Angels in Pink: Holly's Story (Lurlene McDaniel (Mass Market)) Read Online Free PDF Page A

you he’d react badly. That’s why I didn’t tell him in the first place.”
    “But you like the course and you told me you’ve done well.”
    “I have. But Dad considers it beneath the House of Kiefer. He wants me to study traditional medicine. Become one of the Kiefer dynasty.”
    There had to be more going on.
Wait for it,
Kathleen told herself.
    “Plus I told him I was dropping my college prep schedule for senior year. I mean, why should I suffer through trig and Latin if I’m going to be an EMT?”
    “Maybe he’s not steamed about your becoming an EMT so much as he is about your changing your schedule.”
    He whipped around. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
    “I’m not taking sides. I’m just trying to help. You know, he might be right about your changing your curriculum in your last year of high school. You’ve come so far and you’re almost there.”
    “That stuff’s hard.” Carson slumped into a beanbag. “I’m not smart like my brother and sister. I have to study really hard and that’s just for Cs.”
    “We all have to study hard.” She dragged another beanbag across from his and flopped down. “Except for Holly. She skipped a grade way back when and she still doesn’t break a sweat over the books.”
    “Well, I do,” Carson said. “Busting my brain isn’t how I want to spend my senior year. But more than that, I don’t want to go to college—at least not for four years. I’m telling you, I can go two years to Tampa Tech and come out with an associate degree and take the EMT test. Becoming an EMT is what I want to do.”
    “Maybe he’ll come around if you do well in school this year.”
    Carson scoffed. “He’ll think he won if I back down.”
    She felt sympathetic, but wasn’t sure how to console him. “Did you tell him how you felt after you saved my mother?”
    “And she wasn’t the only one I saved either,” Carson blurted out.
    “She wasn’t? Who else?”
    His face colored and Kathleen realized that it was something he hadn’t meant to say. She held her breath, waited. He sat still, staring over her head, his jaw clenched.
    “Tell me. Please.”
    “Steffie’s.” His eyes bored into hers. “I saved Stephanie’s life when we were fourteen.”

five

    “WHAT ARE YOU talking about?” Kathleen’s heartbeat had accelerated the moment he had said Stephanie’s name. Hadn’t she always felt there was some mysterious and perplexing element that linked Stephanie and Carson?
    Carson’s expression went dark as a thunder-cloud. “No one else knows.”
    She sat very still, hoping he would finally tell her what had happened.
    “If anyone knew, we both could be in serious trouble.”
    “But it had to have happened when you were in like . . . ninth grade. Isn’t there a statute of limitations?”
    “She could have died.”
    Kathleen’s heart constricted. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Carson, but if you do, I’ll always keep your secret, just like I kept Raina’s secret about Tony all those years.”
    He laced his fingers behind his head and hunkered down in the squishy chair. “If I tell you, you can’t ever tell anyone, not even Raina or Holly.”
    Kathleen nodded.
    “You already know how Steffie has grown up with absentee parents. Nothing but a few house-keepers along the way.”
    And all the money in the world,
Kathleen thought, without much sympathy.
    “My mother felt sorry for her and sort of took Steffie under her wing. Steffie practically lived here from sixth grade to ninth grade.”
    Kathleen knew all this. The girl was way too familiar with Carson’s family and home, yet there had been nothing Kathleen could have said without coming across as a whiny witch, which she was when it came to Stephanie Marlow. So she kept quiet.
    “Mom wasn’t as involved in Dad’s practice in those days,” Carson continued. “She was around a lot more because I was younger and my sister was still at home. It’s only since I’ve been in