AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Oh God.
A cold chill swept over her, almost causing her to shudder. It was even worse than the one she’d felt the other day when she’d seen her friend Bran getting yelled at by someone in another language, so angrily.
Angel was still talking. The knife was moving, but she couldn’t take her eyes off it. Because she’d seen it before in pictures. She’d heard about it, been told the history of it, and she was certain it was the same knife her mother had given to her first daughter, Beth, before her mother had to leave Beth to go to Iraq so long ago.
The way Angel brushed her hair back when she was nervous . . . Bliss remembered the tears that fell from her mom’s eyes when she told her about how Beth did that so much that she’d bought bows to pin back her hair.
The way Angel sometimes moved when an unfamiliar sound caught her attention . . .
The same way Bliss’s mom moved when the same thing happened . . .
Angel always wore contacts, kept her hair colored. She was always angry whenever Mom would ask her about her parents. . . .
The scars Angel had on the back of one hand, so fine they were almost invisible. When Bliss asked about them, Angel told her she’d gotten them when she was three and her father and sister had been killed. . . .
Oh God, she didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say.
How was she supposed to keep this to herself?
“Bliss, are you okay?” Angel asked, pulling the knife back, pushing it into the sheath at her belt. “You aren’t saying anything.”
Concern filled Angel’s voice.
Bliss could only shake her head. “You’re my best friend,” she whispered. “You should talk to Mom. . . .” She was screaming inside, so scared she was wrong, so certain she was right.
“We don’t have anything to talk about, Bliss,” Angel said then, but Bliss saw all the pain, and even anger, that filled her gaze. “My secrets aren’t her business. But they don’t endanger you. I’d never allow that.”
“Bliss!” The sound of her mom’s voice had Bliss jerking around to see her mother bearing down on them, her expression holding that “all business” look she could get. “Your father needs your help.”
Bliss jumped to her feet and ran to her mother. She knew her mom, knew how she could get, how protective she was. She caught up with her before she could step to the grass, where Angel would hear what was said even if Bliss whispered.
“Mom.” She stopped in front of her mother, seeing it now, how much Angel looked like her mother. The contacts and hair color fooled people. They stared at her eyes, not her face, Bliss realized. “If you really, really love me, Mom, you won’t be mean to her. Please, Mom. Please. Not this time.”
Her mother stared down at her then, her expression softening even as her lips thinned.
“Your dad needs help in the store, Bliss, before Uncle Rowdy and Aunt Kelly
get here.” Her voice lowered. “Tell your friend good-bye now and we’ll both go help him.”
A reprieve. It was just a reprieve and Bliss knew it, but it might give her time to figure this out, time to keep her mother from making a horrible mistake.
Turning, she saw Angel had risen, and she was staring back at Bliss’s mother with that same determined expression, but in Angel’s eyes Bliss saw the need and the anger. And she had no idea what to do.
Moving back to the picnic table and drawing Angel’s attention once again, she saw the pain, the hope, and the fears that filled her eyes now more clearly than she ever had before.
“Don’t leave,” Bliss demanded, certain that if Angel left then she’d lose her nerve for sure.
“I’ll be back, Bliss.” She glanced over her shoulder, her expression flickering with regret.
Bliss knew Angel wouldn’t be back soon, though, and there was no way to hold her there.
“I love you, Angel,” she said, knowing now why she loved the other woman, but the shock, the fear that lit Angel’s eyes broke her heart. “You’re my best friend. Always. And I love you.”
She threw her arms around Angel in a tight, fierce hug. She couldn’t let her leave without telling her. Not now. Not now that she knew.
Angel returned the hug and in it, Bliss was terribly afraid she felt good-bye. If Angel left, she might never come back. . . .
Trudging back to her mother, Bliss avoided her eyes, but she couldn’t avoid the truth. The truth that somehow, for some reason, someone had told her mother a terrible lie. The lie that her first daughter was dead. Because Beth Dane wasn’t dead, she was Angel.
