Down From the Clouds by Marilyn Grey Read Free Book Online Page A

fork.
    "It is expensive, but this is your husband's life," I said.
    She caught a single tear in her sleeve. "But he will plead guilty." Her head shook and more tears dropped. "We were upstairs when they busted the door in. Just about to go to bed. I thought it was a robber. He pulled my face to his, kissed me, and told me to get a public defender, not an attorney, and let him do what he needed to do. I didn't even know what a public defender was. None of it made sense. Ten minutes after they took him I held the baby in the bedroom. I couldn't cry. I couldn't feel anything. I honestly had no idea what had happened until I started processing his last words to me."
    "Can you explain to us what happened?" I said, taking a bite of Ella's deliciousness.
    She put her pinky in her daughter's mouth and tried to catch her breath. "He made me promise I'd never tell anyone."
    "But he will probably end up on death row."
    "I know," she said. "I've known this for a long time."
    "And you're okay with it?"
    Her breathing slowed. "I promised."
    Well, I couldn't have understood Tylissa if I tried, so I stopped trying and just listened, completely baffled as to why and how someone would allow their spouse to accept a guilty verdict in a terrible crime they didn't commit. Promises or not, I couldn't bear to watch someone I love die for something they didn't do. Maybe Tylissa valued faithfulness more than life. Or maybe Mwenye valued faithfulness more than his own life and that's why she couldn't break her promise to him. I wanted to understand. No matter how much my brain cells pondered various scenarios, I couldn't understand. Just couldn't.

Chapter Seven
     
    April washed away the last of the March snow when my resume was turned down for the seventeenth time. I applied everywhere I could think of and wondered why I spent so much time and money in college for a degree that couldn’t guarantee me a job to pay off the loans.
    Ella tapped my shoulder as I drove over the bridge from Jersey to Philly. We spent the morning watching the sunrise on the ocean. Ella loved to drive to the beach for no reason. She called me at 3am and said, “Let’s go.” So I went. It happened five times since the day we met. She loved it and so did I.
    She propped her feet up on the dashboard. “What are you thinking?”
    “Nothing,” I said. Instinct. “I mean, I don’t know. I get spaced out with these windshield wipers. I was just thinking about money. School. Lack of jobs. We just bought a house and I have a savings account that is vanishing by the second. I need to find something quick.”
    “You will. And so will I.” She looked over the bridge at the waves. “There’s something I haven’t told anyone.”
    “About the accident?”
    “How’d you know?”
    “Figured you’d be thinking about it. You always bring it up when we cross this bridge, but my question is ... if you can now play violin again, what’s the big deal? Plus, if you wouldn’t have missed that flight who knows if we would’ve ever met.”
    “Yeah, but there’s something I don’t tell anyone. I didn’t want people feeling sorry for me or thinking I’m a horrible person.”
    “I can relate.”
    “I know, which is why I am going to tell you something if you promise to let me read the second letter when we get there.”
    “Deal.”
    She led me down random roads by pointing and repeating, “Oh, oh. I think it was that road back there. Sorry.” When you’re used to driving solo your entire life it gets weird when you share the road with another person. You see things you never saw before when you drive down the same tired roads. Suddenly things look new and different. That’s the beauty of letting someone else drive. You look at life instead of road signs. So I didn’t mind her sloppy directions. I enjoyed seeing her live.
    We pulled into a graveyard. She got out of the car, rain boots hitting the rocky path. I loved the sound of shoes on gravel. I crunched my way over to