by Meg Moseley
An eight-by-ten photo of the kids hung above the pegs, and Jack counted six blond heads. He didn’t know why he’d hoped for a lesser number; Timothy knew how many siblings he had. There were two girls, a little one and a big one, in matching dresses. Four boys in blue polo shirts. The smallest boy looked young enough to be in diapers.
A thud shook the wide-beamed ceiling. Feet thumped across a room upstairs, and young voices rose in a muffled argument. Someone else murmured something. The hubbub subsided and a faint tootling began. A recorder, perhaps.
Jack abandoned his study of the photo. “May I see the letter she left for Timothy?”
“Sure, but it looks legit. It’s her penmanship. I found the same writing all through the kitchen, on recipe cards and lesson plans.”
“Lesson plans?”
“For homeschool.” The deputy led the way toward the table.
Jack followed, keeping his thoughts to himself. He gave grudging respect to parents who did the job right, for the right reasons, but he hadn’t much patience with homeschoolers whose driving force was fear of the modern world. From the little he knew of Carl, it was easy to believe the man’s family would have been on the radical fringe of the movement.
The table held a sheet of paper, a blue teacup filled with lavender violets, and a litter of construction-paper valentines in all sizes and all the wrong colors. The wrong colors, nearly the wrong month; it was disorienting, like seeing purple shamrocks at Halloween.
Jack picked up the letter. Written in the perfectly proportioned italics that he remembered from the two notes he’d received from Miranda, it read exactly as Timothy had given it over the phone, except it concluded with: You have always been a good son. I’m counting on you, Timothy. All my love, Mother. The boy hadn’t read that part aloud.
She’d signed and dated the letter two weeks earlier. At the bottom of the sheet, she’d included Jack’s full name, address, and cell phone number. All the information was current. He was somewhat suspicious of the timing but attributed his qualms to his overactive imagination.
“I wonder if this is official enough to put me in charge while she’s out of commission,” he said.
“It’ll do for now, while you try to round up her lawyer. That’d be better than bringing in the DFCS folks. Department of Family and Children Services, that is. Once they jump in, it’s hard to pull ’em off again.”
“Do you happen to know the name of her attorney?”
“No, but if it’s somebody in Slades Creek, it won’t take long to track him down.” The deputy hitched up his trousers. “You’ll stay with the kids, then?”
“Of course, but for how long? I called in to work to explain that I have a family emergency, but I’ll need to be more specific when I call back.”
“Where do you work?”
“Chattanooga. It’d be a bit of a commute.” Jack handed over his second card of the morning.
“My, my. A genuine PhD? We don’t have many of those in these parts.”
“We’re pretty useless, most of us.”
The deputy smiled. Then, sobering, he peered in all directions. “You could make yourself useful here,” he said in a low voice. “Because I suspect Mrs. Hanford will need help for quite some time. It was a long, hard fall.”
“Any idea how it happened? And who found her?”
“Timothy found her. We ran down there right after we got the call, and she had a big ol’ camera hanging around her neck. Maybe she was setting up a shot and didn’t realize she was so close to the edge. She—”
Shoes clattered down the stairs. A freckled scamp flew around the corner and came up short. Eight or nine years old, he had the air of having been interrupted in some kind of mischief.
“Hey, there,” Jack said with a modicum of hope. Maybe they weren’t all like Timothy.
“Hi.” The boy jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and inspected Jack with frank but friendly curiosity.
Then came another kid. And another and another, until five fair-haired siblings had gathered at the foot of the stairs. Jack sought a resemblance to his late father, their grandpa, and found bright blue eyes and square chins. A surge of satisfaction hit, like the rush of fitting the last pieces into a jigsaw puzzle, but it lasted only until Timothy brought up the rear, unsmiling.
The deputy moved toward the door. “Anything you need from me?”
“Not right now. Not that I can think of, anyway.”
“Good man. It’ll all work out.”
“Yeah.”
The deputy gave the children a grave smile and a tip of his hat. As the door closed behind him, six pairs of eyes examined Jack.
“Guess I’d better introduce myself. I’m your Uncle Jack. Your dad’s half brother. I don’t know how much you know about the situation, but—” He stopped, loath to mention Miranda’s will or anything else that smacked of death. “Your mom asked me to take care of y’all until she’s better.”
Nobody spoke, but somebody sniffled. He couldn’t tell which one.
“Let’s start with names and ages. Timothy, looks like you’re the oldest. How old are you?”
“Twelve.” He bit off the word as if he begrudged the bit of breath required to speak it.
“Who’s next?” Jack asked.
“Me,” said the older of the two girls. “I’m Rebekah.” Her hands clamped down on the shoulders of the freckled scamp in a grip that he wouldn’t easily escape. “I’m ten.”
“You’ve grown a bit since last time I saw you, Rebekah.” Jack moved his attention to her captive. “Next? Name, rank, and serial number, sir.”
The boy smiled—the first one to smile. “I’m Michael. I’m eight. I ain’t got no rank or serial number.”
A smaller boy, not as freckled, gave Jack a gap-toothed grin. “I’m Gabriel. I’m six.”
Two smiles and counting.
“And this is Martha.” Rebekah released Michael and tugged a round-faced little girl into the limelight.
Martha was a small replica of her big sister. They both wore white T-shirts under long denim jumpers. Clunky shoes. Blond braids. The girls were miniature earth mothers.
“I’m four.” Martha held up four chubby fingers. “And I’m learning my phonics.” She spoke precisely, as if she delighted in pronouncing each syllable exactly right.
“Good girl. Phonics, that’s the only way to go.”
Her dimples blossomed. “Yes sir.”
The youngest was a curly haired toddler. He studied Jack with calm disinterest, then dug in his pocket and pulled out a chunk of granite, glinting with mica. He displayed it on the flat of his hand for everyone to see but didn’t say a word.
“That’s Jonah,” Rebekah said. “He’s almost two.”
Born shortly after his father’s death, then. A come-after child.
The ages were easy to remember—two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve—but the names wouldn’t be so easy. They were all Bible names. Somber saints and mischievous angels. It would take a while to remember which freckled archangel was Michael and which one was Gabriel.
“Is that last one potty-trained?” Jack asked. “Noah, is it?”
“Jonah,” Rebekah corrected. “Yes sir, he’s potty-trained. Mostly.”
“Mostly.” Jack jingled the coins in his pocket. “Okay, here’s the deal. If y’all can show me how your mom runs the household, I’ll help out the best I can. Sound good?”
No one answered out loud, but almost everyone nodded. Even the youngest, who was busy scratching his granite chunk with a grubby thumbnail. Timothy, however, stood motionless, his face a blank. Maybe he was reliving the moment he’d spotted his mom crumpled on the jagged rocks beside the shallow creek.
Years before, Jack had gone icefishing on a northern lake, impossibly clear and deep. Out on the glassy slab, nothing but a few inches of ice had separated him from drowning. Something about Timothy recalled that threat of a sudden fall into deadly waters.
Jack told himself to get a grip.<
br />
He crouched, lowering himself to Martha’s level, the hem of his raincoat settling damply on the wide planks. “We’ll make it through, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.”
Martha’s eyes went round, looking oversized in her little face. “Which creek?”
He smiled. A literalist. “Any creek you want, sugar.”
“The one my mama drowned in?”
“She didn’t drown, sweetheart. She had a real hard fall, but the doctors will take good care of her. We’ll keep praying that she’ll be fine.”
Martha leaned closer. “Maya isn’t,” she said in a confidential tone. “Maya fell. And died.”
“Who’s Maya?”
Her long-lashed, crystal blue eyes widened further. “I don’t know. Timothy knows.”
Jack sought Timothy in the crowd of kids. “Who’s Maya?”
“I don’t know anybody named Maya,” he said.
Rebekah laughed softly. “A pretend friend.”
Martha was the right age for it, but imaginary friends weren’t supposed to die. They were supposed to be cast off like outgrown clothes.
Still crouched beside her, Jack looked up at the boys in the middle, trying to remember which archangel was which, then over at the littlest guy. Noah. No, it was Jonah. The big fish, not the big boat.
Timothy brushed past Jack and walked outside without another word.
three
Jack spent a solid hour on the front steps with his phone to his ear. Thank God, he could find a signal. He hadn’t accomplished much though, besides irritating Farnsworth back in Chattanooga. She was skeptical of his story about being saddled with six kids.
He told her that if he barely had enough time to teach fiction, he certainly didn’t have time to concoct it. She was not amused.
He closed his phone and wished Miranda’s cupboards held coffee. He’d checked, and she was completely out.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen a coffee maker.
Behind him, their voices muffled by the closed door, the kids bickered and laughed. Except for the slight undercurrent of worry, all was well. Timothy had come back from wherever he’d been, and under his and Rebekah’s competent supervision, the younger ones had tackled their chores and a smattering of schoolwork.
At some point, Jack needed to run back to ’Nooga, grab a few of his things, and check in at work, but he couldn’t tell Farnsworth how long he’d have to play baby-sitter. The hospital was being stingy with information about Miranda. He might have to show up in person and prove he was kin before he could pry a prognosis out of somebody.
Locating her attorney was his second priority. He had questions.
Across the driveway, the wind ruffled pale grass on the hillside. A small patch of darker, taller grass lay on the slope like a bruise on a face, and a gray sky brooded over it all, threatening rain. At nearly noon, it was still cold outside but the chill wasn’t a bad trade-off for a piece of solitude.
He jumped as the front door banged open and shut. Michael and Gabriel raced outside so fast that they might as well have had wings.
“Boys,” he hollered to their backs. “Don’t go far. Stay away from the cliffs.”
“Yes sir,” the archangels answered as one. They vanished around the corner of the house without slowing.
Jack took a moment to sort them out. Michael was the older of the two. Sturdy, freckled, and a bit resistant to schoolwork. Gabriel, six years old, had fewer freckles. He was thin, restless, full of energy.
Martha trotted outside, wearing a hooded gray cape over her long denim dress. Jack half expected to see elf slippers with curled-up toes, but she still wore those clunky clodhoppers.
“What are you up to, Miss Martha?”
“Picking violets.” She hopped down the steps, making a racket.
“Don’t go far. Don’t go anywhere near the cliffs.”
“Yes sir.” She ran in the direction the boys took, her elf cape billowing after her.
Jack hoped the kids weren’t as accident-prone as their parents, with a predilection for falling from high places. Their dad from the roof, and now their mom from the cliffs.
He shook his head, and it gave him a throbbing reminder of his caffeine deficiency. Miranda’s kitchen didn’t even stock real tea. He could hunt down whatever passed for a Starbucks in Slades Creek, except he couldn’t leave the children unsupervised—or could he? This business of playing guardian was outside his frame of reference.
He still didn’t understand why she’d named him to the position. Carl hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. Carl had even told him, through her politely worded note, to stop writing those letters, but Jack had never been good at following orders.
He went inside. Jonah squatted near the wood stove’s warmth, singing nonsense to himself as he stacked brightly colored wooden blocks on the braided rug. Timothy and Rebekah were seated at the trestle table across the room. He kept his attention on his book, but she looked up, smiled, and laid down a quill pen. A genuine quill pen. She had a tiny glass inkwell and a blotter too. An assignment for her history studies, maybe, or the family lived in a time warp.
“Will the younger ones be okay out there?” Jack asked her. “I have a bad feeling about mixing small children and tall cliffs.”
“They’ll be fine. The rule is that nobody goes past the barn without an adult.”
“And everybody obeys the rule?”
Rebekah nodded.
Jack eyed Timothy. The boy wouldn’t look at him.
“Does your mom ever leave you two in charge?”
“Yes,” Rebekah said. “Sometimes. For a couple of hours.”
“If you don’t mind, then, I’ll run some errands once the boys and Martha come in. I didn’t bring a change of clothes or a toothbrush, and I need to pick up coffee and such.”
Timothy lifted his gaze, barely. “Mother doesn’t allow caffeine in the house.”
“Ah. But Uncle Jack requires it.” With effort, Jack kept his voice mild.
“It’s all right, Timothy,” Rebekah said. “He doesn’t have to live by our rules.”
Her brother’s lips moved with an unspoken comment.
Jack approached the massive shelves that filled the wall behind the table. They held homeschool books. Hundreds of them. Taking his time, he scanned their spines.
Judging by the titles, Miranda’s version of school was heavy on math, grammar, history, and nature study but light on hard science and fiction. She owned dozens of biographies of godly souls, several well-worn Bibles, and a handful of Bible commentaries, but no novels unless he counted The Pilgrim’s Progress.
“Does your mom keep fiction on different shelves somewhere?”
“No,” Timothy said.
Jack took another look at the shelves. “Hold on, now. Y’all don’t read fiction?”
“Fiction is unnecessary. Frivolous.”
Boys that age didn’t usually go around using words like that. He must have been quoting somebody. His mother?
Jack blew out a testy breath as rain started to patter against the windows. “The homeschoolers I’ve known would say good literature isn’t even remotely frivolous. Have you ever read To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance?”
The kid kept his eyes on his textbook. “No.”
“I’d be glad to bring you a copy.”
“We don’t read novels.”
Of all the narrow-minded, ridiculous.…
“Does your mom approve of, say … Dr. Seuss?”
“Who?” Rebekah asked.
Jack put his hands on his hips. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “What kind of doctor is he?”
He shook his head too. “I don’t believe this.”
The patter became a downpour, pelting the roof and windows. Michael and Gabriel raced inside, their hair darkened with rain. Martha followed, her chubby legs churning beneath her cape. She slammed the door and dumped a dripping handful of pale violets on the f
loor, then pulled down her hood and fiddled with the fastener at her throat.
“It’s a big storm,” she said with a grin. “I love big storms.”
She spoke with exceptional clarity for her age. She was so bright, so interested in life—but she was deprived even of Seuss.
She was also having a terrible time unfastening her old-fashioned garment. Were ordinary jackets taboo as well?
Swallowing the caustic remarks stacking up on his tongue, Jack crouched before her. He 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.”
