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

clothes for the velvet sheath dress I’d worn on my date with Ian, brushed my almost-dry hair, and put on mascara and lipstick so it would look like I’d tried. Wondering why I didn’t just stay home by myself, I fed Lizzie, made sure Chester still had plenty of food, and topped up the communal water dispenser.

I could stay home by myself. I probably should stay home by myself. I was more-than-likely whipping myself into a frenzy over nothing, but couldn’t stop obsessing long enough to rein myself in. Ian breaking our date just didn’t feel right. There was something going on that he didn’t want to confess. Maybe it was nothing, but if it was nothing, why didn’t he just explain?

Barefoot with my stiletto pumps in one hand, I waited on the front porch. While I stood there, rain poured from the rooftop, drilling holes into the soft dirt below.

Ben pulled up in front of the house and opened his door to get out, but I waved for him to wait, ran down the sidewalk and got into the Cherokee. “No sense in us both getting wet.”

“Wow, Angel. You look great.” Ben leaned across the seat and kissed me on the cheek. “I’m lucky Ian stood you up.”

I ignored Ben’s comment. It cut too way close to the bone. I wondered again why Ian had broken our date, but made myself attend to Ben’s chatter about the kids, Ben’s work, and the weather, while he navigated the slick streets out of town then headed down the highway.

The local radio station spouted worst-case scenarios about a flash flood warning, roads closing and neighborhoods flooding. It probably boosted their ratings, and good for them if so, but I wasn’t concerned. Heavy rains went along with the autumn season here, just as they did in the spring. Rivers, creeks and ditches overflowed then receded just as quickly, and only out-of-towners took much notice of it.

During our conversation, it didn’t register which direction we were driving. But when we hit the black highway, Ben started fiddling with the radio controls, and I was slammed by a strange, backward sense of déjà vu. I’d been messing with the radio that night, too, and looked up to see the truck coming straight at us.

“Casey....”

I heard Ben’s voice from a far distance, as if I was sinking underwater and he was standing on a riverbank high above me, calling out my name.

“Are you all right?” He reached over and squeezed my hand. His hand felt burning hot against my icy fingers.

“No.” I wasn’t getting enough air, even though my lungs were squeezing and inflating way too fast, an accordion pumped by a monkey hopped up on speed. I gasped and gasped but I couldn’t catch my breath as it raced away from me. “Stop the car.”

“Angel, I can’t pull over here.”

Above Ben’s voice calling me by the pet name he’d used when we were dating, I heard Melody’s voice in my head, saying, “I can’t pull over, there’s nowhere—”

“Hang on. You’re having a panic attack. Breathe slow and deep. I’ll pull over as soon as I can.” I still heard his voice from ten feet away even though I knew he was right beside me, holding my hand. But after that first, burning contact, I didn’t feel anything. I only knew it because when I tried to pull away, I couldn’t.

Like a horror-struck moviegoer who couldn’t look away from the screen, I stared out the rain-streaked window, watching for the place we had run off the road. I knew I’d see churned-up earth, broken trees, skid marks. “Is this where—?”

But it had been three months now. Maybe the marks would be gone, the weeds grown back over the bare-scraped ground. My breathing slowed, slowed, slowed, and I could feel Ben’s hand holding mine again.

“It’s a little farther up ahead.” Ben slowed to the speed of a Sunday drive. “Do you want me to turn around? We could go to The Riverboat instead.”

“No. I want to see.” I was finally ready, though I had avoided this road ever since the accident. I had started in this direction when I’d tried to follow Ian to Birmingham, but my car bummed out before I got this far. And I’d been so heated by anger and the desperate need to see Ian, I hadn’t thought about this being the road...

“Here it is.” Ben slowed the car to a crawl, and with no other cars in sight, gave me the time I needed to see the visual marks of the accident. Still here, after all this time. A silent language that testified to those horrible moments when everything changed forever.

“God, Ben.” Panic filled my insides with adrenaline, urging me to run, to escape the accident I was about to relive again. I couldn’t escape it, because the signs made everything clear. Short, choppy black smears on the pavement—shuddering tires pushed faster than they could roll. Swirling parallel rows of quotation marks—our backward spin down the highway. A deep furrow of dug-up earth—our descent down the embankment.

I wanted to vomit. I wanted to run. I wanted to somehow turn the clock back. “Pull over.”

Ben pulled over onto a red-dirt-and-gravel verge just wide enough to get the Cherokee off the road. “Are you sure you want to see this?”

“I have to. Can you?”

“I already have.” He grabbed my clasped hands and twined his fingers through mine. “I came the next day. Watched them pull the SUV out and haul it to the police station. I followed the wrecker, looking at that twisted hunk of metal all the way there.”

Poor Ben. I hadn’t even thought about him, how he’d felt, what he’d done. “Was it... very bad?”

“Worse.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips together. I would not cry.

After a minute, we got out of the car. It had stopped raining for the moment, but the very air we breathed seemed full of water. Holding hands, we crossed the road then walked down