Free Angel Falls by Kristin Hannah

thought his wife had spoken, but her hand was limp as death and her eyes were sealed. Slowly he turned to see Jacey standing in the open doorway. She was holding a cake.
    “Hi, honey.” He climbed awkwardly out of the bed and slumped into his chair.
    She moved toward him, her long black hair swinging gently against the oversized flannel work shirt that swallowed her lithe, sixteen-year-old body. Her face was winter pale, and what little color her cheeks might have produced was sucked clean away by the sight of her mother. “It’s your tenth anniversary. You and Mom always made such a big deal out of it …” Her words fell away, and he knew she was looking to him for reinforcement.
    It was difficult, but he nodded and smiled. “You’re right. She would have wanted us to celebrate.”
    Jacey set the cake on the table by the bed. It was a round, two-layered affair with pink butter-cream frosting, the same cake that Suzie Sanman at the Lazy Susan Bake Shop had concocted for them every year. Only this year, instead of the normal
Happy Anniversary Mike and Liam
, it was blank on top. Liam wondered how long Suzie had spent trying to think of something festive and hopeful to write before she gave up.
    Jacey moved closer to the bed and leaned over her mother. “Happy anniversary, Mom.” She reached out a shaking hand and brushed a lock of hair from Mikaela’s face. “Can you believe it has been ten years since we married Liam?”
    She turned and smiled at him, and in that instant, she was six years old again, a gap-toothed first grader who’d fallen off the jungle gym and sprained her finger. He ached to make everything better for her, but no amount of colored Band-Aids or knock-knock jokes would make her smile now.
    “How is she today?”
    “The same.”
    Jacey swiped a finger along the side of the cake, drawing up a big glob of pink frosting. She held it beneath Mikaela’s nose. “Can you smell the cake, Mom? It’s Suzie’s best vanilla cream, with real Grand Marnier in the frosting. Just the way you liked …
like
it.”
    The tiny fissure in her voice was almost more than Liam could bear. “Here, pull up a chair. How was school today?”
    Jacey tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear. “Good. I aced the math test.”
    “Of course you did.”
    She looked at him, then turned away. He noticed the quick, nervous way she bit down on her lip—a trait she’d inherited from her mother.
    “What’s the matter, Jace?”
    It was a minute before she answered. “The winterdance is coming up. Mark asked me if I wanted to go.”
    “You know it’s okay. Whatever you want to do is fine.”
    “I know, but …”
    He turned to her. “But what?”
    She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Mom and I talked a lot about this dance. We were going to go into Bellingham to get a dress. She …” Her voice snagged on emotion and fell to a whisper. “She said she’d never been to a prom, and she wanted me to look like a princess.”
    Liam couldn’t imagine his beautiful wife sitting at home on prom night. How come
he
didn’t know that about her? It was another of his wife’s many secrets. “Come on, Jace. It’ll break her heart if she finds out you didn’t go.”
    “No fair, Dad.” She looked away, then, very softly, she said, “
If
she wakes up.”
    Liam wanted, just once, to hold Jacey and say,
I’m scared, too. What if this is it … or what if she wakes up and doesn’t know us … or if she never wakes up at all?
But those were his fears, and it was his job to keep the lights on for his family.
    “Jacey, your mother
is
going to wake up. We have to keep believing that. She needs us to keep believing. This is no time to go soft on her. We’re a family of warriors, and we don’t run from a fight. Do we?”
    “It’s getting … harder.”
    “It wouldn’t be called a test of faith if it were easy.”
    She looked at him. “I heard you last night. You were talking to Grandma about Mom. You said no one knew why she