When Sparrows Fall by Meg Moseley Read Free Book Online

smiled timidly. “I put fresh sheets on the bed for you.” Her eyebrows wobbled up and down. “Uncle Jack,” she finished, her cheeks turning pink.
    Her bashful use of the honorific—new to her, but sadly nostalgic to him—moved him. He hadn’t been an official uncle since his divorce cut him off, not only from Ava, but also from her sister’s kids, and it still hurt.
    “Thanks, Rebekah. I can sleep on the couch though. You didn’t have to—”
    “Oh, no. Take the bed,” she said, sounding like a grown hostess. “That’s what Mother would say.” She hurried away, shifting the laundry basket to her skinny hip.
    No doubt Miranda wouldn’t want him anywhere near her bed, but he checked out the room. The high four-poster was spread with an intricately pieced quilt in shades of blue and green. A stiff, symmetrical swag of dried flowers hung on the wall, flanked by three little needlepoint pictures on each side. The frames were lined up with an inch separating each one from its neighbor. Miranda seemed fond of regularity and order, or maybe that was Carl’s influence.
    Everywhere were family photos, some posed and some candid. Many of them were artsy black-and-whites with a photo-journalistic flair out of sync with the stiffness he saw elsewhere.
    Rebekah may have been right about having no relatives, because Jack saw no photos of anyone but Carl, Miranda, and the children, and there weren’t many of Miranda. She must have been the official family photographer, behind the camera more often than in front of it.
    Now her vintage Nikon was trash.
    Now a man she didn’t know had taken charge of her children.
    That explained the panic he’d seen in her eyes when she fought through the pain medication and connected with reality. Maybe she’d begun to question her crazy decision.
    She might question it even more once she woke in her right mind, or in whatever passed for a right mind in her strange world. A world where children didn’t use computers or read fiction. Where they didn’t even know Dr. Seuss.
    Tomorrow, Jack would enroll six young students in Normal American Life 101. He couldn’t stay long, but while he did, at least he could say he was homeschooling them.

four
    M iranda struggled out of a groggy sleep and recalled a man standing beside her bed. “It’s all right,” the stranger had said. “I’ll take care of the kids.”
    No, not quite a stranger. Jack. Unless she’d dreamed him.
    What was he doing in her bedroom?
    She fingered the bedding. It was wrong. A fuzzy blanket instead of her soft quilt and smooth sheets. And her hand hurt.
    Everything hurt.
    She fought to open her eyes. Her head drummed with a dull ache that was pierced by daggers when she made the slightest movement. She turned anyway and saw closed blinds on an unfamiliar wall. Everything kept spinning and thumping.
    She closed her eyes. The throbbing continued. Desperate to know where she was, she turned slowly in the other direction before she opened her eyes again.
    A pale blue curtain hung from the ceiling. A room divider.
    A hospital room. That antiseptic smell. That quiet bustling.
    Past hours came back in bits and pieces. Intense pain encasing her chest, her shoulder. Ice packs, bandages, IV lines.
    A move from one room to another. A nurse who hummed and a roommate who snored.
    A doctor who pried her eyelids open and mumbled at her.
    Something rustled. The room divider swayed. A thin woman in a green shirt loomed over the bed, out of focus, and fiddled with the IV bag.
    “You awake, hon?”
    “I … I think so.”
    The nurse smiled. “Maybe not, then. Do you remember what happened?”
    Miranda lay still, trying to sort memory from nightmare, and nightmare from dream. “I fell?”
    “You sure did. You’ve had a concussion, not to mention a collapsed lung and some broken ribs and a separated shoulder. Pretty impressive road rash too. Did you know that?”
    “Not … exactly. Did I have a visitor?”
    “I don’t