When Sparrows Fall (9 page)

Jack swallowed a comment about Carl’s grasp of basic science. “When you heat food in a pot on the stove, the molecules vibrate too.”

Rebekah studied him with light, luminous eyes. “Oh! I guess they do.”

He reminded himself that she was only ten.

And that her mother might forbid her to go to college.

By nine o’clock, the kids had finished chores and hauled out their schoolbooks. Jack soon concluded that their education was adequate in most ways, stellar in others, and sorely lacking in some respects. When Rebekah ran across a reference to Ebenezer Scrooge in an essay, she couldn’t grasp the gist of the paragraph because she’d never been exposed to Dickens.

At least Miranda didn’t require the busywork that public schools used as a means of crowd control. One point for her, but quiet, all-absorbing busywork would have come in handy. He couldn’t send the kids out to play in a rainstorm.

By ten, they had cabin fever. The rain came down without stopping, and so did Jonah’s tears. Sitting amid his blocks, he screamed in useless rage. Rebekah, usually so good at soothing toddler angst, teetered on the verge of a meltdown herself. The archangels bickered. Even Martha, the sunny one, found reasons to whine.

Only Timothy kept his mouth shut. Hunched over a grammar lesson, he clicked his pen, over and over.
Click. Click. Click
.

“Hush up, y’all,” Jack said quietly. Nobody paid him any mind.

Click. Click. Click
.

Martha abandoned her phonics workbook and opened the fridge. “Somebody drank all the orange juice,” she wailed. “I didn’t get any. Not
any.
” She segued into broken-hearted weeping that sent Jack into auditory overload.

Click. Click. Click-click-click-click-click
.

Jack slapped his own pen down on the table. “That settles it. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m taking y’all to Walmart.”

Martha silenced herself, midsob. Jonah stopped shrieking and wiped his wet cheeks with gooey fingers. All the kids gawked at Jack as if he’d announced a trip to France. And a guillotine.

“It’s Thursday,” Timothy said.
Click
. “A school day.”
Click
.

“Indeed, every day’s a school day. The world is our classroom. We’ll take a field trip.”

“There’s no Walmart in Slades Creek,” Rebekah pointed out, sensible as always.

Jack smiled at his astonished charges. “There’s one in Clayton.” And it carried clothing. Normal clothing. There was a thought.

Martha closed the fridge and sniffled. “Uncle Jack? Can we buy Frosted Flakes? Please?”

“Yes. And orange juice.” He turned to Rebekah. “And something easy for supper, because you do too much cooking for a girl your age.”

Click
. Timothy slapped his book shut. “Mother buys organic. She doesn’t want us eating junk,
Jack.”

“He’s
Uncle
Jack.” Martha stuck out her tongue at her brother. “And he’s nice. You’re not.”

“Now, now. Don’t be ugly.” Jack handed her a tissue, then tossed the box to Rebekah so she could deal with Jonah’s snotty countenance. “Blow your noses, you little ruffians, and let’s get this show on the road.”

Nobody argued. Not even Timothy. The children were so compliant and well organized that Jack was leading them to the van in only five minutes. Like the Pied Piper.

That story didn’t end well for the parents.

Walmart might as well have been Tiffany’s; the children, refugees from a third-world country. Dazzled, they stared at everything—and everyone—and their fellow shoppers stared back.

Jack shouldn’t have cared. He didn’t know anybody in their neck of the woods, so he shouldn’t have minded being seen in the company of two girls in elf capes and four polo-shirted boys who might have escaped from 1960.

There was a bit of gender discrimination afoot. The boys, in their store-bought jackets and jeans, blended in more easily than the girls did in their home-sewn dresses and voluminous capes. It hardly seemed fair.

Jonah sat in the seat of the cart while Michael and Gabriel pushed it, shoulder to shoulder. Martha clung to Jack’s hand, her cape sweeping the leg of his jeans with every step. Rebekah and Timothy followed a few paces behind. Jack sensed that they’d taken up the rear so they could keep him under surveillance.

So far, the cart held orange juice, three boxes of Frosted Flakes, bagged salad, and applesauce in individual plastic tubs. All Martha’s requests. Nobody else had asked for anything.

Questionable items lurked throughout the store. To Miranda, nearly everything might have been questionable. Jack wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she objected to frozen dinners on general principles. He herded his flock toward the freezer section, anyway, and contemplated smuggling a portable microwave into the house at some point.

But why should he have to smuggle it in? He’d be bold. He’d call it a science lesson.

“What do y’all like best?” he asked. “Lasagna? Pizza? Burritos?”

The resulting argument did his heart good. The kids had definite opinions.

After stocking up on freezer meals, then two gallons of milk for the Frosted Flakes, he tried to direct the children toward the checkout. Martha spotted the meager book department first. She drew in an awestruck breath and yanked his hand.

Jack let her tug him along. Her siblings followed and filled the aisle.

Martha spied the early readers. She dropped his hand and sat on the floor as if she were in a public library and about to commence reading for free, for as long as she pleased. She started with
The Cat in the Hat
, a classic beloved by generations of kids for its anti-adult propaganda.

On the other hand, Ava had said it taught her kindergarten classes that it
was okay to let a stranger into the house as long as they cleaned up the evidence before Mom came home. What Mom didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.

What Miranda didn’t know.… When she came home, though, she would know.

Jack tugged the book out of Martha’s surprisingly strong fingers and replaced it with
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
. “This one’s better,” he said, hating himself for being a censor like Miranda.

Martha started to argue, but the colorful fish snagged her attention. He replaced the first Seuss book on the shelf, above her eye level lest she be tempted again.

Rebekah had picked up a historical romance. The cover art depicted a buxom, satin-clad lass who appeared to be fainting in the arms of a lusty highlander.

Jack swiped the romance and replaced it on the rack, upside down and backward. “Why don’t you try …” The cookbooks saved him. “This!” He planted a Mexican cookbook in Rebekah’s hands.

He checked on the boys. Thank God, they’d gravitated toward the outdoor magazines that featured hunting, fishing, and other wholesome, manly activities.

“Look, Uncle Jack.” Martha jumped up, holding the Disney version of Cinderella. “What’s this one about? I want it. Please?”

“Sweetie, I can’t buy you every book you haven’t read. You need to have your own library card and pick your own books. A library card, that’s the best little piece of plastic you’ll ever own.”

With a sigh, she settled on the floor again, her cape pooling around her, and leafed through the book. Fiction, not to mention magic. Miranda wouldn’t have approved.

A teenage girl entered the aisle and gave Jack a bold once-over. Her hair was an unnatural black, and the same morbid color clothed her from head to shiny boots. As well endowed as the lass on the paperback, she bore a rose tattoo above her left breast, a ring in her lower lip and a spiked dog collar around
her throat. Jack was accustomed to seeing such styles, but he could only imagine how Miranda would react if her kids gave her a report.

The teenager stepped around Martha, then stared at Rebekah. And back to Martha, with a sneer.

Jack tried to see his nieces as a stranger would: braids, matching jumpers, and old-fashioned capes. All three young ladies attracted attention, but in the Goth girl’s case, it was by her own choice. Not by her mother’s.

Rebekah straightened her shoulders and met the teenager’s sable-rimmed eyes. Martha also examined her. And wrinkled up her nose. The little Pharisee.

Smelling of cigarettes, the girl in black brushed against Jack’s shoulder as she walked past. “Some people don’t know what century they’re livin’ in,” she said under her breath but no doubt intending to be heard.

“Forsooth, fair damsel, good manners yet remain in style,” he said, earning a snort from the girl as she turned the corner.

“She was staring at us,” Martha said, loud and clear. “I hate it when people stare at us.”

He seized his chance. “Martha, Rebekah, you want to pick out some jeans? People wouldn’t stare if you wore—”

“No, thank you,” Rebekah said. “Mother wouldn’t like it.” She returned the cookbook to the shelf and took charge of the shopping cart with Jonah still fidgeting in it. “We’re leaving. Martha, put the book back. Timothy, round up the boys. Let’s go.”

Now Rebekah was the Pied Piper. Martha held on to the side of the cart and trotted to keep up with her sister’s longer stride. Timothy and the archangels followed them to the nearest checkout. Jack trailed behind, put in his place by a ten-year-old who might as well have been leading all of them back to prison.

“Anybody hungry?” he asked. “There’s a McDonald’s, right here in the store. Let’s hit it.”

Rebekah paused in the unloading of the orange juice to look him right in the eye. “No, thank you. Mother wouldn’t like it.”

“No, she wouldn’t.” Jack descended into gloom, though he didn’t even like McDonald’s.

Freedom. That was what he liked. What he wanted for the kids.

Martha craned her neck for one last glimpse of the bookshelves, like Eve longing for her lost garden. Jonah, seated in the cart, tried to reach the gum and candy rack, while Michael and Gabriel foiled his efforts.

Timothy stood apart, his hands in his pockets, and scowled at the groceries as they traveled the short conveyer. He wanted to protect his family, yet he hungered for a wider world at the same time. All of them did, or they wouldn’t have latched on to those books and magazines.

Mother wouldn’t like it
.

Jack was starting to see what he was up against. Miranda had every right to raise her children as she saw fit. They were hers. He was only the uncle with no rights in the matter.

But rights or no rights, he had to do something.

His phone vibrated. He answered, making no effort to disguise his testy mood.

“Jack? Where are you? Why aren’t you answering the phone?”

“I just did, Miranda.”

His phone beeped a warning. It was on its last breath of battery power.

“I meant the house phone,” she said.

“I am not at the house.”

“Where are you? I’ve been trying—reach you.” The dying phone cut in and out. “The doctors—tests look good—discharging me today.”

“Glad to hear it. I’ll run the kids home, and then I’ll pick you up.”

The phone made its last-chance beep.

“I … wh … but … er … 
are
you?”

“Walmart. Those all-American purveyors of dangerous books and frozen pizzas.”

No reaction from Miranda.

He checked the screen. Dark. Dead.

Pretending the phone hadn’t expired, he returned it to his ear. “I’m bustin’ some kids out of prison,” he said into the useless instrument. “And hang on to your hat, Mrs. H., because you’re next.”

An aide had put Miranda’s hair in a French braid so loosely that it was already a mess. At least she had clean clothes to wear and her spare cape. Jack must have brought them on an earlier visit, when she was sleeping.

She’d called the house again, and Timothy assured her they’d come home safely. Jack was on his way. Too edgy to sit still, she hauled herself out of the bedside chair and hobbled to the window. Her head throbbed and her vision swirled. She ached all over, and her ribs stabbed her with every breath, but she was done with narcotics. She needed to be alert. In control.

Still resenting the sling that supported her right arm, she braced herself against the windowsill with her good hand and looked out on the rainy day. She was on the second floor with a view of a narrow, brown lawn, the visitors’ parking lot, and a short stretch of Lee Street. A truck rumbled past, sending sheets of rainwater splashing over the curb, but the hospital’s thick walls muffled the sounds of the outside world.