Heaven Should Fall Read Online Free PDF

bus appeared, driving slowly toward us down a long, curving road.
    “Good luck with your girl,” said Elias. “I envy you that.”
    I grinned. The tension vanished like a wave pulling back from the sand. “Thanks.”
    He leaned into the backseat and wrestled his duffel bag over the console. Probably I would have hugged him to say goodbye, but the bulky bag wedged into the space between the seats. He reached across and bumped my fist.
    “Fuck her brains out, man,” he said. “It’s what I’d do if I were you.”

Chapter 3
    Jill
    My mother believed in signs. Not in a superstitious way, really, but from the belief that sometimes an event catches your attention and brings to the surface of your mind, all of a sudden, a truth about yourself that you ought to pay attention to. When I was twelve she told me about the moment she knew she needed to get sober. She was driving north of Fresno, California, with me in the back of the car, and I asked her about the trees growing in the orchards alongside the road. I was four years old, she told me—she knew the date exactly—and I wanted to know what sort of fruit they were growing that was round and fuzzy and green. So she pulled the car over onto the shoulder, and we got out to take a look, because she wasn’t sure. We were in town to visit her parents for what would prove to be the last time. It was a lovely day, but she was feeling sad and angry, because her parents’ health was poor and they were mean. A couple of old, sick drunks, she said. The most pathetic type of creature in the world. All she could think about doing was getting back to our hotel and opening up a bottle of wine, to make the day go away.
    We got out of the car and pulled one of those fuzzy things off a tree. She thought perhaps it was a kiwi, so she split it open for me, and inside there was an almond. I was just so amazed, she told me. And so were you. Thirty-two years old and I had no idea almonds grew that way. We both laughed, and during that moment she didn’t think about anything except the wonder of almonds.
    Then she said we needed to get back in the car before we got caught by the farmer, and when she turned around she could see that we were on a hill that looked down over the entire city of Fresno. And this was what moved her—even though the sky was beautifully blue and fluffed with white clouds where we stood, the city was covered by a deep gray cloud that was pouring down torrents of rain. From that distance she could see it easily: the storm that appeared to have singled out the city, like a biblical punishment. I’d never seen anything quite like it, she said, and that’s when I knew. That’s how my parents were and that’s how I would become, walking around a beautiful world with a storm pouring over just us. I had to change. It didn’t happen right away. It took me a while. But that was the moment I knew.
    Long after she was gone, I tried to remember every part of that story, to think hard on it so I could understand every aspect of her revelation. It had changed my life and hers, after all. When I stood there in the almond orchard I hadn’t any idea of what was going on in her mind just then, but in the end it had made me who I am. I wasn’t sure if I believed in signs the way she did, but I believed in the truth the sign had taught her: that it was never too late to start over, no matter where you came from, no matter who you had been or how daunting the path appeared. Her own mother had taught her what kind of a life she didn’t want, but mine taught me what kind of life I did.
    * * *
    Thanksgiving passed quietly—Cade and I camped out for the long weekend at Stan’s, house-sitting while Stan made the rounds of his grandparents’ homes—and suddenly it was December, with Christmas carols playing in the campus bookstore and greenery strung in lopsided loops around the dining hall. This was the time of year when depression started stalking me, and I had to fight it back