Angel Falls (Angel Falls Series, #1), Babette Jongh [books for 6 year olds to read themselves .TXT] 📗

onto a wide grassy field where picnickers spread their blankets on sunny days, we walked through the damp grass toward the river’s edge. Years ago, the city had poured a concrete footpath along the water, with park benches bolted to it every hundred feet or so. I trudged to the nearest bench and sat, draping my good arm over the armrest so I could reach down and caress Lizzie’s ears.

I hadn’t been sitting there five minutes when a sleek car slid to a stop at the road’s edge. I knew it was Ian even before I looked over my shoulder to see him illuminated by the glow of the interior light. I could hear the faint beep-beep of the alarm until he slammed the door and strode toward me.

A little thrill of excitement fizzed through me.

CHAPTER FIVE

Ian stooped to give Lizzie a pat and sat next to me on the bench, one arm draped across the back. “Not planning on drowning yourself, are you?”

“No.” I gave him a weak smile.

“That’s just as well.” He stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I’m wearing my good shoes and wouldn’t want to have to fish you out.”

A huff of laughter escaped me, and I immediately felt ashamed. I couldn’t believe I had actually laughed, when Melody was no longer alive to laugh as well.

Ian touched my shoulder. “It’s not disrespectful for you to get on with your life.”

I couldn’t think what to say to him, so I clamped my mouth shut and stared out over the night-dark water that whispered before us. He seemed content with the silence, and eventually I was the one who broke it. I said the thing that had been sitting in the back of my mind for days, a sharp-toothed thing waiting to pounce. “It should have been me. Melody had so much to live for. So many people to live for. I should have been the one to die.”

“It’s not your place to judge which one of you should have lived.” His voice was low, soothing, reasonable. For some reason, that quiet tone made me want to hit him. A tidal wave of antagonism came flooding into me, and I embraced it. It was the one emotion I could feel without it tearing me apart.

I wanted to make him as angry and hurt as I was.

I wanted to make him hate me as much as I hated myself.

I wanted to show him the darkness inside me and make him so disgusted he would walk away and leave me to my misery. “I was jealous of Melody,” I said out loud for the first time. “I wanted what she had.”

He sat there looking at me with that same compassionate expression on his face.

“Did you hear me?” I shouted. “I wanted Mel’s husband. I wanted her kids. I wanted her life.”

I realized that tears were streaming down my face when Ian quietly handed me a handkerchief—the real deal, a soft cotton square of comfort.

I wiped my eyes and took a shuddering breath. “Ben was my boyfriend first; did you know that?”

Ian shook his head but didn’t speak, giving me the time I needed to barf-up the whole damn hairball that had been stuck in my throat for twelve long years.

“We were high school sweethearts, but I was determined to be a ballerina, so I auditioned for City Ballet then moved to New York. Ben stayed back home and we talked on the phone every day, but it felt like I was losing him, you know?”

Ian nodded.

“I convinced Ben to apply to NYU, and when he got accepted, he came to New York and we picked out an apartment in Greenwich Village. He went home to pack his shit, but he didn’t come back right away—one excuse after another—then I got the sorry-Casey-we-didn’t-mean-to-hurt-you phone call. That was twelve years ago. Twelve! A dozen years, and I still couldn’t forgive her. Him, yes. But not her.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“For Ben’s sake, and the sake of my own stupid pride, I pretended to forgive her. I pretended she was still my best friend. I pretended so well, I think even she believed me. I pretended so well, I started to believe it myself. But all the time I’ve been her best friend, I wanted him back. I wanted him to be mine instead of hers.”

Ian didn’t draw back in horror. His face didn’t turn cold with disgust. His soothing tone didn’t even change when he responded to my tirade. “So, you lured her on a shopping expedition so you could crash her car into a truck and drive it off a ravine?”

“Of course not. You know I wasn’t driving.”

He took my face in his warm palms and pinned me with his amber gaze when I would have looked away. “So help me figure this out. How, exactly, is her death your fault?”

“I wanted...” I squeezed my eyes shut against the burn of tears that felt like a hard knot behind my eyeballs. “I loved Mel, and still I wished...” I had yearned for the impossible, to have what she’d taken from me, without taking anything from her. But I hadn’t wished for her to die. My jealousy hadn’t made this happen.

So why couldn’t I get out from under the crushing rock of guilt I carried everywhere?

“Wishing doesn’t make things like this happen, Casey.” Ian stroked my hair, then my cheek, with a touch so tender it made my lips quiver, made the tears flow even faster.

He had uncovered a soft, scared part of me that didn’t want to be dragged into the light. I sprang up, clutching his handkerchief, wanting to run but rooted to the concrete beneath my Keds.

“Shhh,” he said.

I hadn’t said anything, but I guess he knew I was screaming inside.

“Sit back down.”

He grabbed me by the hips and pulled me back. I put out a hand for balance, and his wide chest under my fingertips emanated more BTU’s than a space