Angel Falls Read Online Free PDF

quietly, “That’s how dead looks in the movies.”
    “She’s
not
dead. She’s just … resting for a little while. Like Sleeping Beauty.”
    “Did you try kissin’ her?”
    It took Liam a long time to answer. He knew he would remember this moment forever, and that’s how long it would hurt. “Yeah, Bretster. I tried that.”
    Liam stayed in bed until Bret fell asleep, then he cautiously extricated himself and went downstairs. This time he made himself a cup of tea. God knew the tequila hadn’t worked.
    Did you try kissing her?
    Liam glanced up at the slanted wooden ceiling. “Did you hear that, babe? He wanted to know if I’d tried kissing you.”
    The phone rang.
    He ignored it. On the fourth ring, the answering machine clicked on. He wasn’t ready to hear Mike’s soft, throaty voice. He squeezed his eyes shut.
You have reached the Campbell residence, and the winter office of Whatcom County’s horse rescue program. No one is available right now …
    When the message clicked off, another voice came on. “
Hola
, Dr. Liam. This is Rosa. I am returning—”
    Liam picked up the phone. “Hello, Rosa.”
    “Dr. Liam. This is you? I am sorry not to call earlier, but I was working the dinner shift this ni—”
    “Mike’s had an accident,” he said quickly, while he still had the nerve to form the words. Then, taking a deep breath, he told his mother-in-law everything.
    A pause slid through the lines. “I will be there tomorrow.”
    “Thank you,” he said, not realizing until that moment how very much he needed her help in this. “I’ll arrange for a plane ticket.”
    “No. It will be quicker if I drive. I will leave first thing in the morning. Will she …”
    Make it through the night
.
    “We hope so,” he answered the unfinished question. “The morning should be … fine. Thanks, Rosa.”
    “Dr. Liam?” Another pause, then a soft “Pray for her. More than medicines and machines, she will need God now. You pray for her.”
    “Every minute, Rosa. Every minute.”
    When he hung up the phone, he went to his bedroom.It took all his strength to merely cross the threshold. When he’d come in here earlier, he’d had Bret with him, and the child in his arms had acted as a talisman. Now, Liam felt acutely vulnerable and alone.
This
was where Mikaela belonged; in this room, theirs, the one she’d once painted fire-engine red just for fun; the one that now had gold moons and stars and suns stenciled on its smooth eggshell-white walls and a chiffon-draped canopy bed that she said made her feel like Candice Bergen in
The Wind and the Lion
. Unfortunately, it made him feel like Candice Bergen, too, but so what? She loved their room, and so he’d crawled into their bed every night and thanked God that she wanted him there. Him, an ordinary man whose only claim to the extraordinary was the depth of his love for a woman.
    Rosa Elena Luna walked toward the small altar in her living room and carefully lit two votive candles. Thin spots of light glowed reassuringly within the pebbled red glass.
    She sank to her knees on the cracked linoleum floor and clasped her hands, staring at the figurine of the Virgin Mary as she began to pray. First, the Lord’s Prayer.
    But the familiar words didn’t ease this ache spreading through her chest. Tears blurred her eyes but didn’t fall. She’d learned long ago that tears were just bits of water that had no power to heal.
    She grabbed the rickety table leg and pulled herselfto a stand. After a long night at the diner, her knees made a sound like popping corn.
    For the first time in many years, she wanted to call William Brownlow. She glanced longingly at the phone on the wall.
    He would be no help, of course. She hadn’t seen him in several years. Sunville was a small town, but even in so small a place, they traveled in different circles. He owned a modest apple orchard—not a powerful, wealthy man by anyone’s standards, but compared to Rosa, he might as well have