The Snow Angel Read online

  “Sarah,” I said, trying to hide my confusion. “What are you doing here?”

  The pretty woman before me reached out and put a hand on my arm. “We missed you at Bible study today,” she said.

  Sarah Kempers was short and spirited, with a thousand-watt smile that she wasn’t afraid to offer lavishly. Some would call her plump, but I thought she was faultlessly proportioned and disarmingly cute—it was next to impossible to be defensive in her presence. It didn’t hurt that she was the pastor’s wife. The friendly couple practically oozed benevolence.

  “Oh,” I said distractedly, trying to come up with an excuse that wasn’t a blatant lie. “I guess I forgot.”

  “I called a few times today, but no one answered. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “I was … out,” I fumbled. “Bible study must have slipped my mind.”

  She bit her bottom lip for a moment. “It’s not like you to forget, Rachel. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Sarah seemed genuinely worried, and a faint smile tugged at my mouth in spite of the fear that had gripped me only moments before. “I’m fine,” I said. “It means a lot to me that you would stop by.”

  “It’s no bother.” She grinned back. “I guess we’re just such a tight-knit group that it’s painfully obvious when one of us is missing. We missed you today.”

  Although I was furious with myself for letting something as important as my weekly study slip, it was wonderful to hear that they had missed me. “I’ll be there next week,” I assured her, and I promised myself that no matter what was happening at Max’s shop, I would sneak out for the next Bible study. I couldn’t afford to make such a huge blunder again.

  “We’ll look forward to it,” Sarah said. Then, looking past me, her smile seemed to harden a bit. It was an almost imperceptible change, and I wondered if maybe the sun had slanted just so and altered the shadows on her face. But before I could contemplate it further, I heard footsteps on the tile of the entry hall. Lily loved Sarah and I knew she would want to say “hi” if she was done vacuuming.

  “Lily, honey, are you done with—?” My breath caught in my throat as Cyrus slid an arm around my waist.

  “Done with what?” Cyrus asked, looking down at me. He smelled faintly of exhaust and the overpowering floral air freshener that clung to everything in the dealership offices. In spite of a long day at work, his suit looked clean and starched, and his eyes were bright and curious. “What was Lily doing?”

  “Her homework,” I said, thankful that the house was silent. She had stopped vacuuming. I just hoped that she had put the appliance away. Cyrus couldn’t stand it when things were left lying around the house. “When did you get home?” I asked, hoping that the question sounded light and cheerful. He seemed to be in an unusually good mood, but I knew from personal experience how quickly that could change.

  “Just a minute ago. I saw the Kemperses’ van parked on the street and thought I’d come say hello.”

  “Hi, Cyrus,” Sarah said. Her voice was perfectly normal, and I decided I must have imagined the sudden steel of her smile.

  “Hello, Sarah. What brings you to the Price home today?”

  Please don’t tell him, I silently begged, terrified that she would explain that I had missed Bible study. I couldn’t think of a single plausible excuse, and besides, Cyrus always seemed to know when I was lying. If Sarah said that I was a no-show, it would come out—all of it—and he would force me to stop seeing Max. Though I had spent twelve years without him, now that he was a part of my life again I couldn’t imagine losing him. And Max was just a piece of the whole. The freedom, the acceptance that I had known in just one short week of working at Eden Custom Tailoring made me feel like a new person. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the way things had been.

  Sarah’s eyes found mine and something unspoken passed between us. It startled me, the brief intensity of her stare, and I held my breath as she turned her attention to my husband.

  “Actually, I’m just returning Rachel’s book,” Sarah said.

  I glanced down and found that she was holding out a small, paperback study guide. I hadn’t even noticed that she had anything in her hands.

  “She forgot it at Bible study this morning.”

  “She’d forget her head if it wasn’t screwed on.” Cyrus laughed, taking the book from Sarah. “Thanks for bringing it by. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Sarah shrugged. “But, hey, I don’t want to interrupt family time. You guys have a great night.”

  “Thanks, Sarah.” There was a bit of a wobble in my voice but I coughed to cover it up. “I mean, really. Thank you.”

  Sarah turned around at the bottom of the steps and gave me a quick, searching look. Then she laughed her characteristic, sunny laugh and waved good-bye to the two of us standing side by side. We must have cut a strange silhouette hovering just inside the door. I wondered if she could tell how stiff I was, how aware of the heft of Cyrus’s body next to mine.

  “I’m here for you, Rachel,” Sarah said.

  Somehow, those five words brimmed with meaning.

  CHAPTER 5

  RACHEL

  October 8

  Cyrus closed the front door with a soft click. “Looks like an interesting book,” he said, turning the study guide over in his hands. It was one I’d never seen before.

  I made a vague, noncommittal noise and tried to calm my racing heart. Being with Cyrus when I couldn’t read his mood made me feel like I was surrounded by land mines, and I was so unsettled by my encounter with Sarah that I didn’t feel up to the intricate dance required to evade the many pitfalls and traps that marked life with my husband. His face was a mask of nonchalance, but I didn’t know if his deliberate calm was a ruse, or if he truly didn’t suspect anything devious in Sarah’s appearance on our front step. I hoped more than anything that he wouldn’t quiz me about the content of the book. I had no idea what it was or why Sarah had brought it for me.

  “Supper will be ready in a minute,” I said, trying to direct a smile his way. It came out brittle and uneven. But Cyrus wasn’t looking at me anyway; he was flipping through the pages of the book.

  “‘There is no fear in love,’” Cyrus read, quoting from the back cover copy. “‘But perfect love casts out fear.’” He snorted. “What are you afraid of, Rachel?”

  The question caught me so off-guard I almost answered him. You. But that wasn’t entirely true. I was afraid of many things, but nothing so much as the sickening thought that I was the person he said I was. Good-for-nothing. Un-loved. I could only imagine the things he would say if he knew that I had been lying to him for the span of an entire week. I stifled a shiver and Cyrus mistook it as evidence of my cowardice.

  “Your book is wrong,” he said with a smirk. “Love doesn’t cast out fear. Power does.” Cyrus took a quick step toward me and I flinched. But my apprehension was un-warranted, because all he did was reach around me, his chest pressing against mine in a cheap imitation of the intimacy we knew for such a brief time so many years ago. I held my breath as he yanked open the top drawer of the narrow desk in the hallway. Closed my eyes and willed my hands to stop shaking when I realized what he was doing.

  Even though we lived in a small town where crime was virtually nonexistent, Cyrus insisted on keeping a gun in the hall drawer. Just in case, he said, but I had a hard time envisioning any scenario where that gun would be a welcome addition to our home. When Lily was little, he kept the drawer locked with a small silver key that he hid on top of the wide, wooden frame of the hall mirror. But when she turned ten, he showed her the drawer and the gun, and warned her to never, ever touch it unless there was grave danger. Lily was young, but the vein of iron in her daddy’s voice ensured that she gave the hall desk a wide berth whenever she had to walk through the entryway. It was a small consolation to me that my daughter seemed more afraid of Cyrus’s choice of protection than whatever it was he intended t
o protect her from.

  Now, as my husband lifted the weapon out of the drawer, he did something he had never done before. He took me roughly by the wrist and slapped the gun in my palm. “This should cast out your fear,” he said.

  The metal was icy cold and much heavier than I had imagined it would be. Though the gun had collected dust in our entry for over a decade, I had never touched it or even opened the drawer where it lay in wait. “I don’t want this!” I gasped, trying to give it back to him.

  But Cyrus took a step back, and if I hadn’t curled my fingers around the notched grip it would have fallen to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” I met my husband’s eyes, trying to discern his motives, his strange reasoning for forcing his gun into my hands after all these years. I half expected this to be some sort of test, for Cyrus to be watching my reaction with cool calculation. Surely he knew that I had missed Bible study, and this elaborate masquerade was just a ruse to throw me off-guard. But Cyrus’s face wasn’t hard. I knew the set of his jaw when he was angry, the way his dark brows knit together in the moment before he exploded. This was different. The half-smile on his face bespoke amusement, not anger.

  “I’m going away,” he said. “I thought you should know how to use that thing.”

  “Away?” I parroted lamely.

  “Used cars are hot right now,” Cyrus said with an easy shrug. “I bought a pair of quality trucks from some guy in California. Jason and I are going to fly into LA and hang out for a while, then drive home when we feel like it.”

  “You usually hire men to drive for you,” I said. Then I shook my head, startled that I dared to question him. I decided I was in a sort of shock. I had expected my husband’s fury—not this.

  Fortunately, my comment didn’t stoke Cyrus’s anger. “I feel like doing it myself this time,” he said. “I need a vacation.”

  I gave a meek nod and tried to carefully hand back the gun. But instead of taking it from me, Cyrus merely turned it in my hand.

  “The safety is here,” he said, flicking a tiny square catch with his fingernail. Then he put his thumb on the hammer and pretended to cock it. “Pull this back, and then all you have to do is point and shoot. An idiot could do it.”

  Our eyes locked for a second, and I understood that the idiot was me. It was always me. “I don’t think I could use it,” I said, ducking my head so I didn’t have to watch his gaze harden and frost over.

  “What if you need to? What if something happens while I’m gone?”

  “You’ve been gone before,” I reminded him, studying my feet and saying each word with precise caution. Sometimes I believed that if I moved slowly and spoke softly, I would be able to avoid the tripwires that were scattered all over our seemingly harmless conversations. “I’ve never needed this.”

  Cyrus took the gun from me with a derisive grunt. “You’ve never brought home a book about fear before.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but stopped myself before I ruined the tenuous calm. We hadn’t fought, not really, and I knew better than to push my luck. Instead, I watched out of the corner of my eye as Cyrus clicked the safety catch a second time and put the gun back in the table drawer. Then he tossed the book beside it and shut the two incongruous items away together. “Worthless waste of paper,” he mumbled as he walked away.

  I watched his retreat from beneath lowered lashes, and when he disappeared up the stairs to change out of his suit, I whispered the words that I had almost let slip. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  I hadn’t even seen the title of the book, but from the passage he had read I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Bible study Sarah had brought me wasn’t at all about fear.

  It was a book about love.

  “Cyrus is going to be gone for a while.” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice, but Max looked up sharply all the same.

  “Where is he going?”

  I feigned nonchalance. “He’s picking up some used cars.”

  “Shouldn’t take too long. Here, spread this out for me.” Max motioned toward a bolt of jet-black silk that we were transforming into a formal, double-breasted suit coat.

  Grabbing the smooth rectangle of cloth, I unwrapped several yards and let it pool on the table.

  “It’ll just be nice not to have to worry about tiptoeing around the house for a few days.”

  “You haven’t told him about our arrangement yet?”

  I snuck a peek at Max and found myself trapped in his knowing gaze. “No,” I said, deflating a little. “Of course not. He can’t know.”

  Max opened his mouth. Shut it again. Then he sighed and stood up straight, pressing his fists to the small of his back and rolling out his broad shoulders. “Rachel, Rachel,” he murmured. “Will you ever be done?”

  He wasn’t talking about the suit.

  In the week that I had been working with Max, he had never pried into the particulars of my marriage or brought up the strange and heartbreaking edict that Cyrus had passed almost immediately after I said, “I do.” It was the elephant in the room, the boulder between us that kept everything sweet and surfacey instead of deep and meaningful like it had been with the Wevers when I was a kid. I didn’t like pretending that nothing was wrong, but in all the years that I had been with Cyrus I had never spoken to anyone about what it was like to be his wife. My secrets were buried deep, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to resurrect them.

  And yet, Max’s one question was teeming with memories. It unleashed a barrage of dangerous emotions that threw me off guard. Will you ever be done? The first time that Max said a version of those words to me was on my wedding day.

  I was eighteen years old when I fell in love with Cyrus, and nineteen when we were married. It was a hasty affair, and people were right when they assumed that it was a shotgun wedding. But there was never any evidence of our indiscretion—I lost our first baby to miscarriage only a few weeks after Cyrus and I said our vows. Sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if things would have been different if that baby we never knew had never been. Would I have married Cyrus? Or would I have listened to Max and run as fast and as far as I could?

  Max and Elena tried to talk me out of marrying Cyrus up until the last possible moment. At first my surrogate father had even refused to walk me down the aisle, saying that my real dad deserved the honor. But my dad hated Cyrus, and the feeling was more than mutual. I knew that I could have one or the other—my dad or the love of my life—not both. I had already made my decision, and I would have given myself away to Cyrus if that’s what it came down to. In the end, Max relented, but standing in the back of the church as we watched the bridesmaids disappear one by one, he made one last-ditch effort to convince me that I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

  “He’s controlling,” Max whispered. His voice was tense and urgent.

  “Cyrus’s not controlling,” I said, patting Max on the arm. We were linked at the elbows, our heads bent together as if we were having a final, tender moment on the most momentous day of my life. Anyone who saw us would think we were sharing a dream for my future. “He’s protective.”

  “He’s manipulative.” Max all but growled.

  “He wants what’s best for me.”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  I laughed a little at that. Cyrus wasn’t dangerous. He was exciting and passionate and the perfect amount of wild. There was something brooding and untamed just below the surface, but I loved that side of him. He made me feel intoxicated. Alive.

  It seemed that Max could read my mind. He squeezed my hand. “Rachel, honey, I don’t trust him.”

  “I trust him with my life.” The words rolled off my tongue, but even as I said them I wondered if they were true. I was certainly attracted to Cyrus, and we loved each other enough to make a baby, but there was only one man I trusted with my life and he was standing beside me. But I couldn’t say any of that. Not when the string quartet began to play the Wedding March and the congregation rose t
o their feet for my entrance.

  I took a deep breath and snuck a peek at Max. He was devouring me with his eyes, his expression pained and desperate. I saw the storm that raged inside him, but just when I feared he was going to whisk me out of the church and away from the man I was about to marry, he pulled me into a rough embrace. “You let me know when you’re done,” he whispered into my hair.

  It was a bewildering statement, but I didn’t have time to ponder it. The doors to the sanctuary opened for us, and Max and I began our slow march down the aisle.

  The processional seemed to take a lifetime, and the closer I got to Cyrus the farther away I felt from everything I knew. I wasn’t regretting my decision as much as I was stunned that I had chosen to ignore Max and Elena—and my father—when they tried to share their reservations about Cyrus Price. What if they were right? What if instead of wedded bliss my future only held a time when this would all be over? When I would be done?

  It couldn’t be. Everyone else had to be wrong. I didn’t deserve Cyrus, he was too good for a blue-collar girl like me. A girl who came from such brokenness. And still, there he stood at the front of the church, watching me come with a lopsided, knowing smirk. I blushed at the fire in his eyes, the surfer-boy sweep of his sandy hair, and the sharp line of his angled jaw. He was beautiful, and he was mine.

  By the time Max and I reached the end of the long aisle, I was nearly bursting with anticipation. Marrying Cyrus was my own fairytale come true, and Max’s words were all but forgotten when my groom reached for my hand. But before Max let me go, he leaned toward Cyrus and gave him a sort of one-armed embrace. The three of us were pulled into a huddle, a place where the only thing we could hear was the sound of our own breathing. I’m sure it was a touching sight for all of our family and friends gathered in the pews.

  It wasn’t touching from where I stood. Max glared at Cyrus and Cyrus glared back. Then my gray-haired defender gave my soon-to-be husband a crisp smile and said, “I’m watching you.”