Page 11 of Calling All Angels
Connor lifted one dark eyebrow as if he’d been privy to that thought. She ignored him.
“My aunt broke it off with Drake weeks ago,” Aubrey continued. “It was her idea, not his, but I heard he took it well. As well as one could, I suppose, when it’s not your idea.”
“Why did she break it off?” he asked.
“That’s personal,” Emma announced to no one.
But Aubrey said, “Emma said she felt…suffocated. She’s a bit of a free spirit, I guess.”
Or a commitment-phobe.Aware of Connor’s perusal, Emma bit her lip and looked away.
“Can you think of anyone else?”
“Maybe you should be looking at that debris on the road before you go accusing the people in Emma’s life,” Aubrey told the officer. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.”
As a list of potential suspects spun through Emma’s mind, a sick feeling swelled up in her. This was her life they were talking about. Her life. Or what used to be her life. But no one she loved would want her dead. It had to be a simple case of road rage. Or a hit-and-run accident.
Emma couldn’t seem to quite catch her breath. She felt the hallway closing in on her.
“I just…I can’t—” she told Connor before fleeing down the hallway. Away from Aubrey and Jacob. Most of all, from that maddening man who was apparently an angel.
She rushed down the hallway but found herself in the waiting area, filled with people she knew. There were Dierdre, Joanne, Amanda and her sweet husband, Joe. Mark Wallace, who had just joined her team. Even Kinsey Adler, her assistant, was there.
The sight of all of them here caught her by surprise. All of them waiting to see if she would live or die. Amanda was crying. So was Dierdre. Kinsey, her short, boyish hair cut looking uncharacteristically messy today, sat ten chairs over from everyone else looking very…stoic. But Emma couldn’t fault her for that. That was just Kinsey. But she’d brought flowers for Emma. They sat wilting on the chair beside her. That was unexpected. Surprisingly sweet of her.
Emma suddenly recalled the conversation they’d had just the other day, when Kinsey had told her she’d earned her real-estate license and wanted to move away from contracts to become an agent. To Emma’s regret, she’d tried to dissuade her. Success in her line of work was relationship-based, but Kinsey was not a people person. At all. But now Emma wished she’d encouraged her instead. Good office managers were hard to find, true. But why stand in the way of someone wanting to grow? Maybe she’d surprise everyone.
There was Diedre, who had just gone through a messy divorce, with two young boys to care for, who must have moved heaven and earth to arrange care for her boys to be here. Dierdre was one of her top sellers, but only during school hours when someone else could take care of her boys. It made things tricky for her, but Emma had supported her in every way she could. Still, had she done enough? Had she been too wrapped up in her own career to really notice how much she was struggling?
Even Amanda—a woman who seemed totally together—had to work hard balancing selling condos with juggling her three kids’ sports schedules. Joe was fortunately supportive of her work. But sometimes, even the flexible hours were a challenge due to his demanding railroad job.
Looking at that roomful of coworkers gathered together, it struck her not for the first time that, except for these friendships and Aubrey, her life was relatively unfettered by intimate relationships. She had no children to show for her thirty-three years, no husband, and not even a dog who required walking. Just Winston, a very independent, self-sufficient cat. Which said pretty much everything that needed to be said about the possibly “late” Emma James’s life. Wildly connection free. Unencumbered by mad love.
“And what about Aubrey?” Amanda whispered to her husband. “Emma is the only family she has left in the world. She’ll be lost if…”
“Jacob will watch out for her,” Joe told her, patting her shoulder. “He seems like a good guy.”
“Three months, Joe. That’s how long they’ve been together, according to Emma. That’s not even long enough to know how someone likes his coffee. Much less become family.”
Emma had to agree. She liked Jacob. But really, who could actually deserve her Aubrey? She was special, not just because Emma had spent the last seven years as her surrogate “mom.” But because from the moment she’d been born, Emma had adored that child. Before she’d started her own firm, Emma had even flown to Rome four times to visit after Lizzy and Daniel had moved there when Aubrey turned seven. Later, when they’d moved back and were off scouting locations for dives, it was Emma they called to stay with Aubrey. Sometimes their trips would last for weeks at a time. It had been one of those times when Aubrey had been with her that her parents had disappeared, never to return.
A pain of that memory was still as sharp today.
She was Lizzy’s mini me. Even now she looked so much like her with her thick, dark hair and brown eyes. Never once did Emma forget the responsibility she had to Lizzy and Daniel to see Aubrey through to a happy life without them. Aubrey was likely the only child she’d ever raise. At thirty-three, Emma’s prospects of finding someone to father a child for her seemed as…well, as unlikely as her chances right now of waking up—considering there was already an angel waiting for her to go.
She wanted out of this place. Now.
She reached the hospital entrance before she could make sense of her journey there but stopped at the glass front doors.
Somehow, without even fully willing herself to do so, she found herself outside. In the fresh air. Standing beneath one of the dozens of pine trees that lined the parking lot. How had she done that? Frankly, she didn’t care because now she felt free.
How strange, being outside in the world away from all that beeping noise of the machines and the sterile smell of the place.
The sound of the breeze sifting through the tops of the trees above was unusually acute, as if she were part of the treetops themselves. Her vision was suddenly sharper, the colors more defined or even exaggerated, as if each color carried its own sound, the green and blue louder than the rest. Even the scent of the pine straw beneath her feet seemed headier, more aromatic than she remembered it. It was as if all her senses had suddenly come alive in this in-between place.
A strikingly colored blue jay stared down at her from a branch above her head. He squawked at her, ruffling his feathers, his beady black eyes focused intently on her.
“Hey. Can you…seeme?” she asked. The bird ruffled its feathers, then bolted off the branch in a flutter of wings, disappearing into the nearby trees. “I will take that as a yes.”
