Free The Edge of Heaven by TERESA HILL Page A

me what?" What could there be for him to see?
    "You'll see," she insisted, disappearing into the house.
    He put the ladder and the empty boxes away, and ten minutes later they climbed into his truck. She directed him to a shop at the edge of downtown, a pretty, dainty-looking place called Nanette's Buds and Blossoms.
    "Flowers?" he asked.
    She frowned at him. "We could go back and string lights around the bushes in the front yard, if you'd rather."
    "No, flower shops are fine," he said.
    Emma reached into her purse and pulled out some money. "I called in an order. Would you mind picking them up? I'm thinking if I can hide from anyone who knows me for another two days, the whole town won't have to know my ex-boyfriend's been hitting me."
    "Sure," he said.
    He went in and asked the woman behind the counter, whom he soon learned was Nanette herself, a nosy-looking woman in her forties, for Emma's order. She came back with a simple spray of baby pink roses, tiny and delicate looking against the dark green leaves and the green tissue paper.
    "Sam and Rachel still in Cleveland with Ann and her baby?"
    "Yes," Sam said, extending the bill Emma had given him.
    "And the baby still hasn't come?" She made change without a break in conversation.
    "Not yet," he said, taking the flowers and Emma's money.
    The woman shook her head. "You tell them we'll be thinking of them. All of them and that baby."
    Small-town living, huh? Even the floral shop owner knew them and was worried about Ann's baby. Rye went back to the truck, climbed in, and gave Emma the flowers and her change.
    "Is that what you wanted?"
    "Yes. Perfect."
    "What's going on, Emma? Where are we going?"
    She gave him directions, little by little, until he realized she was taking him to the cemetery. They drove past row after row of graves, until she told him to park and got out of the truck, her steps getting slower and slower the closer she got to one particular spot under a big willow tree on the hill.
    He followed two steps behind her. She knelt down to clear away a few stray leaves, then tucked the flowers against the tiny white gravestone with a lamb carved on the top.
    The colors had his throat going tight, the stone so white, the flowers oh-so-soft pink.
    He didn't really want to know this.
    "Sam and Rachel had a baby once, a long time ago," she said.
    He stared down at the grave. They'd named her Hope. She would have been nineteen in the spring. The gravestone showed that she died on the same day she was born, a long time ago.
    Damn.
    He couldn't say anything at first, and when he could speak without sounding like he was choking, all he could think of was, "They must have been young."
    "Eighteen and twenty," Emma said quietly.
    "What happened?"
    "Car accident. Icy roads. The baby was born too soon. Sam was driving, and he blames himself. They did a hysterectomy to keep Rachel from bleeding to death, so there were no more children after that, something Rachel blames herself for. They've been through a lot, and they' re both very strong, but... If something happens to Ann's baby, they need to be together. They need each other more than I need them right now, and I don't want you to think badly of them because of that."
    Rye nodded, not sure what to say.
    He and Emma had drifted together once more, her arm against his, her hand slipping into his.
    He just stared down at the gravestone, and a split second before he would have turned away, he went back to the date again. It happened nearly nineteen years ago.
    March 12.
    What happened in March nineteen years ago?
    He counted back in his head, looking for some kind of way to mark the time....
    It was when Sam came to see him. A stranger, he'd thought then. A stranger who was supposed to be his brother.
    So this Sam had just lost his baby girl, when Rye's brother had come to find him. Both things would have happened within the same month.
    Would a man do that? Lose a daughter, then try to find a long-lost brother? Did that make