A Nest of Sparrows

by Deborah Raney

  When the dresser was empty, Wade took the suitcase down the hall to Beau’s room and transferred his things from the smaller suitcase he’d packed last night. He refolded the messy clump of clothes along with the rest of the contents from his dresser, and placed them neatly beside the girls’ clothes in the large case. Somehow it made him feel better to have all their things together in one place.

  Though Frank Locke had assured him the agency had a foster home willing to take all three children, Wade still had a nagging fear that they would somehow be split up. It was hard enough to think of them being sent to live with strangers. If they shipped Beau off somewhere by himself––or, God forbid, one of the girls––Wade was afraid of what he might do. He’d promised Beau that everything would be all right, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to him. It was a promise he intended to keep.

  Wade heard Beau’s footsteps in the hall and looked up. Beau came and stood in the doorway, watching him pack.

  “Hi, buddy.”

  Beau eyed the empty dresser. “How come you’re packing everything? All of it?”

  “Well…I don’t know what all you might need.” Wade’s mind raced. He wished he’d thought to leave some of Beau’s clothes in the dresser. It would have been such a simple thing. Now Beau probably thought Wade was anxious to be rid of him.

  “There’s still some of your stuff in the laundry,” he said finally. “We’ll leave that here. It…it’ll be waiting for you when you come back.” He shouldn’t be planting seeds of hope where he couldn’t be sure a promise would bloom, but he couldn’t leave Beau wondering either. Don’t make a liar of me, Lord. Please…

  Wade put the lid of the suitcase down and started to zip it. He wished he could add his own clothes and pretend they were just going on a little trip together. Disneyland maybe. Or Six Flags. Why hadn’t he done those things with the kids? They’d missed so many opportunities over the past months––opportunities that might never come again.

  He pushed the thought away and motioned for Beau. “Hey, bud, come and help me, will you? This thing’s about to blow.”

  Beau didn’t laugh at his sorry attempt at humor. But he came and held down each corner while Wade tugged on the zippers. Silently, they worked their way around each side of the case until the zippers met in the middle.

  Wade picked up the heavy bag and set it by the door. Then, without a word, he pulled Beau into his arms. Beau returned the hug, wrapping his arms around Wade’s waist. They stood that way in the middle of the room saying a wordless good-bye.

  Finally, he pulled back and ruffled Beau’s wayward cowlick. “You better go brush your teeth, bud.”

  Wade went down the hall to the bathroom and cleared the kids’ toothbrushes and toiletries from the medicine cabinet. He helped them load their favorite toys into a large duffle bag, and the four of them went downstairs to wait.

  At exactly nine o’clock, Wade heard the crunch of gravel on the drive. The kids looked at one another, then at him.

  “Well…this is it,” he said. He stood and started for the door. Lacey and Danica followed him. He put a hand on the doorknob, then turned and knelt in front of the girls, motioning for Beau to join them. He didn’t want to say this last good-bye in front of strangers.

  Beau came reluctantly, and Wade enveloped the three of them in his arms. “I want to pray with you guys before you go.”

  They bowed their heads as one.

  Don’t let me break down, Lord. Keep my voice steady. He cleared his throat loudly and swallowed a bitter lump of sorrow. “Father, be with these kids wherever they go. Keep them close to you. Watch over them and keep them safe. I…I’m going to miss them, Lord. Please, Father, bring us back together soon…real soon. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  Lacey tucked herself tighter under Wade’s arm.

  The jangle of the doorbell pierced the air, and Wade rose to open the door. A suffocating summer wind sucked the cool air from the living room, seeming to take the air from his lungs with it.

  “Good morning,” Betty Graffe said cheerfully. The wind whipped her hair, revealing strands of gray. “It’s a hot one today, isn’t it?” She looked from Wade to the children and back. “Well. Is everyone ready?”

  Wade stood by helplessly as Ms. Graffe and another woman from SRS––someone the social worker introduced as a family support worker––packed the children’s belongings into the trunk of the county vehicle. The kids stood on the porch and watched.

  Wade pulled Betty Graffe aside. “Will you take them directly to the foster home?” he asked.

  “We’ll transport them to the agency, and they’ll go to the foster home from there.” She looked at him for a long moment. “They’ll be well taken care of, Mr. Sullivan. You don’t need to worry about them.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, children,” she said, “It’s time to go. Let’s get buckled up.”

  The family support worker took Dani by the hand and led her around to the other side of the car.

  Dani waved, seeming suddenly shy. “Bye, Wade.”

  He lifted a hand and pasted on a smile, unable to speak over the catch in his throat. An overwhelming sense of loss flooded him.

  Betty Graffe made sure Beau and Lacey were buckled in. Before she closed the door, she motioned for Wade.

  “If you’d like to say good-bye…”

  He came and knelt on the gravel beside the car, welcoming the pain as the sharp rocks cut into his knees. “I’ll see you guys soon. You be good, okay?”

  The girls nodded solemnly.

  “I love you Lacey Daisy. I love you Dani Banany. Beau, I love you, buddy.”

  Wade stood and Ms. Graffe started to close the door. Beau looked at his lap, then suddenly yanked off his seatbelt.

  He pushed the door open and tried to climb from the car. “I forgot to feed Shadow!” he yelled, panic in his voice.

  “Hey, hey…” Wade knelt beside the car again, refastening the buckle around his waist. He patted Beau’s knee. “It’s okay, buddy. I’ll feed her. You…you can take care of her when you come back, okay?”

  He looked at the three of them, lined up on the back seat of the car, and he knew he had to get out of there. He gave Beau’s leg one last pat and held up a hand in farewell, forcing a smile that felt obscene on his face. “I’ll see you guys in a few days, okay?”

  Wade closed the back door of the car carefully, and Betty Graffe went around and got behind the wheel. Beau put a hand on the window, and even behind the reflections in the glass, Wade could see the agony contorting the boy’s freckled face. He was grateful he couldn’t see the girls.

  The car pulled slowly around the narrow lane and headed down the driveway.

  Wade stood watching, his hand still raised in a feeble wave, until the car disappeared from sight.

  Then he slumped onto the porch steps and wept.

  Chapter 23

  Dee Thackery pulled into the Xaviers’ driveway, swinging wide to miss a tricycle that had been abandoned on the edge of the curb. She cut the engine and leaned over the back of the driver’s seat. She cleared a rumpled pile of papers off the backseat to make room for the three children she was picking up for a visitation.

  She was grateful Ben and Karen Xavier had reconsidered their decision to cut back on the number of kids they took in. She wasn’t sure she could have placed these children together, otherwise. It broke her heart whenever siblings had to be split up, especially when the kids were as sweet as these three angels.

  When Dee had phoned Karen earlier in the week, it sounded as if the adjustment was going well. After the challenges they’d faced with the last kids, Dee felt certain God had seen to it that Ben and Karen’s next experience was a good one. She’d breathed a heavy sigh of relief when she hung up the phone.

  She didn’t quite know what to expect of this morning. Often, the first visitation after children had been removed from a home took place at St. Joseph’s or on neutral territory. But Ben Xavier had mentioned that the
Parnell kids were really homesick, and they were especially lonesome for their dog, so she’d arranged to take them to the country house where they’d lived with their mother’s fiancé since her death a few months ago.

  Dee had supervised a visitation with the Parnell children’s birthfather just last Friday, and in spite of the fact he hadn’t been a part of the children’s lives for several years, she felt the visit had gone quite well. Though he had a distant history of drug use and spousal abuse, the father appeared to have changed. He seemed genuinely caring and conscientious. She admired the way he had taken it slow with the kids––especially the little girls. He had let them interact with him at their own pace and hadn’t tried to force anything.

  The fiancé had been reported to SRS for possible neglect, so the judge had ordered the children into the care of Child Protective Services, granting both men supervised visitation rights. Unfair though it was, she already had an idea in her mind of the kind of man who would fight Darrin Parnell for custody. She knew that image was mostly to blame for her nervousness about today’s visitation. She shook off the sudden memory of her stepfather.

  Steering her thoughts to the moment, Dee locked the car and went up the walk to the Xaviers’ front door.

  Karen answered the doorbell almost immediately. She welcomed Dee into the sunny foyer where the Parnell children were lined up on an antique church bench.

  “Hi, Karen. Thanks for having them ready.” Dee knelt slightly to the children’s eye level. “Good morning. Don’t you all look nice. Are you guys ready to go for a visit?

  “Are we gonna go home?” the littlest girl asked.

  Dee couldn’t tell if it was apprehension or eagerness that made her voice quaver. “Well, we’re going to go for a visit… Out to the farm where you used to live.”

  “We still live there,” the boy said, folding thin arms over his chest. “And it’s not a farm. It’s just in the country.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Dee said, flashing Karen a covert grin.

  “Everybody ready?” She held the door open as they filed out to the car. “Thanks, Karen. See you in an hour or two. I’ll make sure they have lunch before I bring them back. Hopefully the guy’ll feed them, but if not, we’ll hit McDonald’s on the way back.”

  She helped the children buckle up in the backseat, then went around and got behind the wheel. Glancing down at the directions she’d jotted down, she mumbled, “Let’s see…it’s off of Raphael Road. I think that’s west of town.”

  “Yeah, it’s west,” the boy piped up from behind her. “Six miles west on 37th Road. It’s 3303 37th Road.”

  “Thanks. Beau, isn’t it?” She knew the answer, had it on the papers on the seat beside her, but it was a good way to make conversation.

  “Yeah,” he grunted in reply, slumping lower in the seat.

  She caught the girls’ eyes in her rearview mirror. “Okay, I know one of you is Lacey, and one is Danica, but I get mixed up which is which?”

  “I’m Lacey,” the older sister said. “And she’s Dani.”

  Three miles past the Coyote city limits, Beau perked up. “It’s four more houses,” he told Dee, leaning across his sister to the center of the backseat to look through the bug-splattered windshield.

  His voice rose and he pointed to the left. “There! That’s it. Right up there. Better slow down. You’re gonna miss the turn. Everybody always misses the turn ’cause the trees hide our driveway comin’ from the west.”

  Dee hit the brake pedal and the wheels grinded on the gravel. She eased the car onto the long, curving drive. The traditional curved-top mailbox at the end of the lane bore the name Sullivan. She glanced in her rearview mirror again and saw the kids had loosened seatbelts and were all piled against the right rear window, practically atop one another. Beau had his nose pressed to the window, and the girls were shoving to see around him.

  “Look, you guys,” Beau said, “Wade took down the birdhouse.”

  “I wonder where Shadow is?” Dani said.

  “Wade probably tied her up so she wouldn’t knock her over.” Lacey hooked a thumb in Dee’s direction.

  “No, she’s probably huntin’ for birds down by the river,” Beau said.

  Dee stopped in front of the house and put the car in park. “Well…here we are.”

  Wade walked through the house for the hundredth time, straightening pictures on the wall, brushing invisible dust from the tabletops, and checking out the window to see if they were here yet.

  He’d never been so aware of the way his home might look to an outsider. Every dish was put away, the porcelain sinks sparkled, and the hardwood floors were spotless. He’d even plumped the pillows on the couch in the living room. It was something he’d always teased Starr about because she fluffed them five times a day, only to have them flattened again every time someone sat down, which was, after all, what couches were made for.

  The thought of Starr brought the usual quick smile and subsequent plunge into melancholy that it always did. And something new today: the stark realization that the reason his home looked so neat and tidy was the absence of her children. The life, the spirit of this house had gone with them, and right now, Wade would have traded the shiny surfaces and Pine-Sol scented air for all the dirty dishes and muddy floors and cluttered tabletops three kids could dish out.

  He brushed off the depression. His kids were coming today. He wanted to be upbeat for them, wanted this to be a good time together. But after two weeks, he missed them so badly his heart ached from the emptiness.

  Of course their visit would be supervised. What would it be like to have someone hovering over them, listening to every word they said, watching every expression of affection? He reminded himself that he needed to remain civil to the social worker who came with the kids. He couldn’t give them any reason to take away this one privilege he still had with his kids. Frank Locke had said that after today, he should get to see the kids every week until the hearing.

  They had not been able to get a date until the fall. It seemed unbelievable that a small Kansas county court could be so log-jammed they’d make a man wait weeks––maybe months––on end to get his children back.

  Darrin Parnell had been furious about that. He had gone back to Minneapolis temporarily, promising to bring back his fiancée––a fact that Frank Locke was none too happy about. “It would help if there was a mother figure in your life for the kids, Wade. I know you can’t just go out and buy a wife, but it’s something the judge will definitely consider. Maybe we can somehow make the aunt look like mother material?”

  When Wade pooh-poohed the idea, Locke had said, “Well, we need something, Wade. This bachelor father scenario isn’t going to fly.”

  Wade sensed his desperation. But he couldn’t make promises for Sophie.

  The crunch of tires on the gravel drive pulled Wade from his reverie.

  They were here.

  He looked toward the ceiling, noticing a cobweb he’d missed in a far corner. He closed his eyes. Oh, Father, please be with us today. Be with the kids. Help them to understand what’s happening. Don’t let me lose my temper or get emotional. Help us to make memories they won’t forget. Please, God…don’t let them forget me.

  It was a prayer he’d prayed a hundred times in the days since that SRS car had driven out of his driveway carrying his children, their faces pressed against the window. It was a selfish prayer. He knew that, but he didn’t care. Though it was a blessing, under the circumstances, it frightened Wade to remember that Lacey had no memory of the man she’d called Daddy for the first three years of her life. Even Beau, who’d been five when Starr fled from Darrin Parnell, had scant memories of his father. Would Dani forget Wade the same way? He couldn’t bear to think of it.

  He went into the living room and pulled back the curtain. A blue Ford Taurus stopped in front of the house, then pulled forward again and slowly drove around back. Wade could almost hear the kids telling the driver that nobody ever used the front door.


  Shadow barked down by the river. Out of habit, Wade started to head out the back door to assure the callers she was friendly. Then he heard the muffled sounds of the kids’ joyful greetings and the slam of car doors. Their laughter was the sweetest music he could imagine.

  The front doorbell rang. The kids must not have been able to persuade this social worker that it really was okay to use the back door.

  Walking through the living room, his heartbeat matched the staccato of his boots on the hardwood floor.

  He’d barely turned the knob when the door flew open.

  “Wade!” He was instantly bowled over by the three little people he loved more than life itself. They brought him to his knees––both physically and emotionally––and for a split second Wade was terrified he would collapse in a tearful heap on the floor beside them.

  Instead, a mantle of peace settled over him. He wrapped his arms around all three of them, memorizing the sweet fragrance of their hair and the exquisite softness of their skin.

  Finally, he pulled back and looked at them, one by one. “Hey, you guys! You’re looking good.”

  “That’s ’cause we all had to take a baff and wash our hair before we could come home,” Dani told him, hands on hips, head tipped charmingly to one side.

  Wade ruffled her bangs. “Well, you look good…and you smell good too.”

  She giggled.

  Wade didn’t miss her reference to “home.” He wondered if the kids understood that this was just a visit.

  “Can we go out and play with Shadow?” Beau asked.

  Wade struggled to his feet and, for the first time, acknowledged the social worker who’d stood, silently watching their greeting.

  He put out a hand and forced a smile. “I’m Wade.”

  “Yes, I know. Dee Thackery.” She offered a polite smile but seemed to ignore his outstretched hand.