The Edge of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

and Greg's with all the kids. If you change your mind and want to come—"
    "I'll just get on the train," Emma said.
    It was a comforting thought. She could just leave and go be with her family, if that's what she needed. Maybe once the bruise on her face was gone. It would be bad enough to tell them, in time, in her own way. But to have them able to see it on her face the moment she arrived, and to have everyone see... Not just Sam and Rachel, but Zach and Grace. Her aunt and uncle. Her cousins. It sounded so humiliating, and right now she just wanted to hide.
    Rachel said good-bye, and then Emma started calling relatives to fill them in on Ann's condition. By the time she was done, she had three invitations to dinner and two offers of places to sleep, in case she didn't want to be alone. But she put them all off with her same story—that she was wiped out after finals. Maybe she could buy a few days alone. Maybe she could just hide.
    Women did this, she'd read. They wanted to hide, to pretend it never happened, that it never would again.
    She would never have believed she could be one of those women. But inside her head, she heard all the familiar excuses, the ones she remembered her mother using. It wasn't like him to do this, not the man she knew. He must have been under a great deal of stress, because it wasn't something he'd normally do.
    But he had. He'd done it to her.
    Emma sat there trying to make all the images go away. She was thinking of building the fire back up, trying to go back to sleep when the phone rang one more time. She picked it up without even thinking, sure that it was one of her cousins or maybe a friend from high school.
    "Emma." Mark sighed heavily. "I was hoping you'd be on your way back by now. Don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
    * * *
    Rye checked into the inn and had five different people ask if he was here for the Christmas festival. Obviously it was a big deal around here. That afternoon, restless and with nothing to do, he started walking the streets of downtown.
    He found two discreet signs, one on a house under construction and another being renovated, announcing that the work was being done by McRae Construction. The second time he saw one, there was a man out front checking his mailbox. Rye struck up a conversation with him, telling him he'd been thinking of having Sam do some work for him.
    "You can't go wrong with Sam. He lives six blocks over, in that house that was Rachel's grandfather's. Been a part of this town for twenty years now."
    "He's been here that long?" Rye asked.
    "Longer, now that I think about it. He was a freshman in high school when he came here. I graduated a year or two before he did. I remember because his grandfather had a house over on Sycamore Street, not far from one of my uncles'."
    "His grandfather lived here, too?"
    "Yeah, and Sam did, once his parents died."
    "That would have been rough. Losing both his parents like that."
    "Oh, yeah. Life's just harder on some people."
    What did that mean? That it had been for Sam? Too bad.
    The man he was looking for lost his parents at a much younger age, then got passed from relative to relative, foster home to foster home. He had no idea where the man ended up. There was a birth certificate supposedly showing the man to be thirty-nine now, but none of the Sam McRaes he'd found had a birthday that matched the one on the birth certificate. He had a feeling the Sam McRae he was looking for was older than that, anyway. Absolutely nothing fit.
    "Guess Sam was lucky he had a grandfather to take him in," Rye said, remembering where he was, what he was supposed to be doing.
    "I don't know if I'd go that far." The man shook his head. "Hate to speak ill of the dead, but Old Man McRae... I don't think anyone has fond memories of him. But somehow Sam turned out just fine. You don't have to worry. He'd do a good job for you."
    Rye thanked the man and went on his way. The wind was picking up, and the sun was sinking