Page 128 of Price of Angels

The phone woke her. Holly forced her heavy eyelids open and pawed through the covers until her fingers curled around her cell. It was morning, mid-morning judging by the brightness of the sun falling through the window. It hit her all at once. Slam! New bed, new house, new smell, new sounds, and she was saved the momentary panic of this realization by answering the phone.

“Hello?” She fumbled it to her ear as she sat up, seeing Michael’s childhood room through the screen of her hair.

His voice reached inside her head, its usual brusqueness skating through her and leaving warm trails behind, slowing her pulse the moment it touched her. “Are you alright?”

Holly smiled. No greeting, no formalities. No, that wasn’t his style.

“I’m fine. I just woke up, actually.”

“Wynn said you were still asleep when he went to the barn.”

“Hmm.” It unnerved her to think about a stranger – even Michael’s beloved uncle – peeking in on her while she slept. It was Michael she trusted, only him. “I was more tired than I thought.”

There was a pause, one of those moments when, in person, she would have been able to read his posture and his minuscule expressions. But on the phone, it was just silence, heavy with the things she couldn’t interpret.

Sounds from downstairs: a door opening, closing; tread of feet; clicking of the dogs’ nails on the floorboards; rattle of kitchen noise.

“Your uncle is very kind,” she said, wanting to draw his voice back out.

“Yeah. He’s not much like me.”

Holly smiled. A stiff joke was still a joke, and it touched her. “Don’t say that. You’re very kind, too.”

He snorted.

“What’s going on there?”

“Your kinfolk” – he said the word with an ironic edge – “aren’t happy. ‘Course we knew that.”

She shivered, pulling the covers up tight to her chest.

“We’re about to have church,” he continued. She heard regret in his voice: “Your old man isn’t an entrepreneur, honey. He works for someone very powerful who Ghost doesn’t wanna piss off.”

“Okay.” She wet her lips, felt them quivering against her tongue. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing, really. I might be in more trouble than I thought I’d be, but it doesn’t change anything.”

She closed her eyes, overwhelmed with love and gratitude and terrible tenderness for this man who had no reason to put himself at risk for her. “Michael–”

“Look, I gotta go.” His voice was gruff and thick. “Tell Uncle Wynn you want some of his famous pancakes for breakfast. And if you go out of the house, take your gun. Everywhere, Hol. I mean that.”

She nodded though he couldn’t see it. “Okay.”

“Be safe,” he said, and the line disconnected.

A man of few words, and those few difficult at that.

“I love you,” she whispered to the droning dial tone, then pressed End and let the phone fall on the bed.

Fifteen minutes later, after she’d dressed and made herself presentable, she encountered the rich smell of breakfast halfway down the staircase. She paused, hand on the rough-cut wood of the banister, and listened to the hiss of the skillet around the corner, Wynn’s cheerful humming, the clink of plates.

She took a deep breath and descended the rest of the way, went into the kitchen. She smiled.

Wynn was wearing heavy tan Carhartt overalls, but had removed his boots. His flannel shirt was buffalo plaid; his hair was mashed to his head, the imprint of a hat band left behind on his forehead. Delilah and Cassius lay on the floor, one on either side of him, watching the bacon with rapt attention, hoping for a handout.

He glanced up at the sound of her entry and sent her a beaming smile. His face was one totally transformed by a smile: eyes crinkling to slits, deep grooves bracketing mouth and nose. A true smile. A smile with nothing hiding behind it.

“Good morning,” he greeted, and the dogs spared her a fast look before returning to bacon-watch.

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