Coast Road by Barbara Delinsky Read Free Book Online

died. If she needed to hear upbeat things, that wasn't the news to tell.
    And what was? You'll be pleased to know that my firm's falling apart.
    But Rachel wasn't vindictive. So, that wouldn't do it. Nor would I've lost the touch, nothing I design is right anymore. Rachel had no taste for self-pity. Nor was she one for jealousy, which meant that he couldn't tell her about Jill. Besides, what would he say? Jill was nearly as softhearted as Rachel. She was nearly as pretty and nearly as bright. She was nowhere near as spirited, or as talented, or as unique.
    She would always pale by comparison.
    What was the point of telling Rachel that? She had left him. They were divorced.
    Feeling useless and suddenly more tired than he would have thought possible, he said, "Your friend Katherine is here. She was the one who called me. She's been here since they brought you in. She wants to see you, too. I'm going to t"Lk to the doctor Then I'll go get the girls.
    We'll be back in a couple of hours, okay? " He watched her eyelids for even the slightest movement. "Okay? " Nothing.
    Discouraged, he returned her hand to the stiffhospital sheet. Leaning down, he kissed her forehead. "I'll be back." DAWN was breaking to the east of Monterey when he left the hospital.
    Once he was past Carmel, the hills rose to stave it off. Inevitably though, the sky began to lighten. By the time he reached the Santa Lucias and Highway I began to wind, a morning fog had risen from the water and was bathing the pavement with a shifting mist.
    Jack kept his headlights on and his eye peeled, but neither was necessary. He couldn't have missed the accident site. Traffic was alternating along one lane while a pair of wreckers worked in the other. One mangled car had already been raised, but it wasn't Rachel's sturdy four-by-four. A mauled section of guardrail lay nearby.
    Feeling sick to his stomach but needing answers, he pulled up behind the wreckers and climbed out. The air was cool, moist, and thick in ways that should have muted the brutality of the scene, but what little the shifting fog hid, Jack's imagination supplied.
    Rachel's car lay against boulders a distance below. Its top and sides were dented and scraped. Water shot up from the rocks not ten feet away, but the car itself looked dry.
    "Better move on, sir. If one stops, others do. Before we know it, we have a jam." Jack pushed shaky hands into his pockets. "My wife was in that car.
    Looks like it went head over tail. It's a miracle she's alive. " "She's all right, then? " the trooper asked in a more giving tone.
    "We never know, once they leave the scene."
    "She's alive."
    "For what it's worth, she was driving within the speed limit." Jack looked back at the road he had just climbed. It wound up from a basin lined left and right with cypress, dark and spectral in the fog.
    "Too bad. If she'd been going faster, she might have been down there when she was hit. Then she'd have gone offonto evener ground."
    "She might have gone head-on into trees or traffic. There were a number of cars traveling south. Be grateful for small favors." Jack tried, but Rachel hadn't asked to be hit. She hadn't done anything to deserve it.
    He didn't need to be told that she was driving safely�or that she had been wearing a seat belt. If not, she'd have been dead down there on the rocks.
    The workers were struggling to hitch cables to her car and haul it up.
    "When'll those guys be done? " he asked the trooper. "I'll be bringing our daughters back this way, and I'd rather they not see this.
    " "Couple of hours, I guess. Can you wait that long? " He hadn't planned to, but he could. If he found the girls asleep, it might actually work out fine. He could use the time to figure out the most sensitive way to break the news.
    chapter three.
    JACK DIDN"T SEE MUCH of the rest of the drive. Fog continued to float across the road, lifting and lowering across the rugged terrain, allowing now and again for a glimpse of sea stacks in gray