Falling Angel by Clare Tisdale Read Free Book Online Page A

love.”
    “More like lust,” Ann replied.
    “Well, nothing here is calling my name,” said Cara, slipping back into her jeans. “Let’s take a break.”
    They bought smoothies at a stand inside the mall and sat side by side at a counter, looking out over the homogenized crowd of Sunday shoppers.
    “Did your dad ever try to contact you, after he left for good?” asked Cara.
    “Are you kidding? And risk being hit up for child support?” They sat in silence for a moment.
    “Why did he leave?” Cara asked.
    “He was a third-generation logger. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, he was on a roll. This whole area was nothing but forest. He took us wherever the work was, up and down the coast.” Ann sipped her smoothie and pushed her black bangs out of her eyes. “Then the hippies and the tree-huggers came in and started kicking up a fuss and the whole lumber industry went into a tailspin. The mill he worked at shut down when I was ten. That’s when the good times ended.”
    “I was seven when my dad left,” Cara said.
    Ann nodded. “That must have been hard. Were you close?”
    “We were. But now, I don’t even know him. Haven’t talked to him in years. I think he moved to New Mexico.” Her tone was light, as though this were nothing of consequence.
    “You know, some people are good at reinventing themselves,” Ann said. “Other people, when you take away the thing that defined them, just get lost. That’s what happened to my dad. He’s a lost soul. He started drinking a lot. He’d take off for days or weeks at a time without a word.”
    Cara nodded sympathetically. “How did your family get by?”
    “My mom did the best she could. She was pretty much worn out with taking care of us and fighting with my dad when he came home. She got a job cleaning houses to keep us afloat.” Ann gave a bitter half-smile. “She didn’t make it much fun to hang around the house.”
    “Neither did my mine. I could never do anything right. If I got a B in school, she’d ask why it wasn’t an A. If I made my bed, cleaned and vacuumed my room, she’d ask why I hadn’t washed the sheets.”
    “How did you deal with it?” Ann asked. “You seem pretty well-adjusted to me.”
    “I kind of retreated into myself. Into books and gardening.”
    “Wish I’d taken that route. I dropped out of high school and moved to Seattle with my boyfriend. Boy, was that a mistake.” Ann told Cara a little about Clint, an aspiring musician was convinced that because he and Kurt Cobain both hailed from the same small town they were possessed of a similar genius. “Only problem was he liked the rock star lifestyle more than the actual work of writing music and performing.”
    Cara laughed. “Sounds like my own bad-boy musician boyfriend.”
    Ann’s eyes widened. “You had a bad-boy boyfriend? I don’t believe it. Tell me more.”
    For the next hour, Cara and Ann had brought each other to tears of hysterical laughter trading stories about the various insults and degradations they had suffered in the name of love. Although their experiences were similar, Cara realized that their impact had proved very different. Ann embraced her weakness for creatively inclined bad boys, even taking a certain perverse pride in her lack of sound judgment. She enjoyed the intensity and volatility of her short-lived affairs. Cara, on the other hand, no longer enjoyed the sturm und drang of such relationships. “Maybe now you can understand better why I’m looking for someone more practical,” she said. “The majority of so-called artists I’ve met turn out to be unstable, narcissistic, and drug-addicted. I don’t need that in my life.”
    As Ann leaned back and fixed Cara with a sardonic smile, Cara half-regretted her attack of honesty. Ann had a sarcastic sense of humor that Cara found amusing, most of the time. But her tendency to laugh at other people’s weaknesses made Cara nervous that she herself would one day be the target.
    “Have you ever