Free Angel Falls by Kristin Hannah Page A

didn’t wake up. After Grandma left, I saw you go to the piano. I was going to say something, then I heard you crying.”
    “Oh.” He sagged forward in his chair. There was no point in lying to her. It had been a bad night, the kind where his armor felt as if it were crafted of cellophane. Remembering their anniversary had done him in. He’d sat at the elegant Steinway in the living room, aching to play again, needing to recapture the music that had once lived inside him. But ever since the accident, he’d been empty; the music that had sustained him through so much of his life had simply vanished. Though he’d never said so to Jacey, she knew; perhaps she’d noticed even before he had. The house that once had been filled with Bach and Beethoven and Mozart was as silent these days as a hospital room.
    Music had always been his release. In the Bronx, when he’d felt as if he was losing his soul, he’d played angry, pounding music that screamed that the world was unfair, and in the bleak days while his father was fading into a stranger, he’d played quiet, elegiac melodies that reminded him of the sweetness of life, of the fullness of promises made. But now, when he needed that solace most of all, there was only this aching emptiness inside him.
    He gave Jacey the only truth he could. “Sometimes it catches up with me and grabs so hard I can’t remember how to breathe. I sort of … fall through thefloorboards of my fear, but I always land here, at her bedside, holding her hand and loving her.”
    Jacey looked at Liam with a sadness that wouldn’t have been possible just a few short weeks ago. “I want to tell her I’m sorry for all the times she looked sad and I didn’t care.”
    “She loves you and Bret with all her heart and soul, Jacey. You
know
that. And when she wakes up, she’s going to want to see those dance photos. If you don’t go, we’ll be eating macaroni and cheese out of a box for months. No one can hold a grudge like your mother.” He smiled gently. “Now, I may not know much about shopping for girl stuff in Bellingham, but I know about style because Mike has bucketloads. Remember the dress your mom wore to the Policemen’s Ball last year? She went all the way to Seattle for that dress, and to be honest, it cost more than my first car. You’d look perfect in it.”
    “The Richard Tyler. I forgot all about it.”
    “She wore it with that pretty sparkly clip in her hair. You could do that. Grandma could help you. Or maybe Gertrude at the Sunny and Shear salon could help. I know I’m not as good at this as your mom, but—”
    Jacey threw her arms around him. “She couldn’t have done any better, Daddy. Honest.”
    He turned to his wife, forced a smile. “You see what’s happening, Mike? You’re forcing me to give fashion advice to our sixteen-year-old. Hell, the last time I picked out my own clothes, bell-bottoms were in fashion.”
    “Dad, they’re in fashion again.”
    “See? If you don’t wake up soon, honey, I might authorize that eyebrow piercing she’s been asking for.”
    They sat together, talking to each other and to the woman lying motionless in the bed before them. They talked as if it were a normal day, hoping all the while that some snippet of their conversation, some word or sound or touch, would sneak through Mike’s darkness and remind her that she wasn’t alone.
    At three o’clock, the bedside phone rang, jangling through one of Jacey’s stories.
    Liam reached for the phone and answered, “Hello.”
    “Hi, Liam. Sorry to bother you. It’s Dawn at the school.”
    He listened for a minute, then said, “I’ll be right down,” and hung up. He turned to Jacey. “It’s Bret. He’s in trouble again. I’ve got to go down to the school. You want to come?”
    “Nope. Grandma’s going to pick me up here after her errands.”
    “Okay.” Liam scooted back in his chair, hating the fingernail-on-chalkboard sound of the metal legs scraping across linoleum. As