When Sparrows Fall by Meg Moseley Read Free Book Online Page A

know, hon. I’m working nights.”
    “Yeah, you had a visitor.” A woman spoke from the other side of the divider. “A man. Dark hair. Good-lookin’.”
    Jack? She hadn’t dreamed him. He had the children, then?
    He would think she deserved to lose them. A good mother wouldn’t have left her children alone in the house. Not even for a prayer walk. But what had she been praying about?
    She moved her head too quickly and cried out. The room spiraled, pressing in on her.
    The nurse hovered near. “You have a button to push for your meds, whenever you need more.” Warm fingers took Miranda’s hand and guided it toward the side of the bed, then curled it around something cold and hard. “Like this, see? There, now. You’ll feel better soon.” The nurse lowered Miranda’s hand to the bed.
    Lying motionless, she tried to think. Everything was fuzzy. And growing fuzzier. Now her bed was a boat, tilting and circling in a giant whirlpool. Nearly going under.
    She was thankful for the numbness creeping up on her. But she mustn’t rely on pharmakeia . It was a false peace. It wasn’t peace at all.
    Too late. The whirlpool spun faster, sucked her in, and spat her up in Abigail’s living room. Nicole was there, her dark eyes shining. She held a folded red sweater to her chest.
    That’s Abigail’s sweater! Miranda snatched it and ran.
    You Jezebel , Carl scolded. Now you’re a thief too .
    You’re dead , she told him. Be quiet. I don’t have to obey you anymore .
    He faded away. She was drowning in the black hole again, trying to catch her babies in the cuddle-quilt as they fell from the sky. One … two … three.…
    They fell from heaven, dodged earth, and raced through a lower sky toward hell. Something choked her scream into a weak bleat that traveled no further than her prayers.

    Jack stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing his face awake. “O, I have passed a miserable night, so full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, that, as I am a Christian faithful man …”
    It was annoying, sometimes, the way his mind spouted Shakespeare at random moments.
    Something about sliding between Miranda’s flowery sheets hadn’t set right with him, and he’d hardly slept. He’d kept imagining how his life might have changed if her fall had killed her.
    One thing was certain. If anything ever happened to her now, he couldn’t put the children in foster care. Martha? Jonah? Unthinkable.
    He couldn’t raise six orphans either.
    Jack looked out the window at a dormant vegetable garden and an arborhung with brown, bare grapevines. Farther away, fog softened the outline of a wooden swing hanging from an oak that still bore last year’s caramel brown leaves. Three smaller oaks stood deeper in the fog. One broken limb hung straight down like a body at the end of a rope.
    It was only Tuesday. Too early in the week for morbid thoughts. He turned away from the window.
    Thankful that the local Kroger stocked everything necessary for the perfect cup of coffee, Jack poured beans just past the four-cup line in his brand-new grinder and hit the switch. An explosive racket shattered the quiet. Quickly, he lifted his finger from the switch.
    No sounds of life came from upstairs. Thank God. He didn’t need half a dozen rug rats underfoot when he was hardly awake. But he couldn’t wake up without coffee.
    He toyed with the desperate idea of pulverizing the beans with the marble mortar and pestle on the windowsill, then recognized the insanity of that notion. Grimacing at the noise, he hit the switch again. Nobody stirred, but he’d better start grinding the beans the night before.
    While the coffee brewed in his new, no-frills coffee maker, he took a closer look at Miranda’s domain. The kitchen held a king-size fridge and a modern electric range. Sunshine, filtered through fog, sneaked into the room over plain white curtains that covered only the bottom half of the window.
    The walls were warm, knot-holed planks, and her decorating