The Color of Love (The Color of Heaven Series) Read Online Free PDF

didn’t work out that way. Though I did come close once.”
    “Yeah? What happened?”
    “I lived with a woman for a while when I was in grad school, but she wasn’t ready for marriage. She cheated and took off. I ran into her a couple of years later. She was living with some guy with a drug problem. The last time I saw her she was a raging alcoholic. She had a kid and couldn’t hold down a job. I tried to talk her into getting help but she just asked me for money to pay her rent. I probably shouldn’t have, but I gave her some. Never heard from her again. I don’t know where she is now.”
    “That sucks,” I said.
    Aaron nodded and squinted up at the sun.
    “I stayed away from women for a long time after that,” he finally said. “I always figured there was time to get my act together and then meet the right person, but you just never know when your number’s going to come up.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know,” I replied, leaning back again. “It’s funny, I had similar thoughts when we were going down.”
    Aaron waited patiently for me to elaborate. Maybe it was a learned skill—something they teach all psych majors in therapy 101—but for some reason I couldn’t help myself. His quiet penetrating stare persuaded me to confess everything.
    I told him all about Carla and Kaleigh and confessed my feelings of guilt for not wanting to be a husband and father.
    And my guilt about always breaking my promises—even to God, who kept giving me second chances when I probably didn’t deserve them.

Chapter Twelve

    It was the rumble that woke us—a deafening sound like rolling thunder, uninterrupted. I’m still amazed that it was Aaron who was first to get up and lower the tent zipper.
    I suppose I was overly comfortable in the frozen outdoors, while he was on edge every minute of every hour and unable to sleep.
    “What is that?” he asked as he stepped out onto the moonlit snow.
    I followed him out to see what we could see. The sky was clear and the moon was full, but the ground beneath us was shaking.
    “An avalanche,” I told him. “Over there.”
    I pointed at the mist rising up from the slope.
    I was thankful we were safe on higher ground.
    “The plane will be completely buried,” Aaron said. Then he turned and regarded me with awe. “You were right.”
    I nodded and returned to the tent to go back to sleep.
    o0o
    “I have to ask,” Aaron said the next morning as he climbed sleepily from the tent. I was sitting before a fire, melting ice for water. “What does she look like?”
    “Who?” I asked.
    “Your wife.” He sat down across from me. “You said she was the most beautiful woman you’d ever seen.”
    I chuckled and dug out my phone, which I’d powered up only twice since the crash—the second time to check for service up here on the ridge. Of course there hadn’t been any, otherwise our situation would have been vastly different in that moment.
    I’d since turned off the mobile network to avoid draining the battery.
    “Want to see her?” I shaded the screen with my glove to search through my gallery.
    Aaron moved around the fire to sit beside me.
    Most of the pictures had been taken during various climbs around the world which, naturally, was quite impressing Aaron, but then I found the three photos from the time I spent with Carla in Boston after we were married. That was almost eight years ago.
    “This is her and Kaleigh.” I held the phone up for Aaron to see. “We took this picture at the Public Garden in Boston. See the swan boats in the background? We’d just gotten off a tour around the lagoon. Kaleigh loved watching the ducks paddle their little feet. She’s such a cutie.”
    I scrolled to the picture of Carla standing on the bridge, posing like a supermodel, her long blond hair wavy and loose about her shoulders.
    “Wow, you’re right,” Aaron said. “She is gorgeous.”
    I searched for the video I’d taken of her that same day when we were lying on a