Angel Falls

Rosa leaned down and touched Mikaela’s still, white face. “I watched you fall in love with him, this man with the face of an angel. I knew there would be fireworks at the start of it—how could it be otherwise? I knew, too, that there would be pain at the end of it. Enough to last a lifetime.

“I told you that he was no good for you, but you laughed and told me not to worry. As if a mama could stop worrying so easily. ”

She let her fingertips linger on her daughter’s cool, sunken cheek. “You thought I did not understand, but I was the only one who could. ”

Rosa gave her daughter a small, sad smile. “You promised that you would not make my mistake. But I knew, querida, I saw it in your eyes. You already had. ”

Chapter Ten

The pain of each new sentence was sharp and sudden, a rock thrown through a high glass window. Liam sat very still in his chair, trying to draw meaning out of every pause, trying to hear the story that wasn’t being told as well.

It was no ordinary love that Mikaela had felt for Julian True. That came as no surprise. How could anything about that man be ordinary?

Diamonds and agates, once again.

He wondered why he had let Mikaela hold such secrets. It wasn’t only Julian’s identity; it was a hundred smaller things. The prom she hadn’t gone to, the memories she hadn’t shared. It was her. He’d been content with so damned little. He’d thought what mattered was that he loved her, that he made her smile and laugh again. Why had he never asked himself what fueled her dreams?

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sp; Probably, deep down, he’d been afraid of her answer. And so, afraid of the truth, he’d powered along in silence, comforted by the dull softness of words unspoken, questions unasked.

But what about now that he knew? He didn’t know if he could believe in her love. Not now that he’d seen what she was hiding. He didn’t know if the feel of her body next to his would generate any heat.

Rosa turned around suddenly, and Liam realized that she had stopped talking. The room was deathly quiet now; the only noise was the steady drone of the monitors. “She has not blinked again, Dr. Liam. ”

He stood and crossed the short distance to the bed. This time, when he looked down at his wife, he saw a stranger. Kayla. He picked up her hand, held it gently. “She never told me any of this, Rosa. Why did I let her keep such secrets?”

Rosa stood beside him, the snow-white cap of her head angled close to his shoulder. “You come from money,” she said simply. “You are a doctor—from Harvard. You cannot understand what life is like for people like us. Mikaela had such big dreams, but no way to make them come true. Even her own papa, he did not show her any love at all. ” She turned to him. “I first came to Sunville to pick apples when I was a little girl. Mi padre, he died when I was eleven. Of a cold sore. There was no money to buy medicines, and no doctor to help him. I can still remember the pickers’ camps—especially when the air smells of ripe fruit. I can smell the tin-roofed shack with no indoor plumbing, where we lived, ten people in a room this size. I remember the feel of old mattresses, and the heat. This I remember most of all, the heat.

“I found my way out with a man. He wasn’t my man—that was my great sin—but I didn’t care. I loved him. Madre de Dios, I loved him in the desperate way that women like me always love another woman’s husband. ” She leaned over the bed rail and gazed down at Mikaela. “I am afraid I taught my daughter that a woman will wait forever for the man she loves. ”

Liam could tell by the sad end note of Rosa’s sentence that she was finished. She turned slightly and looked up at him again.

“Lo siento,” she said awkwardly, smoothing the hair away from her face. “I am sure this is more than you wish to know. Perhaps now you will think badly of me—”

“Ah, Rosa, don’t you think I know how it feels to love someone who belongs to another?”

“She married you. ”

“Yes, and she stayed with me, and we built something. Over time I forgot … things that I should have remembered. But I always knew, deep down, I knew. There was a part of Mike’s heart that was off-limits to me. But I loved her so damned much, and Jacey, and then Bret. And she seemed happy. Maybe she even was, in a I-lost-it-all-and-this-is-what-I-have-left sort of way. ”

“There was more to her happiness than that. This I know. ”

Liam gazed down at his beautiful wife. “I didn’t even know her. ”

Rosa didn’t say anything.

“Mike?” He said her name without the usual tenderness. This time he spoke to her as if she were a stranger. “Enough of this. Come back to us. You and I have a lot to talk about. ”

“Nada,” Rosa said, wringing her hands together. “Maybe we were wrong about the blinking. Maybe it was wishful thinking. ”

“Believe me, I wish she’d blinked when she heard my name. ” He leaned closer. “Julian True. Julian True. Julian True. ”

“Nada. ”

“Keep talking to her, Rosa. You left off when she fell in love with him. ”

She frowned. “The rest of the story, it is filled with much pain for her. Maybe it will make the coma worse. ”