Snow Angel Read Online Free PDF

forehead against the sliding door, her gaze focused on the oasis of the yard.
    Beyond their fence line, the Mojave Desert rolled toward the foothills fronting the San Bernardino mountains, visible now only as a deeper black against the night sky. During the day, the desert would spread wide for miles, plentifully dotted with houses, yet somehow still barren-looking.
    Melinda exhaled slowly, rubbing her forehead against the chilly glass.
    Eventually, she would forget that Mitch ever swam in their pool, or played with Buddy and Baxter on the lawn, or kissed her under the shade trees.
    Wind-tossed piles of tumbleweeds mounded against the outside of the fence, waiting to be swept along with the next strong gust. Her memories of Mitch would be like that someday. Dust-dry and easy to blow away with a breath.
    She hoped.
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    Behind her, as though a switch had been flipped, the sudden influx of chatter announced the arrival of the hungry horde.
    Melinda watched their reflections in the glass as her family and friends filtered in from the kitchen and the hallway, everyone talking over each other, the women carrying serving dishes, bottles of wine, and pitchers full of iced tea.
    Her dad carried a basket mounded with garlic bread and, with a furtive glance over his shoulder, set it conveniently next to his place at the table. Melinda grinned. Her mom would make sure he didn’t hog it all.
    Jacob approached in the slider’s reflection, stalking toward her with his arms straight out and rocking side to side like a drunken Frankenstein’s monster. He grabbed her by the elbows and lifted her straight up off her feet.
    “Parsnip!” he said, bellowing the word and giving her a little jiggle before lowering her back down.
    “Rutabaga,” she answered with a smile.
    He wrapped one arm companionably around her neck and placed his chin on top of her head, his golden-brown eyes glinting like topaz-colored jewels as they met hers in the glass. “Sweet potato.”
    “Rump roast.”
    “Hey!” He straightened, hands on hips, feigning indignation. “Don’t talk smack about my rump roast. It’s grade-A, baby.”
    Melinda made a face meant to take him down several pegs. “Please. Control yourself.”
    “Come eat, you two,” her mom called, aiming the clicker at the giant TV to shut it off. Pushing another button, she turned soft, instrumental Christmas music on from the stereo instead.
    “Your chariot, milady,” Jacob said to Melinda, turning and flexing one leg into a lunge for her to use as a foothold. He patted his left hand on his own ass. “Watch the roast.”
    Ignoring that last comment, she tucked her purple-slippered foot into the crease between his hip and thigh and stepped up, boosting herself onto his back. His black cable-knit sweater bunched warm and nubby beneath her fingers. He grabbed her by the legs and jogged the fifteen paces to the dining room.
    “Oh, man,” Jacob and Melinda whined in unison, surveying the seating as she slid off his back.
    The chairs at the kid’s table were already filled by her cousins, Danny and Christian, as well as Danny’s best friend, Gabe McConnell, and the carrot-top, Christian’s best friend, Wendell Page.
    Jacob put on a pout worthy of Rick’s stage career and kicked at Christian’s chair leg. “I don’t wanna sit at the grown-ups’ table.”
    “Suck it up, buttercup,” Christian advised, smiling his extra-cherubic smile.
    “Yeah,” Wendell chimed in. “You snooze you lose, and all that.”
    “You’re twenty-one now, Jakey, you can handle it,” Danny said.
    “You’re twenty-three,” Melinda pointed out to her oldest cousin. “And so are you,” she added to Gabe, who only grinned, his emerald eyes gleaming.
    Next to her blond cousins, black-haired, green-eyed Gabe looked more like her relative than they did. Well... if her relatives had descended from fallen angels, maybe. Though he was a marshmallow underneath the tough-guy act,