Page 20 of Angels Are Falling

I watched her for a moment. “Then I suppose you were never an unbreakable couple to begin with.”

Chapter

Six

AMELIE

With Stefan at work and the kids in school, I sat at the kitchen table, replaying the conversation with Kai in my mind.

The single bulb over the sink was still on, the overhead light a casualty of a blown fuse we never got around to fixing. In the weak glow, I ran the numbers on my laptop again, even though I’d already run them four times. Even if I picked up every extra shift this month and Stefan worked a second job, we couldn’t catch up with our bills. We were in too big a hole, especially with our most recent notice for back taxes owed to the IRS.

Perhaps I could borrow the money that would help us get back on our feet. Enough to cover the back mortgage payments. Enough to pay off our credit card bills. Enough to breathe for a few weeks while Stefan pulled himself together, and Kai lost interest in me.

There was a name I hadn’t dialed in weeks. Maybe longer. Not because I didn’t love her—I loved her a whole fucking lot—but because phone calls with Rose had started to feel like charity. Not in anything she ever said. Rose wasn’t like that. It was in what I never said, in the excuses I made for why we couldn’t visit her in New York. We just couldn’t afford it. She got married a few months ago, and her new husband flew my entire family to New York just so Rose could have her best friend by her side. He’d offered to fly us to New York again for the summer, which made me feel like a charity case. I couldn’t even return the favor by inviting Rose to our home in California. We had no idea how her immensely wealthy husband would react to our residence with broken lights, and we didn’t want him to think poorly of Rose’s friends.

Rose knew. Of course she knew. I still missed her so badly.

I picked up my phone.

She answered on the second ring, her voice carrying the warmth of someone genuinely happy to hear from me. “Amelie! Hi.”

The knot in my chest eased at the sound of her voice. “Hi.”

“It’s been so long.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Things have been—” I pressed my back against the chair. “Hectic.”

“No worries at all. I understand.” She always did. Even if I hadn’t been busy, Rose would have understood. “How’s Stefan?”

“Stefan’s great.” I closed my eyes because it couldn’t be further from the truth. How could I tell her that I was considering marrying another man because Stefan was depressed with his burdened life? I didn’t even have the means to get him help for his suicidal thoughts.

“How are his brothers and sister?”

“The twins turned eight a few days ago.”

“Oh, wow. Did you do anything special?”

“Just dinner.” Dinner that changed our lives. “How’s Dr. Maxwell?”

Rose laughed. “Amelie.” The fond exasperation was immediate. “Are you ever going to call my husband by his first name?”

I laughed, too. “Sorry. Old habits.”

Although I had promised to make a considerable effort to break the pattern, Rose’s husband, Caden Maxwell, would always be Dr. Maxwell to me. He was a professor at our university before he married Rose. Later, he became my employer when he offered me a nurse’s position on his luxury yacht. Coincidentally, that was how I met Kai. They all knew each other, rich people. For a moment, I wondered whether he’d tell Dr. Maxwell about his sleazy proposal. I’d die of embarrassment, but found consolation in the fact that Kai appeared to be a private person.

For a few minutes, everything was fine, and I was just calling my best friend to catch up. Those seconds were enough to remind me what normal felt like. I held on to them for as long as I could.

I started talking about anything and everything. I told her about my shifts, about a patient who had brought me homemade cookies, about something funny Bella said at dinner last Tuesday. I talked too fast and about too little. She let me. That was the thing about Rose. She let you run until you ran out of road.

I was running out of road.

Eventually, she asked gently, “How are things, really?” The question carried more weight than the first one. Rose could read subtext over a phone line.

My eyes welled up. Because, of course, she sensed desperation in my voice, even though I aimed to sound cool and collected.

“We are managing,” I said carefully, skirting around the issue.

Silence.