Not a Sparrow Falls by Linda Nichols Read Free Book Online

God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden,” she began.
    He detached himself from her words. His eyes drifted open, and her voice became background. He gazed around him at the sea of people. Their heads were tipped down, topped in varying shades and lengths of Anglo-Saxon hair. The prayer finished and their heads tipped back up, faces bland. Blank. Waiting to have something written on them.
    There was his daughter. She was beginning to look like Anna. She had that same porcelain fragility. She’d begun to act like her, as well. She sat aloof, alone, beside a knot of whispering girls. He watched her and felt something break loose within him, falling down, bouncing hollowly against the inside of his chest and abdomen as it rattled past. Another chunk. Another small piece of what used to be solid and firm, filling him up. He readjusted his body, as if that would bring his mind under control, and could hear his father reminding him that questions, though understandable, were not commendable.
    The prayer was over. The worship leader stepped down, her robes flowing around her as she moved. The choir rose again and began the hymn. “I Lay My Sins on Jesus.”
    The worship leader stood again, led the Confession, the Pardon, the Peace. That was the accepted order. First the confession. Then pardon and peace. He wondered what would happen if a clot of unbelief lodged itself in the channel of faith. If the movement through those places stopped. He knew the answer. There would be pain. Searing. Almost beyondimagination. Then a slow numbing—a deadly lack of feeling spreading through the body as living flesh blanched and died.
    He frowned again, coughed slightly into his fist. When had his mind become a highwayman, lying in wait to ambush him? Bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, he instructed himself.
    The congregation stood. They recited the Gloria Patri. They were seated. The lector read the Prayer for Illumination. The first reading was given. Then the second. Another hymn. The choir shut their books and moved off the dais smoothly, without so much as a dropped paper. He sat still for another moment, and gradually the movement around him stopped. Everyone readied themselves. Hymnbooks were put away, papers stuffed in pew boxes, skirts and jackets rearranged. A few coughs, the sound of a child whimpering and being stilled; then they were settled, quiet and ready. They all waited expectantly to receive some illumination, some insight, a reason to get up in the morning, to put one foot before the other, to draw the next breath. It was time for the sermon.
    He rose from his seat and made his way to the pulpit.
    ****
    “Overcoming Emotions That Destroy.” Lorna read the title of Alasdair’s sermon and felt a lurch of pain at the irony. She put the bulletin in the drawer beside the telephone in her brother’s house.
    “It has not been two years,” Fiona insisted with professorial finality as she put the lid on the plastic container.
    “It’s been at least two, if not longer,” Winifred corrected firmly. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”
    Winifred was right, but Lorna knew better than to interject. Even at thirty-five she was still the youngest, barely an adult in their minds. Her vote was hardly enough to tip the scales in a clash between the two elders. When Fiona and Winifred argued, it was like Zeus and Apollo doing battle, she thought, and immediately knew her father, rest his soul, would not haveapproved of the analogy. “Two heathen deities that should never cross the tongue of a Presbyterian,” she could almost hear him intone, and she immediately changed the analogy to Wesley and Calvin.
    Her brother was reminding her more and more of their father since Anna had died. More than two years ago, no matter what anyone said. She felt a stirring of unease and didn’t know which thought had brought it on—Father’s memory, her brother’s personality