Not a Sparrow Falls

by Linda Nichols

“I don’t know,” Bridie said, taking a deep breath, “but here’s what I do know.”

  Samantha lifted her face.

  “There wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it.”

  Samantha shook her head. “What if I’d been home? I could have talked to her, and maybe she would have listened.”

  Bridie shook her head, wondering how well-worn those questions were, how many times they had been asked in the silence of Samantha’s mind. “You read that last entry. She’d gotten to the place where she took things out of context. Whatever happened, she took it as a sign that what she’d decided was the right thing. She’d convinced herself that Lorna would be a better mother to you and the babies than she was. Nothing you said would have mattered. Look how many people tried to help her. Her father, your uncle Calvin, Lorna, you. Your father tried his best.”

  Bull’s-eye. The head dropped again. The tears flowed. “I thought it was his fault.”

  “I know you did, but it wasn’t.”

  “Do you think he’ll forgive me?”

  “I know he will.” Whether he would forgive himself or not was another matter entirely.

  Samantha was quiet, but Bridie wasn’t thinking they were even close to being finished. After a minute Samantha edged around to the greatest of her fears. Bridie had seen it coming a long way off, since that day in the principal’s office. Lord, give me the words, she prayed. I’m an unclean vessel, but use me anyway.

  “Do you think she went to hell?” The words landed with the impact of an explosive, but Bridie was ready for them. Her head was shaking before they were even out.

  “I most certainly, absolutely, without a doubt do not believe she went to hell.” And the Lord must have answered her prayer because there, just like a pretty little jewel dropping into her open hand, came one of the hundred verses. “ ‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.’ ”

  Samantha took that in, and her face lost that tight, pinched look. She cried a little more.

  “What if I get sad like she did?”

  Lord—again? Bridie pleaded, holding her hand open as if the answer might literally fall into it. It did.

  “Your mama’s sadness was her undoing,” she said, “because she ran from it. First she ran to college to get away from it. Then she ran away by putting all her attention on your daddy; then she ran away by coming here to America, thinking if she left the sad place she could leave the sadness. Then she ran away from it by putting her mind on you. But you can’t run away from things,” Bridie said, and she saw herself in the old rusty truck, coasting down the dirt road, the bag of money on the seat beside her. “They just keep after you if you try to do that. You finally have to stop, turn around, and face whatever’s on your heels. Otherwise it hounds you right into the grave.”

  Samantha heaved a huge sigh. Bridie took a close look at her face. It was sad but calm.

  “If you feel sad, tell your daddy. Tell Aunt Lorna. Turn around and look the sadness in the eye, and it won’t get the best of you. Everybody feels sad,” Bridie finished. “There’s nothing there to be afraid of. It’s running from things that gives them strength.”

  Samantha nodded. She threw her arms around Bridie’s neck, and Bridie rocked her for a long time. She stroked Samantha’s hair and wiped her own eyes on her sleeve again and again.

  ****

  Alasdair looked down at the half-finished pile of sermon notes on the desk before him. He should put them away and prepare for his trip to Richmond.

  Why? another part of him asked. Why was he going to Richmond in one last attempt to save his career? Why was he doing any of this? He imagined himself standing in the pulpit, the sea of faces before him. Hungry people, waiting for him to turn the five loaves and two fishes into food for a multitude. All holding pens poised over blank pages. Pages he should fill with words of wisdom. He felt unbearably weary.

  What did he have to tell them? Where would he point them to? When was the last time he’d heard the voice of the Lord? Felt that swelling in his heart at the movement of the Spirit? When had the Scriptures last come to life before his eyes? How long had it been? Was it any wonder the people he led were dull and hard of hearing?

  His own desire for the Lord had become deadened along with the rest of him. He had his own stone rolled firmly against the mouth of his tomb, blocking any resurrection. It remained there, regardless of his straining and pushing, his despairing prayers. And there didn’t seem to be any angels nearby.

  He knew when it had sealed him up. He recalled the very day. He had come home from the radio studio after a long day of recording. The police car had been waiting in front of the house. No sirens blaring, no flashing lights. It had been pulled to the curb, idling, waiting. And he had known. Immediately he had known. The only question had been how, and that had been answered in short order.

  He had tried to take care of things after that. Tried to clear away the debris as quickly as possibly, to keep it from hurting anyone else. To put out the fires and bury the dead. He had done the best he could, but obviously it was not enough. It was never enough, was it? It never had been.

  He dropped his pen and rubbed his neck. Why had he become a pastor? Why was he enduring so much misery to hold on to something he’d never wanted in the first place? He thought and thought, and to save himself, he couldn’t remember. His father had told him to do it, and ever the good son, he’d obeyed.

  He sighed, tried to gather the pieces of himself together. He could hear Bridie’s and Samantha’s voices twining together from the next room. None of this was Bridie’s fault. He had seen the hurt on her face when he’d left after dinner, barely speaking to her. It wasn’t too late to approach her. He stood up. He would ask her to come downstairs and talk to him. Not out of any sense of obligation. He wanted to, he realized as he walked toward the door. He needed to.

  Thirty-Three

  Samantha watched Bridie put the last journal back into the box and looked again at the picture she’d kept out—of Mom in the party dress. She wondered what her dad would say if she hung it on her wall. The door opened.

  Oh, my gosh. This was so not good.

  Dad came in all smiling and everything, and then he saw the picture in her hand. He looked over at Bridie and then down by her feet at the box of journals, and his face went completely white. Like the refrigerator or something. He looked straight at Bridie then. It was like she wasn’t even there.

  “What have you done?”

  “It was my idea,” Samantha said, trying to explain.

  “What is all this?” he asked, still talking to Bridie. “Where did you get these?”

  “Don’t get mad at her.”

  “You stay out of this, Samantha.”

  “They were in the attic,” Bridie said. “I never meant to deceive you, Alasdair.”

  Dad got totally stone-faced then. “There are things in there she shouldn’t know.” His voice was sounding funny.

  “I already knew,” Samantha said. “I knew she did it on purpose.”

  Dad looked at her, then turned around and looked at Bridie again, and for the first time Samantha got a little scared. He didn’t say anything for a huge long time, and Bridie’s face got white. Samantha thought maybe she was going to cry.

  Then Dad said, really quiet, “This is what you’ve been doing in here.”

  Bridie nodded, and then Dad said, “I need to talk to you.”

  Bridie went with him and Samantha followed them out. Dad led the way downstairs. It was so not fair that Bridie was getting blamed for this.

  “Go to your room, Samantha,” he hollered back at her.

  “Fine,” she said and went straight to the heat vent. She lay flat on the carpet and put her ear against the grate. After a minute she heard them. Perfectly. They were both talking really loud.

  “I did it for Samantha,” Bridie said.

  “Fo
r Samantha.”

  She knew that tone. He used it when he was just trying to get it straight exactly how you’d messed up.

  “Yes,” Bridie answered. “She’s why I came here to begin with. I saw her in the church. She pinned a note to that board—the one with the falling sparrow—that’s why I came, and this is what she needed.”

  Samantha blinked. She hadn’t thought that prayer had been answered. Huh.

  “She needed for somebody to tell her the truth,” Bridie said. “She already knew it, but since nobody would say it, it was eating away at her.”

  “You have no idea what the truth is.”

  Dad sounded mean.

  “I know Anna killed herself. It’s obvious if you have eyes to see. She got more and more depressed, and nobody could help her no matter how hard they tried. Finally she just got tired of fighting and drove into the river.”

  There was this huge long silence. Samantha could feel her heart thumping. She wondered if she should go downstairs.

  “Did Anna write about her mother?” Dad asked, a little quieter, but in this dead sort of voice. Samantha pressed her ear down so hard it hurt. “How she took an overdose of sleeping pills when Anna was six weeks old? Did she write about how her father talked of it time and time again, trying to get Anna to open up? Did she document the parade of counselors that marched through her life and how powerless they were to keep history from repeating itself? Enlighten me. What should I have done? If silence doesn’t work and talking doesn’t work, what would?”

  “I don’t know,” Bridie said, and now she sounded mad. “But maybe there’s something in between those two extremes of pretending nothing ever happened or being so sure she’s a ticking bomb that she finally explodes just to end the tension.”

  Uh-oh.

  “How dare you accuse me of pretending Anna’s death never happened? Her death has colored every moment of my life, every movement of this household since the day she died.”

  “Then maybe it was time she was laid to rest.”

  “And how should I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Bridie said. “But this is a start. Raise your voice. Cry out to God. It’s those who mourn who’ll be comforted.”

  They were both quiet then. Samantha waited for a really long time, and still nobody said anything.

  “Do you want me to come back tomorrow?” Bridie finally asked.

  “I suppose so,” he said, and he sounded really mad. “It’s too late to make other plans now.”

  Then Samantha heard the door open and shut, and she got up and ran into the guest room so she could look out the window to the street. There went Bridie. She didn’t even bring her coat. Just her purse. That made Samantha feel better. Bridie would be back.

  Samantha dropped the curtain and went back into her room. A couple of months ago she would have gotten mad at Dad, like maybe even hated him and all. But now she felt sort of bad for him. But he was just going to have to get used to the idea that she knew stuff.

  ****

  Jonah had been waiting out in front of the Bag and Save forever. He idled the engine and felt like he was going to explode if he didn’t get out of the car. He needed to move around. They were working their way out again, those little glass splinters. He picked at one place on his arm, then another. He scratched until his hand came away sticky with blood. He chewed his lip and lit another cigarette. His hands were shaking. He put in another CD and turned it up so he couldn’t hear that chopping anymore. He wished they’d stop, but he knew it wasn’t any use.

  The automatic doors opened again and he flicked the cigarette out the window. It was an old woman, and that kid who’d pointed out Carmen to him was carrying the woman’s groceries. He leaned back in his seat and beat the rhythm of the music onto the steering wheel. He needed gas. That little dark-headed fellow staying in the room next to his at the motel had been sucking it out at night while he slept. He’d seen him over there with his lips pressed against the gas tank.

  The kid went back inside with the empty cart. The doors opened again. A woman came out. She was fat and had a little fat girl trailing after her, and her fat husband came along after the both of them pushing the cart.

  Fat. Fat. Fat. At. Fat. Cat. Sat. Hat. Fat. The doors opened again. There she was, the woman who knew where Mary was. Carmen. She looked at him, and he wondered what she had in that sack. Could it be Mary in that sack? Maybe that was the chopping he’d heard. No. Mary was somewhere else. And Carmen was looking at him, and that wasn’t good.

  He leaned over like he was reaching for something on the floor. He stayed hunkered down for a minute or so, and when he lifted his head up, a police car had pulled to the corner. Jonah froze. That’s what the demons rode in. That meant they were back. Oh no. And Carmen was in cahoots with them, because the demon car pulled to the curb, and just like that she leaned in and gave him a kiss. Judas kissed. Judas was a woman. Who knew about that? And now Jonah knew what was in the sack. It was the thirty pieces of silver. He wondered if he would find her hanging, swinging, when he went to find Mary and get the pieces of his brain back. And his money. His money. He hung on to that thought as the Judas girl got into the demon’s car.

  His hands shook as he started up his engine. His only chance was to follow them to wherever they were going, then wait until the demon left, then go inside and find Mary.

  He crept along behind them all the way to the little apartment house, but instead of leaving, the demon parked his car and got out with the girl. That’s when Jonah decided he couldn’t stand it any longer. He would have to come back later. He wrote down the address on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket. That way, if they cut out that part of his brain tonight, he would be able to find this place again tomorrow.

  Thirty-Four

  Friday morning Bob combed his hair, gargled with mouthwash, put on his tie and jacket. He inspected himself in the small mirror of the hotel bathroom. His eyes were red, but he looked pretty good, considering. After he’d left Jim Wigby, hands clutching the still-warm dirt on Mary Bridget Washburn, he had thought hard. It hadn’t taken long to work things out. It would do him no good whatsoever if Gerry and MacPherson and the Knox elders resolved this situation tomorrow afternoon over tea and crumpets. The only way he was going to benefit from the months of hard work he’d been putting in was if he personally delivered MacPherson’s head on the silver platter before that meeting took place.

  He’d burned the highway, arriving in Alexandria around four yesterday afternoon. He’d managed to finagle a meeting with the religion editor of the Washington Post, which had gone even better than he’d hoped, then swung by the Bag and Save. He’d shown Mary Washburn’s last driver’s license photo to the manager, and he’d verified the ID. Then Bob had checked in here and stayed up all night, writing. The article he’d produced—a work of art if he said so himself—was neatly printed and in the envelope in his briefcase, along with the documentation he’d been collecting. Either way today’s events went, he didn’t see how he could lose. Risky? Yes. But then again, he’d never been afraid of rolling the dice.

  He packed away his shaving kit, zipped his suitcase shut, turned off his laptop, then checked his watch. It was seven-fifteen. A little early to come calling, but he didn’t want to take a chance on missing MacPherson. He nodded in satisfaction, gathered up his things, flicked off the light, and went to turn in his key.

  ****

  Jonah pulled out the paper he’d written the address on. The numbers were jumping around, and he couldn’t read them, and he couldn’t remember the way he’d taken yesterday to find the place. Yesterday? Yeah, he was pretty sure. He slowed down and cruised down the alley, turned onto a street that looked a little familiar, a U-shaped red-brick building with a courtyard in the middle. That was it. And there was the demon’s car, still parked in the front. He rubbed his jaw and took another drink of the malt liquor.

  He had planned on going to the door, but he thought maybe he’d best wait for someone to
come out. He checked the address one more time, but the numbers were gone now, jumped clean off the paper.

  ****

  Alasdair sat at the kitchen table and drank another cup of coffee. He hadn’t slept. Well, a little perhaps, here and there. Mostly he’d looked through the journals, determined to take the same journey his daughter and Bridie had taken. How could they talk about it unless he did? He had found his wife again in the pages of her books. He’d smiled, and wept, and anguished. This is it, he’d realized, turning the heavy pages. This is what you’ve fought so hard to hide. Or whom.

  The doorbell rang. He glanced at the clock. Too early for Bridie, and he was glad, for he still didn’t know what he would say to her. He wasn’t angry anymore but wounded. Hurt by her duplicity. Yet what would he have said if she’d come to him? He could almost hear himself declaring there was nothing to discuss, all the while looking for a safer hiding place for Anna. A safe deposit box. A vault that no one could open but him. Somewhere she wouldn’t get out this time. He went to the door and opened it without looking.

  “Bob.” The name came without thought, automatically, though now that he had a chance to think, the man who stood before him looked quite different than the seminarian of fifteen years before. Heavier, a little less hair, a little darker, perhaps, or it could just be the light.

  “I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time.”

  “I have a meeting to prepare for.”

  “This doesn’t have to take long.”

  Alasdair stepped back from the door automatically, years of training taking effect. “Please, come in.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shut the door. He almost pointed toward the living room but remembered it was no longer the parlor. Besides, Cam and Bonnie were already playing in there. “Why don’t we go up to my study?” he suggested, and Bob Henry followed him up the stairs. He tapped on Samantha’s door and asked her to go downstairs and watch the children, then led Bob into his study and invited him to sit down.

  They settled themselves, Alasdair pulling the desk chair out so he could face Bob. They exchanged inconsequentials. Bob’s eyes still darted around when he was being spoken to, Alasdair noted. As if he were trying to keep track of all the possible directions the conversation might take and be prepared for any one of them. A disconcerting habit.