Angel Falls

She couldn’t smile back. “What do we do?”

He’d known they’d circle around to this question, which was, after all, the beginning. “The only moment of hope in this whole damned mess came when we said Julian’s name. ” He was surprised that his voice sounded so ordinary.

“Sí. Perhaps it is coincidence. ”

“Once, maybe. Twice—no way. The crying was a response. I’m sure of it. ”

“But we have said his name many times. I have told her the story of her marriage to that man so often I could say it in my sleep. Still, there is nada. ”

Liam sighed. These were the issues that had kept him up all last night, tossing and turning sleeplessly in his lonely bed. They had followed him into the light, plaguing him all day.

The measure of a man. That was what it came down to. At least that was the cul-de-sac at the end of his thoughts. “We’re going to have to try something else, Rosa. Something a little more extreme. She’s not responding to our voices. And I don’t think we have a lot of time. ”

He felt Rosa turn toward him, but he didn’t look at her. He stared instead at the hands in his lap, at the small gold wedding band he’d worn for ten years.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

He heard the worry in her voice, the tiny, halting hitch in the middle of the sentence, and he knew that she knew what he was going to say. “I’m going to call Julian True and ask him to come see her. Talk to her. ”

She gasped. “You cannot!”

He turned to her finally. Her cheeks were paper white; her dark eyes looked like burn holes in a sheet. “You know I have no choice. ”

She laughed. It was a brittle sound like the breaking of an antique glass Christmas ornament. “He is … dangerous. ”

“You think he was physically violent to her?”

“No, no. Of course not. The danger is in how much she loves—loved him. ”

Liam pretended not to be wounded by her mistake. “Do you think he still loves her?”

“He never did, I think. ” She twisted around so they were face-to-face. “You do not have to do this. God will waken Mikaela if that is His plan. You need to take care of su familia. That man, he could ruin everything. Mikaela made her choice a long time ago. You do not have to do this, Liam. ?

?

He wondered if she realized that she’d used his name. Strangely, that little intimacy comforted him as no touch ever could. “You and I, Rosa, we’re not kids. We know how easy it is to do the wrong thing. This is probably the clearest moment I’ve had in all my fifty years. I can call Julian and give my wife a chance at life. Or I can not call Julian and know that I was so afraid of losing Mikaela’s love that I let her die. ”

Rosa’s eyes filled with tears.

“I won’t be able to look myself—or my children—in the eye if I let fear keep me from doing what’s right. I am going to call Julian True. There’s a phone number for his agent in the pillowcase. ”

Rosa reached out, placed her hands on top of his. “Does she know, I wonder?” she said softly, gazing at him through watery eyes. “Does my Mikita know how lucky she is to have you?”

Liam knew he shouldn’t ask it, but he couldn’t help himself. “Did she love me, Rosa?”

She squeezed his hands. “Of course. ”

“Like she loved him?”

Rosa paused, and in that heartbeat’s hesitation, Liam saw the harrowing truth. “Sí,” she answered with a smile that was too bright, too fast.

Liam sighed. “Then I guess we have nothing to worry about. ”

Part Three

The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much. —AMELIA BARR, “THE BELLE OF BOWLING GREEN”

Chapter Twelve