Page 99 of Never Fall for an Angel

I clear my throat, combing through a particularly bad knot in the back of her head while trying not to hurt her.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah. Miss Pat lets me help with the cooking and the dishes. She’s teaching me how to read right now. I read a whole book the other day without her help.”

“Wow,” my voice croaks. “That’s impressive.”

“Yeah, but the other girls can already read, so maybe not.”

“Miss Pat seems like a very nice lady.”

“She is. Way better than my last mother. She yelled a lot.”

“Moms do that, sometimes,” I murmur, thinking of my own mother, whom I haven’t spoken to since the wedding.

“My first mom was the best, though. She used to bake cookies. That’s all I remember.”

“I love cookies.”

“Me, too. I like oatmeal raisin.”

I crinkle my nose, chuckling.

“Yuck. You like wrinkly grapes?”

“They’re good,” she admonishes, turning around to face me. Her soft blue eyes twinkle with mischief. “What’s your favorite?”

“Sugar. Sugar cookies are the king in the cookie world.”

“Bo-ring,” she laughs, then her eyes catch on my hair. “You have pretty hair. What happened to your head?”

I swallow past the rock growing in my throat. My scar.

“Uh, well . . .” I stammer, my cheeks flaming red. “I was in a sort of accident.”

She stands, then, lifting up her shirt to showcase a deep scar on her stomach, surrounded by small white marks.

Marks of a knife. Marks that match mine.

My stomach clenches, my mouth filling with saliva from the nausea roiling in my stomach.

She’s so young and . . . little.

“Me too.” She pauses, suddenly shy. “Is that why Mr. C loves you so much?”

I nearly choke on air at her observation.

It’s because he called you his wife, the voice in the back of my head chimes.

“Mr. C is a good man,” I say softly, patting the chair in front of me, and she sits back down. She’s quiet for a long moment while I braid her hair.

“You don’t have to be afraid anymore. At least, that’s what Miss Pat says. I still get scared, sometimes.”

Me too, I want to say, but she’s a child. From the looks of things, she’s come a long way from wherever she was when she first arrived.

“We all have nightmares,” I say finally, twisting her blonde locks down her back. “We just have to teach ourselves that they are just that, now. Nightmares and not real life.”

“Just got to put one foot in front of the other,” she chimes happily, kicking her feet in the chair.

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