When Sparrows Fall (39 page)

Abigail frowned. “I suppose so.”

“But does he hang on to files from years ago? If he does, could you find mine? And Carl’s?”

“I don’t know. He has so many file cabinets, and I don’t know how they’re organized.”

“Could you look though? Please? Just open some drawers, take a quick peek?”

“If he caught me at it … Miranda, they’re confidential. I’ve never even wanted to look.”

“I’m not asking you to read anything. Just bring me anything with my name or Carl’s. Why would Mason need them anymore? Abigail, please.”

Abigail regarded her doubtfully. “All right. I’ll call if I find them, but there’s not much time left. Not many chances to call either. He’s always there, always listening.” She moved closer, lowering her voice. “Don’t share my plans with anybody until I’m on my way. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Thank you.” Abigail was still breathing hard.

The bag boy had rounded up half a dozen stray shopping carts. He pushed them past, their wheels rattling and shaking on the rough asphalt.

A louder rumble drowned out the racket of the carts. The pale blue flank of Mason’s truck crept forward, taking the empty parking spot beside Miranda.

Her fingers like ice, she dropped her keys. She stooped to pick them up, then straightened, turning her back on the truck.

She was torn. Part of her wanted to tell Mason she knew what he was doing. It was all about sex, money, and power, like Jack had guessed.

Part of her only wanted to run.

“Go,” Abigail said. “Or he’ll take it out on me.”

Miranda moved faster than she’d moved in weeks. By the time Mason climbed out of his truck, she was behind the wheel of her van. She started the engine, looking through the dirty windshield.

Abigail stood stolidly in her baggy dress and old-lady shoes. Mason hurried around his truck’s hood and stopped beside her, trim in his black trousers and white shirt. The wind ruffled his hair, softening his immaculate appearance and giving a glimpse of the handsome young man who’d married homely Abigail. She must have loved him so.

Miranda had once thought his eyes were a striking, silvery blue, but they were only the same faded shade as the peeling paint on his truck. His hold over her had weakened. He had no authority over her.

Yet he had all the power he needed. He knew about Jeremiah.

Moving closer, Mason held up his forefinger as if to ask her for a moment of her time.

She hit the gas. She would not give him one more moment of her life until Abigail was safely away.

The campus, nearly deserted on Good Friday, had been the perfect place for catching up on writing, research, and administrative paperwork. Jack could breathe easier again.

His mental energies had already shifted toward the weekend and a ramshackle log home rich with children. A domain ruled by a peasant-princess with dazzling blue eyes and heavy burdens.

He missed her. And the kids. Even Timothy. Miranda’s oldest boy had called with a question about a school assignment, and they’d progressed from awkward silences to a friendly argument about the necessity for book reports. Neither of them had mentioned the tension between Timothy and his mother.

“It’s quittin’ time,” Jack said, shuffling piles of papers on his desk.

An early escape meant hitting Slades Creek while he still had some daylight for pitching the tent. And he’d be so busy that the Friday night demons wouldn’t have a chance to catch his ear.

He gathered a batch of papers and stuffed them into his briefcase. Once he’d locked up, he strode toward the side exit.

“Jack!”

Farnsworth. Farther down the corridor, between Jack and the exit, she conversed with a custodian but held up one finger to tell Jack he’d better not run off.

He suppressed a groan but told himself to be patient. In five minutes, tops, he’d be out of Farnsworth’s clutches. On his way to Miranda.

He walked down the hall, remembering her curves in her jeans. How her waist felt in his hands. The downy blond hairs at the nape of her neck. The way her shoulders relaxed when he kneaded them with his fingers. Her shoulders were always so stiff.

Your shoulders are hard as bricks
, he’d told her once.

Life is hard as bricks
, she’d answered with a—

“Jack.”

“Uh—huh?” He’d almost walked right past Farnsworth.

Her eyes bored through the thick lenses of her black-rimmed glasses. She’d dismissed the custodian. “Are you catching up on your work?” she asked.

“I’m getting there.”

A short woman, she could still make a man feel she was looking down on him. “Last time I saw your desk, it was a disaster.”

“There’s always a backlog.”

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

“I know. Thank you.” He consulted his watch with exaggerated interest. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to hit the road.”

“I presume you’re going down to Georgia for the weekend.”

“Yes, I am.” His phone vibrated, and he checked it. Miranda’s number. One of the kids, probably; they called more often than she did. He let it go to voice mail. He’d call back once he’d ditched Farnsworth.

She dogged him down the hall, slowing his flight. “It seems you’re quite smitten with your hillbilly homeschoolers.”

“They’re not hillbillies. The six-year-old reads on the high school level. The eight-year-old has a flair for writing like you wouldn’t believe, if you can make him sit still. And the four-year-old …”

He patted his shirt pocket to hear the rustling of the blue paper heart. Miss Martha loved her Unkul Jack. It was one of the highest honors he could ever hope for. He might even consider finding work closer to Slades Creek. Closer to Miranda and the kids. Jobs were scarce, but so were good women, and it wasn’t as if he’d be giving up a position at Yale.

He’d be giving up Dr. Vera Farnsworth.

She snapped her fingers. “Jack! You’re drifting off. Acting like a teenager in love.”

“I’m in love with the whole family. Good night.” He broke into a run before she could think of some complication to throw in his path.

Outside, unlocking his car, he checked the sky. A storm had been threatening all day, but it kept backing off, changing its mind. With some luck, it wouldn’t hit Slades Creek, miles away.

The trunk and the backseat of his car were crammed with borrowed camping paraphernalia, sleeping bags, and an eight-man tent that smelled of old suns and old rains. In the trunk, he’d stashed some of his dad’s history books and the impulse buy for Miranda.

No, he couldn’t call it an impulse. He’d hovered over eBay for days, nervous as a cat until the prize was his.

He was only two miles from the turn for Slades Creek when he remembered the incoming call from Miranda’s number. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he put his phone to his ear and listened to the recorded message.

“Uncle Jack?” It was Martha, still timid about this new voice mail business. “Hi? Uncle Jack? Hurry up and come home.”

“I’m almost there, sweetie.” He wished she could hear him.

The recording continued. “Mama’s been crying a lot. She’s sad and she’s mad, but she won’t tell me why.” Martha sniffled. “Okay, bye.”

He stomped on the gas, trying to outrun his doubts about Martha’s mama. Those doubts mingled with memories of his own mama, who’d done most of her crying in private.

Eleanor Hanford hadn’t had a tender-hearted four-year-old to help her through. She’d only had a thirteen-year-old who’d let her down.

“God, help,” Jack said. It was a Friday. Good Friday.

Catching a glimpse of Miranda just around the first bend of the driveway, Jack made the engine growl through a downshift to grab her attention. She turned, holding a handful of mail. Her hair whipped by the wind, she put up her thumb to hitch a ride and gave him a smile that seemed artificially bright.

He braked beside her and reached over to open the door. “It’s a blustery day for hitchhiking, Mrs. H.”

“It’s a blustery day for anything, Dr. H.” She climbed in, the puffiness around her eyes confirming Martha’s message.

Still hanging on to his smile, he pounced, trying to lose himself in the warmth of Miranda’s embrace. She cradled his head in her hands and kissed him as fiercely as he was kissing her.

She drew back and studied him. “What’s wrong? The worry in your eyes … it worries me.”

“No, you’ve got this all backward, darlin’. I’m fine, but Martha tells me you’ve been crying. May I ask why?”

“When did you talk to Martha?”

“I didn’t, but she left a voice mail. Answer my question.”

“As you like to remind me, I’m recovering from a brain injury, and moodiness may be part of the package. Let me be moody, please.”

“There’s moody and then there’s moody. Martha said you were sad and mad but you wouldn’t tell her why.”

“I’m more mad than sad, and you’re making me madder.”

“Good,” he said. A woman with a lot of fight left in her wasn’t as much of a worry. “But who are you mad at, besides me?”

“None of your business. You’re not all sweetness and light either. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Baloney. If you’re going to use Martha’s gossip against me, I’ll use it against you. She told me you did something really, really bad, and that’s why you’re sad.”

“I am not—”

“In your eyeballs,” Miranda said, leaning closer. “She told me you’re sad in your eyeballs, and she’s right.”

He drew back, afraid she would try to poke his eye like her daughter had. “Everybody has something to be sad about sometimes. Everybody makes mistakes. Or call them sins.”

“Oh, no. You don’t mean.”

“Whatever you’re imagining, it’s wrong.”

Turning away from her penetrating stare, he flashed back … how many years? Forty minus thirteen. Twenty-seven years had passed since a nerdy kid walked through the door of his mother’s house with his books and clothes for the weekend.

Hey, Mom, I’m here. Where are you? Mom … Mom?

The blue parakeet, dead in its cage. The cat, frantic with hunger. The light left on in the bedroom.

The neighbor was the first to realize something terrible had happened. Mr. Olson dropped his garden hose and raced to the porch where Jack stood, screaming. The water ran endlessly to the street, into the gutter. Even after the cops came, the water kept running. That image was seared on Jack’s brain as clearly as the other. He still couldn’t see water swirling into a storm drain without remembering the rest.

Miranda touched his cheek. “Jack, tell me. Or did you do something so horrible that you can’t?”

“It wasn’t anything I did.”

A squirrel flounced across the driveway, tail waving like a flag, then scrambled up the trunk of a pine. A crow cawed, far away.

Miranda took Jack’s chin in her hand and tried to make him face her. “Why do you feel guilty then?”

“It was something I didn’t do.”

“What didn’t you do? Come on. I told you about Jeremiah. It’s your turn.”

True. She’d leaned against him and cried, that night beside the fire. She’d told him a tale that had ripped her heart in two. She’d earned the right to ask for his honesty.

“It’s nothing recent,” he said. “It was years ago.”

She moved her hand to his arm and squeezed it. “That doesn’t make it go away though. Who was involved in this situation, whatever it was?”

“My parents.” There was no retreating now. “They split up when I was
thirteen. I lived with my dad—he was the fun parent—and spent weekends with my mom. I’ve heard you say Timothy and I have a lot in common. Well, we each had a mother who needed help. But Tim did the right thing, the responsible thing. He got out of bed, early in the morning, and followed you to the cliffs because he worried about you. Me? I couldn’t be bothered to make one phone call for my mom’s sake.”

“Why? What happened?”

“She was all alone from Monday to Friday. Alone except for a cat and a parakeet. She took a wicked assortment of pills sometimes. Sleeping pills, anti-depressants. And she was careless about dosages.”

“No,” Miranda breathed.

“I showed up on a Friday night and found her lying across the bed. There were pill bottles on the nightstand.”

“Oh, Jack.”