Miles to Go by Richard Paul Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

he
ran
away unscathed. He fled the scene on foot.” She looked at me with gray eyes. “Why is it that the guilty survive while the innocent die?”
    Sometimes it did seem that way. “I don’t know.”
    “
If
there is a God,” she said, “He has a foul sense of irony.”
    I had had nearly the same thought as I looked in the mirror the day of my wife’s funeral, but I was surprised tohear it coming from her. I guess I didn’t expect someone named Angel to diss God.
    “I’m making meatloaf for dinner,” she said, turning from me. “I just need to put it in the oven.”
    “Are we on for a movie tonight?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    She clearly didn’t want to talk, so while she made dinner, I went to my room and read. A half hour later she called and we sat together at the table. We ate a while without conversation. Suddenly, she asked, “How long do you think you’ll be here?”
    I looked up from my food. “Are you tired of me already?”
    “Of course not. I was just wondering.”
    “Assuming I’m in walking condition, I can’t leave Spokane until the roads through Montana and Wyoming are clear. That could be as late as April. But I could always stay somewhere else.”
    “No, I’d like you to stay.” She went back to eating. All of a sudden she asked, “Do you believe in an afterlife?”
    I thought the question a peculiar change of conversation. “Yes.”
    “Why?” she asked. “There’s no evidence of one.”
    “You don’t believe in life after life?”
    “I think that death’s just death. The grand finale. There’s no afterlife, no memory. Nothing.”
    “That’s a depressing thought,” I said.
    “For some it would be heaven.”
    “Heaven? To never see our loved ones again?”
    “It sounds tragic, but it’s not. We’d never know what’s gone. A person born blind doesn’t miss eyesight.”
    I just looked at her, wondering why we were having this conversation.
    When I didn’t respond, she said, “That’s what I hope for at least. Sweet oblivion.”
    After taking another couple of bites, I said, “I met a woman in Davenport who claims to have had a near death experience.”
    “Those people are crazy.”
    “She didn’t strike me as such.”
    “So you believe the Bible’s version of an afterlife with pearly gates and a hell with a lake of fire?”
    “Pearly gates and lakes of fire, no. But I believe the spirit and intellect live on, as do relationships.” I was a little surprised by the strength of my conviction.
    She seemed bothered that I didn’t echo her belief and her voice turned antagonistic. “What evidence could you or anyone possibly have that something exists past this life?”
    I set down my fork. “I’m not arguing with you. Truthfully, for most of my life I wasn’t sure what I believed, until …” I stopped, not sure of how much I wanted to share.
    She was looking at me intensely. “Until what?”
    “The day after McKale’s funeral I was considering taking my life. Just before I swallowed a handful of pills I heard a voice.”
    “What kind of voice?”
    “I don’t know how to explain it. I actually thought someone had spoken to me and I looked around the room. The voice seemed both to have come from inside me and outside me. All I know is that it didn’t feel like my own thoughts.
    “Then, after the mugging, just before the paramedics revived me, I had another experience. It was somethinglike a dream, except I don’t think it was. It was much more lucid. I think I saw McKale.”
    “Your wife?”
    I nodded. “I talked to her. And she told me things.”
    “What kind of things?”
    “She told me that there was a reason we’re here on this earth and that there are people I am meant to meet. People whose lives were supposed to intersect with mine.” I looked into her eyes. “She told me that I would meet you.”
    “Me?”
    “She told me I would meet ‘Angel.’ When I woke up in the hospital you were sitting there.”
    Angel went back to