When Sparrows Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

conquered the loop-and-hook contraption that was bedeviling her, lifted the rain-speckled cape from her shoulders, and hung it up. He took his rumpled raincoat from a neighboring peg and shrugged his arms into the sleeves.
    “Does anybody need anything from town?”
    “Town?” Martha spoke the word with reverence, as if tiny Slades Creek were a magical destination. Then she squatted to gather her flowers. “No, thank you.” With violets in both hands, she ran to Rebekah. “I want the tiny teacup today. The green one.”
    “Please?” her sister prompted.
    “Please.”
    Neither Rebekah nor Timothy asked for anything from town either. She was already pulling a bright green teacup out of a cupboard; he was glaring at his book. Whatever it was, the book was certainly not frivolous.
    About to spout off, Jack examined another family portrait on the wall. This one included the parents, when Martha was the baby of the family. Carl, a blond giant in suit and tie, looked like a paragon of respectability. That day on the porch, though, he’d been a boor.
    Miranda had given the camera a shy and beguiling smile, her head down and eyes slanted upward in a pose reminiscent of early photos of Princess Diana. But Miranda’s hair was atrocious, with long bangs forced into unlikely curls and a fat braid draped over her shoulder. No woman in her right mind would have volunteered for that hairstyle. Nor would a sane woman deprive her children of fiction and God only knew what else.
    “Way to go, lady,” he said under his breath. “Screw up your kids’ lives, then donate ’em to me.”
    But what a gift. He wouldn’t waste the opportunity.
    He’d better find the hospital and learn her prognosis. Then he would look for basic necessities. Coffee, a coffee maker, a change of clothes, and toiletries. For the kids, he would try to find a decent bookstore somewhere in the godforsaken hollow called Slades Creek, and the books themselves could do the rest.

    She floundered in a black sea of pain. Heavy fog weighed her down. Waves slapped her.
    Don’t make waves , somebody scolded.
    She flew to the edge of the cliffs. The wind flapped her cape like a bird’s wings. She was a starving bird, blown off course. Drifting between worlds, she floated past misty, spring green moss on rocks.
    She opened her eyes to a smooth white wall. Spinning, spinning, spinning, it never went anywhere but never held still. Closing her eyes, she saw mossy rocks again and muddy tree branches flying past—and heard footsteps—
    “Hey there, Miranda,” a man said.
    No, I’m Randi. Let me be Randi .
    “Good Lord, girl, you took quite a tumble.”
    She forced her leaden eyelids open and saw him, from the shoulders down. In a wrinkled raincoat, the man weaved back and forth, moving but not moving.
    Her eyes couldn’t take it. She closed them. The inside of her eyelids rotated in a lopsided swirl.
    He wasn’t Carl. Carl never wore raincoats.
    Carl was long gone. She remembered now. The chastisement of God. Her fault. So stubborn.
    The letters. The sugar bowl. Jezebel.
    She couldn’t move. Her limbs were shackled. Her mind was heavy, clogged with pain.
    “Miranda,” the stranger said.
    She dared another narrow peek at the spinning world. He still stood there, making that ceaseless, side-to-side motion.
    “Are you awake?” He leaned closer. Dark eyes, curly hair. “I’m Jack. I don’t know … but if you can …” His warm drawl drifted in and out, soothing her.
    Jack. She knew that name. He was … who was he? She couldn’t rouse her tongue to ask.
    They’d given her … pain meds, they’d called it. So innocent. But Mason said drugs were witchcraft. They would lure her into giving her soul over. Out of her control. She’d go off the rails again and—
    “Why did you name me as guardian?” the man asked. “You don’t even know.…”
    Guardian. Jack. Of course.
    She slipped into a dream, a memory, a long-ago day. Lemonade on the porch.