When Sparrows Fall by Meg Moseley Page B

with her professors, drove her to the airport, and picked her up when she came back from Auntie Lou’s funeral. He’d been a fortress.
    Miranda hadn’t known, then, that a fortress could be a prison.
    Rain on the windshield made blurry stars of oncoming headlights, but then the wipers cleared the glass and the lights became sharp white knives slicing into her. Blurry stars, then brutal knives, they alternated every two seconds, but she had to keep her eyes open.
    Jack hadn’t spoken since they’d turned onto the county road. She gave him a cautious look and knew he was unaware of her discomfort. He tapped a rhythm on the steering wheel in time to some private song, his mouth graced with a faint smile.
    Her muscles clenched with panic. She would never be able to explain him to Mason—or vice versa—and Mason would show up soon. Even before her accident, he’d rebuked her for procrastinating. She hadn’t listed her house or called a handyman. Her excuses had worn thin.
    The car swooped through another pass, making her feel as if she were in a blender. She clung to the black leather seat with her left hand and turned slowly toward the rain streaming down her window. With the slightest movement, pain hammered her.
    “Could we clear up a few questions?” Jack asked.
    “We could try.”
    “Why did you name me as guardian?”
    “It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t die.” Too late, she realized her answer was both flippant and illogical.
    “Yes, we’ve already established that you didn’t die—thank God—but why me, a divorced curmudgeon with no experience in raising children? And you don’t know me. We’ve had only one conversation, nine years ago. A conversation that ended with Carl ordering me off the property.”
    “I’ve always been sorry about that. We were going through a rough time, and … he wasn’t quite himself.”
    “I’m happy to know that wasn’t the real Carl, but back to my question. Why me? Why not your own relatives?”
    She pictured her mother’s pleasant, uncomplicated face. Her honey brown hair in a classic, simple style. Her closet, jam-packed with expensive clothing and shoes.
    “I don’t have any relatives who are fit to take care of the children,” Miranda said.
    Jack murmured something, but she didn’t catch it.
    Wooded slopes, silvered by the rain, whipped past. Woozy, Miranda faced forward again, into the violent brightness of the oncoming lights. She leaned back against the head rest but couldn’t decide if it was better to brace against it or try to relax her muscles.
    “Why didn’t you discuss it with me first?” he asked.
    “I thought I would call as soon as … as soon as things … well, soon. But then I fell.”
    “You changed your will only a couple of weeks ago. Were you expecting a calamity like your fall?”
    “No, but I might have brought it upon myself. I’d been taking a lot of walks to the cliffs.”
    “What inspired you to change your will though?”
    “The previous guardians are moving out of state.”
    “And you decided the children would be better off with me? A stranger to them and nearly a stranger to you?”
    “After Carl asked you to leave, when you started writing to him … your letters made me feel that I knew you, at least a little.”
    From the corner of her eye, she caught the swift movement as Jack turned toward her. “You read my letters?”
    In rebellion. In secret. If Carl had known, he never would have believed that she thought of Jack only as a brother. A brother who made her smile.
    She nodded, and a jolt of pain hit her skull. “I read them.”
    “Did Carl?”
    “Only the first one. I wish he would have given you a chance.”
    “After he told me to stop writing, did my persistence cause any trouble?”
    She hesitated. After that first letter, Carl had told her to write back and tell Jack not to bother. She’d obeyed, written the note, but Jack’s letters hadn’t stopped coming until she’d told him Carl was