When Sparrows Fall Read Online Free PDF

the children unsupervised—or could he? This business of playing guardian was outside his frame of reference.
    He still didn’t understand why she’d named him to the position. Carl hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. Carl had even told him, through her politely worded note, to stop writing those letters, but Jack had never been good at following orders.
    He went inside. Jonah squatted near the wood stove’s warmth, singing nonsense to himself as he stacked brightly colored wooden blocks on the braided rug. Timothy and Rebekah were seated at the trestle table across the room. He kept his attention on his book, but she looked up, smiled, and laid down a quill pen. A genuine quill pen. She had a tiny glass inkwell and a blotter too. An assignment for her history studies, maybe, or the family lived in a time warp.
    “Will the younger ones be okay out there?” Jack asked her. “I have a bad feeling about mixing small children and tall cliffs.”
    “They’ll be fine. The rule is that nobody goes past the barn without an adult.”
    “And everybody obeys the rule?”
    Rebekah nodded.
    Jack eyed Timothy. The boy wouldn’t look at him.
    “Does your mom ever leave you two in charge?”
    “Yes,” Rebekah said. “Sometimes. For a couple of hours.”
    “If you don’t mind, then, I’ll run some errands once the boys and Martha come in. I didn’t bring a change of clothes or a toothbrush, and I need to pick up coffee and such.”
    Timothy lifted his gaze, barely. “Mother doesn’t allow caffeine in the house.”
    “Ah. But Uncle Jack requires it.” With effort, Jack kept his voice mild.
    “It’s all right, Timothy,” Rebekah said. “He doesn’t have to live by our rules.”
    Her brother’s lips moved with an unspoken comment.
    Jack approached the massive shelves that filled the wall behind the table. They held homeschool books. Hundreds of them. Taking his time, he scanned their spines.
    Judging by the titles, Miranda’s version of school was heavy on math, grammar, history, and nature study but light on hard science and fiction. She owned dozens of biographies of godly souls, several well-worn Bibles, and a handful of Bible commentaries, but no novels unless he counted The Pilgrim’s Progress .
    “Does your mom keep fiction on different shelves somewhere?”
    “No,” Timothy said.
    Jack took another look at the shelves. “Hold on, now. Y’all don’t read fiction?”
    “Fiction is unnecessary. Frivolous.”
    Boys that age didn’t usually go around using words like that. He must have been quoting somebody. His mother?
    Jack blew out a testy breath as rain started to patter against the windows. “The homeschoolers I’ve known would say good literature isn’t even remotely frivolous. Have you ever read To Kill a Mockingbird , for instance?”
    The kid kept his eyes on his textbook. “No.”
    “I’d be glad to bring you a copy.”
    “We don’t read novels.”
    Of all the narrow-minded, ridiculous.…
    “Does your mom approve of, say … Dr. Seuss?”
    “Who?” Rebekah asked.
    Jack put his hands on his hips. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
    Slowly, she shook her head. “What kind of doctor is he?”
    He shook his head too. “I don’t believe this.”
    The patter became a downpour, pelting the roof and windows. Michael and Gabriel raced inside, their hair darkened with rain. Martha followed, her chubby legs churning beneath her cape. She slammed the door and dumped adripping handful of pale violets on the floor, then pulled down her hood and fiddled with the fastener at her throat.
    “It’s a big storm,” she said with a grin. “I love big storms.”
    She spoke with exceptional clarity for her age. She was so bright, so interested in life—but she was deprived even of Seuss.
    She was also having a terrible time unfastening her old-fashioned garment. Were ordinary jackets taboo as well?
    Swallowing the caustic remarks stacking up on his tongue, Jack crouched before her. He