Heaven Should Fall by Rebecca Coleman Read Free Book Online Page B

test because I feared the answer, and dreaded the possibility that Cade would receive the news and leave me behind on Christmas anyway. That would be more than I could bear. My mother had taught the women she sponsored about taking a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves to figure out who they really were; it was the Fourth Step officially, and a good idea for anybody, she often said. Know what you are capable of. Know what stands in the way of your moving forward . I had done that, and found myself sorely lacking. I wished I had my mother’s courage, but when I looked inward all I saw was the fear of finding myself in her situation, alone.
    “It’s getting darker,” I said. The temperature was dropping and the air felt sharp and clear, with the smell of new snow enlivening it. “We should go back.”
    “Don’t be mad at me. I’m just trying to look out for you.”
    “I’m not mad,” I told him, and it was true. After this week, once Cade was back, we could let the situation unfold in an organized way, unimpeded by his brother-in-law. I wasn’t afraid that Cade would shirk his responsibility. I only feared that I would decide he was unworthy of it, and if that was the case, I didn’t want to know.

Chapter 4
    Cade
    It’s not as if it was the first time this had happened to me. Senior year of high school, barely more than a month after I lost my virginity, my girlfriend Piper pulled me aside during open lunch in the courtyard and told me she was pregnant. She always wore a lot of eye shadow that made her eyes look huge, and so all the fear in them came right at me. Do something, Cade . There was some accusation in there too: you promised . But what did I know? I was seventeen. Of course I’d thought it would be fine to have sex. I would’ve sworn to her I could beat Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France right then if I’d thought it would help me close the deal, and I would have believed it, too.
    I’m not sure what my excuse was at twenty-one. Overconfidence: it’s a problem. It’s probably why, when Jill came to me and told me she was pregnant, I took it in stride. Part of me was definitely freaked, but by then I’d spent so much time knocking on doors, talking up candidates, that my gut reaction in an uncertain situation was to project total confidence. Here Jill was caught in this fight-or-flight response between hightailing it to some camp in the woods or else to the abortion clinic, and I’m all, hey, it’s gonna be great! I’ll teach the kid to play hockey!
    It definitely wasn’t like that when it happened with Piper, when for the first few days I was in denial, mulling over all the reasons it wasn’t even possible, along with these spikes of cold-sweat, hyperventilating panic. I’d envision this showdown in the living room with my folks, my dad grabbing me by the collar and shoving me up against the wall like he used to do with Elias, my mom all stoic, but radiating utter disappointment. After about a week I couldn’t take it anymore. I drove down to the U-Store-It to talk to my brother alone. I didn’t know who else to go to.
    When I got there the parking lot was empty except for Elias’s green Jeep, which was a relief. If he’d been driving the van I would have suspected my brother-in-law, Dodge, would be there, too, but the Jeep was Elias’s own, and he didn’t want Dodge Powell to so much as breathe in the smell of its air freshener. I parked next to it and went around back to find him. The storage units were basically garages, three sets of four arranged in a U shape around the little office building. We had this one customer who kept a weight bench and a full set of weights in his. Lately Elias had taken to driving down there and letting himself into that unit with the master key so he could lift weights. It went against policy, and if he ever got caught either by Dad or Dodge or the customer, he would have been in trouble. But Elias was nineteen and kind of in a