Not a Sparrow Falls (8 page)

She startled awake and stared into the dim light of her room. It took a moment to orient herself. She was here in Alexandria in the apartment she shared with Carmen. This was home now. She sat up and checked the clock, felt gooseflesh rise on her arms from the chill in the air. It was nearly seven. She turned off the alarm, which would have gone off in just minutes, pulled her housecoat from the foot of the bed, stood up, and put it on. There. That was better. She slid into her slippers, opened her bedroom door quietly, and stepped into the hall. Carmen’s door was closed. She went to the living room window and peeked through the slit in the curtains. Newlee’s car was gone. She let the curtain drop and breathed a sigh of relief. It made her nervous having him around, even though she knew there was no way an Alexandria police officer would know about a drug raid over a year ago in a different part of the state. No way he could know about the one who’d gotten away.

During those tense first days, she’d searched until she’d found a newsstand that carried the
Charlottesville Daily Progress
and had scanned it religiously. There had been nothing
that first day, and she hadn’t known whether to feel relieved or terrified. She thought she saw Jonah everywhere. She would glimpse an angular jaw disappearing into a crowd, whip her head around, and see that it belonged to someone else. She would catch the sound of a similar voice, and her heart would freeze. See a long, lean body coming toward her in a familiar lope, and her tongue would stick to the roof of her mouth. Even after she knew the truth. That Jonah couldn’t come after her.

The article she’d waited for had finally appeared. It had actually been three days. It had only seemed like an eternity. It was a pretty big spread, in fact. “Drug Enforcement Task Force’s Efforts Yield Results,” the headline had announced. The story had gone on to say that the Nelson County Sheriff and Virginia State Police were working on busting meth labs and targeting the places dealers bought their ingredients. She’d darted through the two-page story until she’d found what she was looking for. There, along with a mention of several other raids, were two beautiful paragraphs about an anonymous tip that had led to the shutdown of a huge lab, location right on target. There was even a photo of the rusty trailer and falling-down shack. She’d held her breath until she read the article twice and ascertained that Jonah and Dwayne had both been arrested, though Dwayne had been picked up downtown trying to sell to an undercover cop. Figured.

She’d clipped that article and put it in her Bible, which served mostly as a safe deposit box these days. She reread it occasionally, but only when her fears got the best of her, for at other times it filled her with remorse.

You did what you had to do,
she reminded herself, but it was thin comfort. She could only imagine what torment prison would be for a man like Jonah—someone who couldn’t breathe in the city, who had to be traipsing through the woods to feel alive.

That Jonah doesn’t exist anymore,
she told herself.
The Jonah you knew is not the man who’s locked up.
She could
barely remember the old Jonah. She tried to recall him now, and her mind peeled back the layers of years. He’d been raw, roughhewn, inscrutable, and remote, but his passion for the land had burned like a pure, hot flame. He would have been perfectly happy to find some fold in time and step through to long-ago days. To live without cars and factories and people polluting his mountains.

His differences had been the fuel for her infatuation with him. She’d been fascinated with him for as long as she could remember. In junior high she’d frequently walked up the road past his house, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Most days she’d had to be content to look at the pie-eyed cows grazing the sloping pastures, the fields of mountain cabbage, the orchards full of apple trees.

When she did find him, they went walking through the woods—actually Jonah strode and she scrambled to keep up. He didn’t chatter like everybody else, but when he spoke it was usually something worth hearing. He knew all about the plants and trees and animals and their ways, and he had a good solid common sense about him. But he didn’t play the games of polite society; that much was for certain.

“That boy’s downright unfriendly. It must be his mother’s side of the family coming out. She was a Crawford, you know,”
Mary’s aunt Brenda would say, lifting her chin and taking that little sniff.
“And crazy as a coot, besides.”

Which had irritated Mary no end. It wasn’t right how everybody talked about his family, saying they were sorry and no-account. It wasn’t Jonah’s fault his papa couldn’t keep a job or that his mother had whatever problems she had.

She supposed she and Jonah were two lost souls and that’s why they’d finally ended up together. Their families had certainly met similar fates. Jonah’s mother and father had divorced, and the bank repossessed their house. One of his brothers went into the navy. The other moved to Lynchburg and took a job at a furniture store. Jonah had already been living with his old uncle. He was working at the towel mill,
but they’d gone to laying off, and Jonah was last hired. But he probably could have even survived all of that if his uncle hadn’t died. Joshua Porter had gone out to feed his birds, broken his hip, and gotten pneumonia. And after that it just seemed as if Jonah didn’t care anymore. That’s when he’d started on the drugs. That’s when he’d set out to be as bad as he could be.

She’d known all of that when she’d run off with him, of course, but she couldn’t exactly afford to be choosy. Jonah had offered her a way out of what had become an intolerable situation. She shook her head now at the bitter irony. Out of the frying pan.

Well, she was safe now. He couldn’t come after her. Nor could he watch the sun come up over the mountains, or hear rain pelt the leaves, or smell that loamy smell after a good drenching.

She hardened herself and reviewed the facts. Jonah hadn’t seen a sunrise in years. He’d been too busy cooking meth. Besides, this Jonah, the meth-eaten Jonah who existed in reality rather than some girlish fantasy, likely wanted to kill her, she reminded herself, and she felt the familiar chill of fear.

She did her best to shake it off and made her way to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, dropped a piece of bread in the toaster, then sat down at the table. Carmen was proud of that table, yellow Formica with chrome all around the sides. She’d gotten it for fifty dollars at a garage sale. “I could sell it for four times that—any day of the week, Bridie.” She smiled, thinking about the way Carmen’s Brooklyn tongue tried to curl around her name.

Bridie, she realized. She thought of herself as Bridie now. She had finally eased her way into her new persona, though it had been like a game at first. Whenever she was faced with a decision, she would ask herself, “What would Mama do?” and then do it. When a customer at the Bag and Save got testy, she would ask herself, “What would Mama say?” and unfailingly her words would come out kind and patient. She
even turned without hesitation when someone called out the name. She had everybody fooled. Everyone thought she was a kind, sweet, innocent girl from the hills of Virginia.

“Act a way long enough and it’ll become who you really are,”
her grandmother had been fond of saying, and for a moment a tiny hope flared inside her heart. It flickered out before she could warm herself by it, though. Jonah wasn’t the only one who’d changed. She knew the truth. She might talk like Mama, act like Mama, even think like Mama, but the shadow of Mary Bridget Washburn still trailed along behind her wherever she went.

There was a curl of paper beside Carmen’s cigarette case. She picked it up. It was a strip of pictures from one of those booths that snap four or five shots in a row. She smiled. There was Carmen, big eyes and dark bubble of hair, wide smile and white, even teeth. Behind her Newlee stood guard, looking like a soldier with his crew cut and steady eyes. She felt a stab of loneliness, dropped the pictures back down onto the table as if they’d burned her, then got up to take a shower. She was clear into the hallway before she heard the spring of the toaster and remembered her breakfast. She left it, showered, dressed, and caught the early bus to work, not even taking a cup of coffee after she’d gone to the trouble to make it.

Five

Alasdair skirted the patches of ice on the walkway, barely visible in the dusk, and slowed his pace. It wouldn’t do for him to fall and break a bone. Then what would happen to the children? He picked up the soggy
Washington Post
lying on the brick walkway and retrieved the mail spilling from the letter box. He barely took note of it. His mind was on this month’s column for his magazine, which he had just mailed, and the subject of his next series of radio broadcasts. That would be tonight’s project, as well as going over the publisher’s contracts for the study Bible. He also had a speaking engagement coming up in December. He felt as if they were all spinning plates, and he was the circus performer. He gave the first one a twist, then made his way down the line, coming back to the beginning just as the momentum was failing and the china beginning to tipple. The secret was to keep moving, he told himself.

He turned the key and let himself in. Samantha was waiting in the dark hallway, though it took him a moment to make out her shape. She thrust Bonnie at him even before he could take off his coat.

“She’s been whining for an hour.” Her voice sounded angry and defiant.

He took Bonnie and handed Samantha the mail, which she promptly tossed onto the stairs. A few envelopes slid through the railing to the floor. He decided not to make an issue of it. “Where’s Lorna?” he asked.

“She took Cam to the doctor.”

Alasdair nodded and felt a twinge of concern. Cameron had been running a fever for days now. A surge of appreciation for Lorna filled his heart. She had given up her only afternoon off to help him with the children. What would he do without her? He shifted Bonnie higher onto his shoulder.
Her little face felt hot against his own. She was becoming ill, too. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“All right,” he soothed. “First things first. All things decently and in order.”

He aimed himself up the stairs toward the bedroom, his daughter struggling against his arms, still whining. He eased her gently onto the bed and took off his coat. Bonnie slid on her stomach to the edge of the bed. He caught and righted her just as she began to pitch down. Finally he had her right side up and on the floor. He led her to her own room, changed her diaper and wiped her nose, then took her small hand in his, and they toddled back down the stairs to the kitchen. He put her in the playpen and gave her a few toys. Samantha was sitting on the couch watching television. He sat down beside her, since there was no other furniture, and patted her knee. He attempted conversation.

“Thank you for watching Bonnie. Do you have homework you should be doing?”

She pulled her leg away and didn’t answer. His fault. He shouldn’t have combined his praise with nagging.

He tried again. “How was your day?”

Samantha didn’t answer, just pushed a button on the remote control that changed the station and landed on
Jerry Springer.

He stared at her for a moment. When had they become enemies? He sighed. “Find something else to watch, Samantha, or better yet, turn it off. This is unsuitable for a twelve-year-old child.”

She ignored him and stared straight ahead. He frowned and leaned toward her. She was wearing makeup. Quite a lot of it, mostly clumped around her eyes. He had never given permission for that. “Samantha—” he began.

“I’m thirteen.” She punched the remote again. The news this time, a report of a fatal collision between a car and a semitrailer.

“Turn it off,” he said sharply, his voice rising.

She stared at him coldly, tossed down the remote control, and stalked off. He turned off the television himself and was about to call her back to deal with her disrespect, but Bonnie began to cry, and the telephone rang. He debated for a moment, then went to the phone.

The caller ID said anonymous. It could be a solicitor. It could be someone complaining about the choice of hymns last Sunday. Or it could be someone in the congregation who needed him.
And what help can you offer?
a familiar, hateful voice whispered. He clenched his teeth and picked up the receiver.

“Man, I was beginning to wonder if you still existed.”

Alasdair felt irritation well up as soon as he recognized the voice, familiar again from the number of messages left in recent weeks. He forced himself to be polite. “How are you, Bob?”

“Good,” Bob Henry answered quickly. “Better than you. Why don’t you return my calls?”

“I appreciate your offer of help, but this is something I’m going to have to face on my own.” No tricks, he thought to himself, remembering the maneuvering and subterfuge Bob had specialized in, even in college. Behind him Bonnie let out a pitiful, wavering cry of high-pitched misery. He turned toward her. She was rubbing her nose and forehead with a tiny hand.

The front door opened and closed. Alasdair leaned around the corner. It was Lorna with a miserable-looking Cameron on her hip. She smiled and waved. Alasdair held up a hand in greeting, then pointed back toward the playpen with a look of apology.

Lorna nodded and headed toward the crying child. “It’s the flu and nothing to be done for it,” she whispered as she passed him.

Of course. He shut his eyes briefly, but it had no effect on Bob Henry’s voice rasping on in his ear.

“I don’t think you understand, Alasdair, how things are.
The wheel’s squeaking pretty loud and Whiteman’s as serious as a heart attack.”

“This situation has nothing to do with Gerald Whiteman. I serve at the pleasure of this congregation and the presbytery.”

“Or not,” Bob pointed out. “And they’ve contacted Gerry and asked him to get involved. You’d better be glad he
doesn’t
bump it back down to the presbytery. If he does, there’s not much I can do. And what were you thinking, telling him you couldn’t meet with him?”