Angel Falls (Angel Falls Series, #1)

by Babette de Jongh

  “Aunt Casey.”

  I sat up abruptly, banging my forehead against Ian’s with an audible crack. I pushed Ian to one side of the couch and scooted out from under him. I held out my arms for Amy, who stood uncertainly in the doorway, outlined by the hall light.

  Somehow, I made my voice work. “Hey, what’s the matter? Come here.”

  Amy crept forward, clutching her security blanket, thumb securely in mouth, a wary expression on her face. Skirting Ian’s outstretched legs, she climbed into my lap. “Who’s that?” She pointed at him with her little finger without taking her thumb out of her mouth.

  She’d seen Ian before. Probably knew his name. She just didn’t know him in this context, in her house, lying on top of her babysitter-honorary aunt. “This is my friend, Ian.”

  “Hi, Amy.” Ian held a hand toward her, but she only curled closer to me, and he dropped his hand onto his lap after a second. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “You were kissing my Aunt Casey,” she accused. “You were on top of her.”

  Ian cleared his throat. “Well, Amy, we’re...” his voice trailed away and he sent a desperate glance my way.

  “We’re really good friends,” I finished for him. “We were kissing because we were glad to see each other.”

  She turned in my lap and cupped my face in her small hands. “You don’t kiss my daddy like that.”

  I sent another silent prayer of thanks up through the ceiling. Amy, unknowing, had said exactly the right thing.

  Ian stood and held a hand out. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  To my everlasting surprise, she bolted from my lap and took his hand. “Yes, please. I’m so thirsty. I dreamed I was living in the desert.”

  Ian took Amy’s hand and cast another glance my way. I nodded toward the kitchen. Together, they left the room. “Was it a nightmare,” he asked in a serious tone, “or only a dream?”

  I sat on the couch, listening to their voices.

  “It was a horrible nightmare,” Amy told him. “There were prickly cactus plants, and big orange snakes that chased me all over the place.”

  Ian asked Amy where the glasses were. He chatted her up to the grind of the ice dispenser, and then at her direction led her back to her bedroom. Again, I listened to the conversation as he tucked her in, and started the bedtime music again.

  He would be a wonderful father.

  My foolish heart envisioned a future with him tucking our children into bed while I waited for him to come back and make love to me.

  And I didn’t even want children. At least, not yet.

  Ian came back into the living room. “Thank God she got thirsty when she did, and not fifteen minutes later.”

  “I guess we’d better stick to talking.” I patted the couch beside me.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Ian sat and took my hand in his.

  “Okay.” I took a breath and let it out. “Where do we start?”

  Ian cut to the chase, completely skipping over Bianca’s midnight-kitchen-appearance. “I’m selling the newspaper. Bianca and her husband are colleagues of mine, and as you’ve probably figured out by now, they’re buying it. We had just signed the papers when I saw you at the realty office.”

  “Oh.” My heart stopped beating, my lungs quit working, and I doubled over from what felt like a punch to the solar plexus. He wasn’t just planning to sell the newspaper at some possible future date that might not occur. He’d already done it. “So that means...”

  “Sweetheart.” Ian stroked my back, but I didn’t feel it, not really. “I never meant to stay. I buy failing newspapers, revive and flip them. Then I move on and repeat the process in another place. I’ve already bought another paper in South Carolina. I’m sorry.”

  I clenched my hands against my belly to keep my guts from falling out. A meaningless fling with the curvaceous Bianca would have been better than this.

  He ran a hand down my back in a soothing gesture that didn’t soothe me, not at all. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “So, you’re leaving.” Why had he come here tonight and wrapped me in his arms like I meant something to him? Why had he called me sweetheart, and kissed me like he’d been starving for me? Why had he made me fall in love with him all over again when he’d been planning to leave all along?

  “I had to break our date that night because her flight had been cancelled. She’d come to see the newspaper, and ended up staying at my house because—”

  “Do you think that matters now?” I stiffened, pulled away, shut down. But he didn’t seem to notice. He stroked my back as if I were a cat or dog who’d be grateful for any show of affection. “You’re leaving. That’s all that matters.” Every slide of his magic fingers on my skin made me angrier than I already was. How dare he? How dare he treat me with such tenderness when all he’d ever meant to do was leave?

  “Casey, please, this doesn’t have to change—”

  “Stop touching me!” I shoved his hand away.

  He didn’t try to touch me again, but let his hand hover over my back in a way I could still feel, damn him. “The deal in South Carolina closes next week. I usually move right away, but this time I’ll stay in Angel Falls until the South Carolina paper is officially—”

  “Move today.” I jerked upright, stood and pivoted toward him like a wooden marionette who’d just had her strings pulled. “Leave as soon as you can.”

  “Casey, honey, please.” His quiet, reasonable tone made me want to pick up the nearest sharp object and hurl it at his head.

  “Please what?” I backed away from him as if he were holding out a poisonous snake. “Please let you fuck me even though you’re planning to leave? Please admit that I’ve fallen in love with you even though you...” I choked on the words, and turned away before he could see the hurt I knew was plain on my face.

  “Casey, honey, it’s just business. It doesn’t have to mean anything about us.” He stood and came toward me but I kept backing up, always a step away from him.

  “You meant to leave from the very beginning.” I skirted the piano and edged into the entry hall. “You had a chance to buy the house you’re renting, and you turned it down. I can’t believe you’d suck me into thinking we had a relationship, knowing it was a lie, all along.”

  “Sweetheart, it was ne’er a lie.” His Scottish brogue had deepened, the low tones reflecting the pain I felt, as if he felt it himself. But how could he feel pain over this? It was all his doing. It had been his choice from the beginning. Stumbling against the closed front door, I wrapped my fingers around the cold knob.

  He put his hands on my shoulders and tried to pull me into his embrace. “Sweetheart, please don’t do this.”

  I shrugged away, turned my back, rattled the damn doorknob that seemed to be stuck. “Why won’t this stupid thing open?”

  “We can still see each other on weekends.” He hugged me from behind, and his heart hammered against my back.

  My bones weren’t connected anymore, and one deep breath would have me collapsing on the floor like a broken doll. “Why does God hate me?” I wailed to the ceiling.

  “I’ll drive here every weekend.” Ian kept trying to wrap me in his arms while I squirmed away and fumbled with the deadbolt.

  Finally, I yanked the door open, taking comfort from the blast of air that punched its cold fist through my nightgown. “Leave now, Ian. Leave now, before I say something really nasty.”

  “Casey, don’t shut me out.” He hugged me close in the doorway while the chill night air flapped and fluttered my nightgown against my legs. “Let’s talk about this. We can figure something out.”

  I shoved him away, though all I really wanted was for him to hold me close again. “Oh?” My voice dripped sarcasm. I stepped backward onto the concrete porch, feeling its cold, hard surface scrape against the soles of my bare feet. “You mean, you’ll change your mind and stay if I ask you? You’ll back out on the deal you just made and buy that big-ass house you’re re
nting? You’ll marry me and stay here in Angel Falls to make babies and live happily ever after?”

  He let go of me. “Lass, be reasonable. I’m only doing the job I came here to do. We can still see each other—”

  “On weekends, yeah. I heard that part.” I’d have been shivering from the cold if my anger hadn’t been heating me from the inside. “We both know from experience how well long-distance relationships turn out, don’t we?” I took another step back.

  He stepped forward. “We can make it work if we want to.”

  “Wanting isn’t enough.” I backed to the edge of the porch. “You have to leave.”

  He stepped forward again, as close as he could get without touching me. “Please don’t be this way. Let’s—”

  My throat tightened, as if he’d grabbed it with his long fingers and squeezed. But he wasn’t even touching me. He seemed to know now that I was beyond his reach. I couldn’t step back any farther, but I turned my face away from him. “Just go.”

  He walked down the steps and stood on the long sidewalk looking up at me. “If I call you tomorrow, will you talk to me?”

  “I don’t know.” I went back to the door and stood there, holding the knob. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  He put his hands in his pockets, the gesture unconsciously self-protective. “Casey, I’m still trying to figure out what I want. I—”

  “Don’t waste your time trying to figure out what you want,” I warned him. “You may not get it anyway.” Then I went inside, shut the door, and slid the bolt home.

  His car door slammed, he drove away, and I realized I still hadn’t given him a chance to explain why that woman had been at his house late at night, wearing a slinky black robe.

  And I didn’t care, or at least, I shouldn’t, because it didn’t matter anymore. Ian was leaving me, just as I’d left Ben all those years ago. This time, I was finding out how it felt to be the one left behind. But I knew something I hadn’t known back then. I knew the chances of making a long-distance relationship work were zero to nil.

  I felt drained of emotion when I turned off the lights and went back to bed. Some part of me had died and gone on to another place, leaving a dry, empty shell. I crawled under the covers and closed my eyes, not caring whether I talked to Ian tomorrow. Not caring why he’d taken that woman to his house, or whether we ever got the chance to talk again.

  None of it mattered, if he wasn’t going to stay.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Saturday morning, my first waking thought was of Ian, but I pushed it away. Pushed him away. There was no point in torturing myself over him anymore. If he was determined to leave, I was determined to forget him as soon as possible.

  I had more immediate, if much smaller, problems, such as how to get out of the little-girl-sandwich I’d woken up in. Amy backed up to me from the front, Maryann pressed against me from behind. I managed to wiggle out without waking them both by sliding out from the top like pulling a hand out of a glove, then crawling down the channel between their bodies.

  Waking them wouldn’t have been a serious tragedy, but at least I could have a cup of coffee in peace before the onslaught of children demanding breakfast. I walked past Jake’s room and looked inside. He wouldn’t wake until after noon without determined intervention. He lay sprawled under a heap of covers, extremities sticking out of the rounded pile like so many toothpicks from a marshmallow.

  I turned on the coffee maker, tightened the sash on my robe and headed out to get the paper. I wasn’t going to read the stupid thing, but I had to bring it inside to toss into the recycle bin. I should suggest to Ben that they get a parrot, so they could at least line the cage with newsprint. Now that the Informer was available online and even had its own Facebook page, I saw no earthly use for the printed version.

  When I came back inside, the phone was ringing, and I snatched it up right away. If it hadn’t already woken the kids, I didn’t want it to. “Hello?”

  “Casey, it’s Ian. Don’t hang up.”

  My heart flipped over and started beating way too fast, a flock of pigeons fighting to get out of my chest. “I won’t hang up.”

  “When can we talk?”

  “We’re talking right now.”

  “When can we get together? I don’t want to do this over the phone.”

  “Do what? What are you planning to do that you didn’t do last night? You’ve already told me you’re leaving. What else is there?”

  A long silence stretched out, and I envisioned Ian counting to ten, hanging onto his temper by a thread. Good.

  “Sweetheart, I know you’re angry.”

  I snorted.

  “You have every right to be mad at me. I should have told you from the beginning that I didn’t intend to stay in Angel Falls.”

  I didn’t say anything, which led to another long silence. I hoped he was pulling his hair out.

  “When does Ben get home?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “Afternoon.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “I don’t think—”

  But I was talking to myself. He’d already hung up.

  *

  “Okay, kids.” I pulled into the driveway of the empty house by the canal and cut the engine. “You can open your eyes now.”

  “Whose house is this?” Jake asked.

  “We’ll talk about that in a minute.” I unbuckled Amy’s car seat. “Get out, everybody.”

  I carried Amy to the front stoop and set her onto her feet so I could unlock the door. Everyone followed me inside.

  “Wow.” Maryann’s voice echoed off the bare walls. “This is nice.”

  Jake gave me a sidelong look. “Whose house is this?”

  “Yours, if y’all and your daddy like it. What would you think about that?”

  Jake scoffed. “You mean move away from Nicky and all my friends in the neighborhood? No way.”

  “Your friends are only a bike-ride away.”

  “But I love my room at home,” Maryann whined.

  Amy skipped across the living room floor and examined the pocket door between the living room and the dining room. “Look, it slides.”

  They wandered the first floor, peeking into doorways, looking out windows.

  “Look, Jake,” Maryann squealed from the kitchen. “The back yard is huge.”

  “That big tree looks good for climbing,” I said. “Maybe your dad would build y’all a tree house.”

  “Tree house!” Amy shrieked, enjoying the echo in the empty rooms downstairs.

  Maryann pulled at my sleeve. “Can I go upstairs?”

  “Sure. Just for fun, why don’t you decide which bedroom you’d like best?”

  Jake pushed past her and rushed up the stairs two at a time. “I’m getting first pick!”

  “No fair,” she screeched, pelting up the stairs behind him. “You meanie, I get first pick.”

  I followed more slowly, holding Amy’s hand. “If you and your daddy decide you want to move, he can help you choose which room you want.”

  Jake poked his head out the open doorway of the room he’d just entered. “I don’t want to move.”

  “Me, neither.” Maryann followed Jake into one of the bedrooms overlooking the canal. “But if we do, I want this room. Aunt Casey,” she called. Amy and I made it up the stairs and joined them. “It’s bigger than my room at home, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Much bigger. And look,” I opened the lid on a built-in window seat. “A toy box.”

  Jake went on to explore the rest of the upstairs. “I found my room,” he yelled from across the hall. “Come see.”

  We followed his voice to the largest of the four rooms. It had a dormer window on the street side and another that looked out at the branches of a large magnolia. Across from the dormer window, built-in bookshelves filled the entire wall.

  “Look at this.” Jake opened a small door about three feet tall, revealing a crawl-space to the att
ic. “I could hide stuff in here.”

  “Which room do you like best?” I asked Amy. She’d been unusually silent.

  Her answer was a shrug.

  “I think I know which one you’d like best.” I took her hand and led her to the second bedroom that faced the canal. It was connected to Maryann’s room by a shared bath.

  “It’s almost the same as the one Maryann likes. See the window seat? It makes a good toy box. What do you think?”

  Amy stuck a thumb into her mouth and shrugged again.

  “We could paint the walls pink. You could put stars on the ceiling just like you have in your room now.”

  Amy took her thumb out of her mouth with a wet-sounding pop. “The very same stars?”

  “Yes, the very same stars. We could take them from your old room and bring them here.”

  Amy sucked her thumb again for a moment, her fair brows knitted. “My toys, too?”

  “We could bring everything in your house, if your daddy and y’all decide to live here.”

  Amy looked undecided, sucking furiously on her thumb. She tugged the hem of my shirt as if yanking the bell-pull of an old-time hotel. I knelt down and put my arms around her. She pulled my ear until I brought my head close to her mouth.

  “But how will mommy find us when she comes home?” Amy asked in a small voice. “How will she know where we are?”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” I looked to see whether Jake or Maryann had heard. It seemed they hadn’t.

  “Can we go see the back yard?” Maryann asked.

  “Sure. You two go ahead. Amy and I will catch up.”

  Jake started down the stairs. “I want to go in the canal.”

  “Me, too.” Amy pulled my hand, her forlorn question forgotten for the moment, so we followed the two older kids down the stairs.

  “We’ll stand at the back of the yard and look down.” I had played in the canal as a child. So had every other kid I’d known. It was a slippery, forbidden place dug twenty feet deep and at least as wide, out of the limestone the town of Angel Falls was built on. Built for drainage so long ago that no one I knew remembered when, it snaked through the city and emptied into the Black River. The canal is often a quiet, magical place where birds flit through the leafy canopy overhead and small animals drink from the circular pools dug by decades of swirling currents of rainwater. Other times, a maelstrom of white-capped waves pound through the channel, charging toward release at the river’s edge.