Snow Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

similarly-adorned formal table, in the middle of the arch between the two rooms, set for four to round out their party of sixteen.
    Melinda made a mental note to snag a seat with three of the guys at the smaller “kid’s table” where she’d be less likely to suffer through an interrogation about Mitch by any of the other women.
    With her brother Zach once again absent, and since Melinda and Jacob didn’t have additional guests attending the trip this year—thanks to that bastard Mitch backing out—there was an even split between adults and kids—eight each.
    The fact that all of the kids were now legal adults meant little when it came to dividing up the party. The kids would always be the kids, even when they were in their forties with kids of their own.
    However, there was only room for four at the kid’s table, and although none of them really cared where they sat anymore, snagging those seats had become something of a game.
    Setting the salad bowls in the middle of the big table, one on each end, Melinda straightened the place settings, then moved through the arch and crossed the family room to stare out the back sliding door.
    Buddy and Baxter were in their pen in advance of everyone sitting down to dinner. It spanned the length of one side of the property, giving the dogs plenty of room to frolic. An enormous barn-style doghouse sat on their own covered patio where they could escape the elements, along with a plastic kiddie-pool to laze in during the blisteringly-hot desert summers.
    Melinda frosted her breath on the glass door and drew a heart inside the fog, then wiped it away.
    Summer’s heat seemed a long way off. The lawn lay dormant and crisp beneath a light layer of frost, crisscrossed with the dogs’ paw prints. She tapped on the glass, and Buddy barked in response before chasing after Baxter, who had their favorite tug-rope dangling from his mouth.
    No one else was in sight.
    The backyard stretched for nearly an acre beneath a clear, star-studded sky, the grounds well-lit thanks to the landscape lighting her mother had installed herself. The many shade trees, her mother’s beloved rose bushes, and assorted shrubs reached toward the stars with winter-skeletal arms, waiting for spring to green them up again. They wove in and around artfully designed pathways and river-rocked beds of indigenous cacti, including a few majestic desert sentinels—the spearing Joshua trees.
    California’s drought conditions would play havoc with the yard again this year, yet somehow her mother always managed to keep it looking gorgeous.
    Her parents owned the local nursery, and Karen also hired herself out for landscaping jobs, so their yard served as both a testament to her mother’s first love—gardening—and as a living advertisement for the family business.
    An above-ground pool, covered for winter, took up a portion of the back half of the property, along with a wide deck and plenty of chairs for sunning. Bright-orange California poppies would blanket the ground around the pool in summer, and evergreen California junipers clumped along both sides of the back fence.
    Melinda liked to lightly crush ripe juniper berries in her hands and inhale the scent. Aunt Pat used a different variety of the berry—actually not a berry at all, but a seed cone—in some of her favorite recipes, which had been passed down in her family for generations.
    Some people found the desert climate too harsh, too dry, too brown, and it could be, for sure. Especially when the winds blew—burning hot in summer or freezing cold in winter—which was most of the time. It wasn’t a lush, tropical paradise by any stretch of the imagination, and they had their share of nasty critters—rattlesnakes, scorpions, and more. But life in their small town of Pasodoro was everything Melinda wanted and loved.
    It was home.
    “Dinner’s ready!” Her mom’s voice sounded from the kitchen.
    Instead of heading straight for the table, Melinda rested her