Not a Sparrow Falls by Linda Nichols Read Free Book Online Page A

change, or Anna’s death.
    “Lower your voice,” Winifred cautioned, ending the argument with her word conveniently last. “Alasdair’s study is just upstairs, and you know how noise carries through the heating vents.”
    Fiona gave a slight nod, rinsed her hands at the sink, and dried them on a paper towel. “Well, regardless,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s time some permanent arrangements were made in regard to his household. I don’t know what stops him. He carries on well enough in other areas.”
    It was true, Lorna thought as she opened the refrigerator and made room for this week’s meals. In fact, no one but her seemed to think there was anything amiss with Alasdair at all. Even his reactions in the days just after Anna’s death had seemed exemplary, the model of how a Christian should face tragedy. She hadn’t been there when the police had come with news of the accident. By the time she’d arrived, Alasdair was returning from having identified the body. Even then he’d been in control. It was she who had collapsed. Even Fiona and Winifred, who had never been particularly close to Anna, had been stunned into weeks of tearful silence. Alasdair alone had displayed the proper mix of sadness and faith, unlike her own anguish or Samantha’s wild anger.
    She remembered crying out to God when her brother had told her. “Why?” she had wailed. “Why?” It had actually been a prayer, but Alasdair had taken it upon himself to answer her.
    “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” he haddemanded. The words were correct, but the hoarseness of his voice and the darkening of his eyes had told the truth.
    Alasdair had made all the decisions during that horrible time, asking his sisters for help only in caring for the children. He had arranged matters without consultation, opting for a private interment instead of a service. He’d dispatched the flowers to local nursing homes and hospitals and had his secretary field condolence calls and send thank-you notes for the ever present casseroles. Yes, in the matter of Anna’s death Alasdair had performed as efficiently as he’d always done in all areas of life. As was his habit, he had surveyed the situation and met its requirements. She only wondered what the effort had cost him.
    She stopped her shuffling of plasticware, shocked at what she was feeling toward her brother. Irritation. No, anger. A surge of shame engulfed it. Alasdair had been through a horrendous ordeal—losing the wife he’d loved, then trying to deal with the newborn twins and the eleven-year-old daughter she’d left behind. Everyone dealt with grief in his or her own way, she remembered, paraphrasing what the associate pastor had told her when she’d confided her concerns.
    Alasdair would someday be himself again, and for a moment the person he had been flashed across the screen of her memory. She remembered him as a boy, kindhearted to a fault and passionate in his defense of the underdog. The worst punishment he’d ever received had been for fighting at school, for defending her from perpetual teasing about her weight, a fact he had never divulged to Father and forbade her to reveal. “It doesn’t matter,” he’d told her, sparing her the humiliation of repeating the names they had called her.
    She remembered his intensity, his fire. He had loved with all his being and had given himself completely to whatever he did. She remembered watching him run, and oddly that image became the sum of all he had lost. His body had moved with such fluid ease, cutting through air like butter, feet and legsseeming to flow just above the surface of the earth instead of pounding onto it, his face a picture of joy and abandon.
    She thought about the man her brother had become and knew the truth, whether anyone else would acknowledge it or not. Something was wrong. Something was gone. Something precious had been lost. She felt a pang of sadness and hoped this new person