forefinger, she traced the holes left by the stitches she’d made when Jeremiah was a tiny baby. “We buried Jeremiah two weeks before you came to meet Carl.”

Jack’s head came up. “You’d just lost your son?”

“That’s why Carl wouldn’t let you stay. He was afraid Timothy would say something. He’d been asking for Miah—that’s what Timothy called him—and Carl wanted Timothy to forget.”

“Do you mean the other children have never known?”

“Never. It’s best that way.”

A log shifted in the fire. It thudded in the quiet, in the space she left in her story.

Jack’s face had that calculating look again. “I think I understand. Timothy and Rebekah might have blamed themselves one day. For being there, for keeping you from reaching Jeremiah in time. And Carl wanted to spare them that. That softens my heart toward him, a little.”

“Good.” Never mind that his theory was wrong.

“And that’s why you have no mementos, no photos of Jeremiah. Nothing but his quilt.”

“I have one photo of Jeremiah, but everyone thinks it’s of Timothy.”

“The little guy in overalls? The one where you look like a teenager?”

“I was nineteen, almost twenty.”

“So you were about twenty-four, twenty-five, when Jeremiah died.”

“Yes. I loved him so much. If I could have taken his place, I would have.”

“I believe you.”

She nodded, remembering that terrible, sleepless night, ringing with the sounds of Carl’s saw and hammer, and then the cruelest of mornings when the sun came up on a world that no longer held her living, breathing son.

“Jeremiah. The name means ‘God will raise up,’ ” she said. “But God didn’t raise him.”

Jack knelt beside the chair and drew her hand to his chest. His heart beat steadily under her fingers.

That kind heart. His kindness might have persuaded her to tell him the rest, but it wouldn’t have been fair.

Jack stood in the kitchen, slicing into a loaf of Rebekah’s whole-wheat bread and trying to put the puzzle together. He was still missing a few pieces.

Why had Carl insisted on keeping Jeremiah’s death from the younger kids? They didn’t need to know the details, but surely they needed to know about their brother.

Anyway, it seemed that Carl’s plan had failed. Timothy remembered. Miah, not Maya. A boy, not a girl. Real, not imaginary. Miranda wasn’t ready to hear it, though.

First, she needed to eat.

When Jack brought her the bread and a glass of apple juice, she’d moved to the couch. She still had the quilt wrapped around her.

“I have no idea what’s good for breaking a fast, but I’m gambling on bread and juice.” He sat beside her and placed the glass in her hand. She fumbled, nearly spilling, so he took it back and held it to her lips. “Once you have some food in your stomach, you won’t be as shaky.”

He broke off a piece of the bread for her. She chewed and swallowed mechanically, but she seemed very far away.

“Miranda, where’d you go?”

She focused on him with unnerving force. “Back to about AD 33, and I met you there. And I met Jesus—” She touched his chest with her forefinger. “Here. In you. And in Yvonne.”

Bewildered, he shook his head. “Far be it from me to comprehend the workings of a woman’s mind. Eat, please.”

“I’m seeing so much. Hearing so much. Hearing from God, inside. I was ‘naked, and you clothed me.’ That was Yvonne, bringing those hand-me-downs. ‘I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink.’ Even if you spiked my food with pain pills, sometimes.”

“Guilty as charged.”

She smiled, blue eyes drowning in tears. “And ‘I was sick, and you visited me.’ You dropped everything and showed up to take care of me. ‘I was in prison, and you came to me.’ I wasn’t in a literal prison, but—”

“Hush, now. I’m no saint. Not even close. More of a bully, it seems. Eat—and there I go again, telling you what to do.”

She took a tiny bite of bread. “It’s all right, now and then.”

“I’m very thankful that you and the children won’t be moving.” Jack ducked his head. “I’ve become quite fond of the whole kit and caboodle, including you.”

He handed her a tissue. She blew her nose and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She was a mess, dripping tears like a leaky faucet.

“But I have some more questions,” he said.

“I knew you would.”

“Are you sure Timothy doesn’t remember Jeremiah? Because I’ve heard him mumble ‘Miah.’ I thought it was a girl’s name. Martha’s imaginary friend. I thought Timothy was imitating her, but it might have been the other way around. Martha might have heard him talking about Miah and made an imaginary friend out of the name. And she must have heard him say that Miah fell and died, because that’s what she told me.”

Miranda passed her wadded-up tissue from one hand to the other, squeezing and shredding it. “No. Timothy was so young. How could he remember?”

“It’s quite possible, and it could be unsettling if he remembers his brother but you’ve led him to believe there was no brother.”

She shook her head, hard, and a lock of hair fell across her face. Her hand trembled when she tucked the hair behind her ear. “Timothy doesn’t remember.”

“I’m not so sure about that, and if I were him, I’d feel cheated. That’s how I felt about never knowing Carl, but the brother Timothy lost was actually part of his life, if only for a few years. That must be even harder than losing a brother you’d never met until the day you lost him.”

“I don’t believe Timothy remembers.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Jack searched her eyes and saw growing uncertainty. “But why not tell him anyway? Why not tell all the kids? You don’t have to share anything that would make Timothy and Rebekah believe they were somehow to blame. Give them the short version. Jeremiah was your first child. When he was five, he fell from the cliffs and died. That’s all they need to know.”

She looked away, pressing her lips tightly together, and he could have kicked himself. A grieving woman needed comfort, and he’d offered another lecture instead.

Thinking back to eighth grade, he remembered hating the hollow expressions of sympathy people had given him when his mother died. Some claimed to know how he felt. Some had the gall to say all things worked together for good, and God wouldn’t have allowed it to happen if it hadn’t been for the best.

Wiser souls, though, had the wisdom to make one short, truthful statement, wrapped in heartfelt sympathy, and then shut up. His favorite teacher, Mrs. Hurst, was one of them. She’d known what to say. It was so simple, and he’d loved her for it.

That lock of hair had fallen across Miranda’s face again. He brushed it back and tucked it behind her ear. Putting his whole heart into the words, he repeated in its entirety what Mrs. Hurst had said to him.

“I’m so sorry.”

Those simple words opened the curtains that hid Miranda’s heart. She gave him the tearful version of her Princess Diana smile and dropped her head to his shoulder. He cupped her cheek with his hand as if she were a weeping child, and like a child, she wet his shirt with her tears.

It must have been two or three in the morning. Miranda didn’t want to know.

Jack paced the porch, smoking one of his smelly cigars, and she was alone. Although her feet were planted on the rug in front of the wood stove, she felt lost. Disoriented. Like a tourist in a foreign land who didn’t know the language or the laws. Or maybe there were no laws.

She only knew she was done with Mason’s church. Done with obeying his rules.

She wasn’t sure she knew who she was though, apart from the church. Already, she’d been nobody’s daughter, nobody’s wife; now, she was nobody’s disciple.

No, that was wrong. She wished Jesus were there in the flesh though, to stand between her and Mason. And to reassure her He was real. Sometimes, she just didn’t know anymore. All those things she’d told Jack about seeing Jesus in him and in Yvonne? They’d sounded good at the time, but now nothing felt good or solid or real.

The children had been asleep for hours. Still, Miranda tiptoed to the bookshelves as if someone might be listening.

She pulled Carl’s books and pamphlets off the top shelf. They were thin. They didn’t look dangerous.

She stood still, chasing elusive memories, tracing out the maze of the past. They’d meant well, both of them, but they’d gone so far wrong that some things couldn’t be mended.

“Oh, Carl,” she said. “You did the best you could. I did too.”