Read Coast Road for Free Online Page B

opened his hand. "How about moving a finger to let me know you can hear? Want to try? Or are you going to keep us all guessing about what you hear and what you don't? " She showed no sign of having heard him.
    Nothing new there, he thought. She had gone right ahead and done her own thing for years, certainly for the six they had been apart. So, did she hear him? Or was she deliberately ignoring him? He didn't know what to say next.
    Lifting her hand to his mouth, he kissed it and held it to his chest.
    With the slightest shift, it covered his heart, flesh on cotton, but close.
    "Feel that? " The beat was heavy and fast. "It's been that way since I got the call. Samantha and Hope are scared, too. I talked with them, though. They'll be fine." When that sounded dismissive, he said, "I'll call them again in a little while." That didn't sound right, either, so he said, "I'll drive down once I leave here. They'll believe me better if I tell them you're okay in person. Duncan's there now. So, what's the scoop? Is he just the baby-sitter, or what? " He wondered if she was laughing inside. "I'm serious. I don't know the guy. Do you two date? " She said nothing.
    "Sam informed me that she wasn't going to school. She'll go." He thought aloud, "Or maybe I'll just drive them back up here to visit.
    It won't kill them to miss one day of school." But they were approaching June fast. "When do finals start? " Rachel didn't answer.
    "No sweat. I'll ask." He rapped her hand against his chest. "Wake up, Rachel." She slept on.
    He brought her hand to his mouth again. Her skin was as soft as ever, but it lacked a distinct scent, which wasn't like Rachel at all. If she didn't smell of whatever medium she was working with, she smelled of lilies. He had started her on that, way back when he hadn't had enough money and had resorted to stealing lilies of the valley from the shady side of his landlord's house. For their second wedding anniversary, he had found perfume like it. No, not perfume. Toilet water. Perfume would have been too strong for Rachel. Even when he started earning money, he avoided perfume. Light and floral. That fit Rachel.
    Light and floral was worlds away from her antiseptic smell now.
    Not that she would still be wearing the same toilet water. She would have switched. Wouldn't have wanted the memories, though more than a few were good.
    "Wake up, Rachel, " he begged, suddenly frightened. He had lived without her for six years, but all that time he had known where she was. Now he didn't. Not really. It was as unsettling a thought as he'd had of late.
    "I need to know how you're feeling, " he warned in a slightly frantic singsong. "I need to know what to tell the girls. I need you to talk to me." When she remained silent, he grew angry. "Damn it, what happened?
    You're the safest driver I know. You used to save me from accidents all the time�"Maniac on the left, you'd say, or, Jerk on your tail.
    Didn't you see a car behind you? " But she might not have. She had been driving north on a road that wound in and around, from the lip of one canyon to the lip of another. She would have been squeezed on the east by cliffs, and on the west by a single lane of oncoming traffic, then a guardrail and a harrowing drop.
    Once she rounded a sharp curve, she wouldn't see the car behind her until it, too, rounded the curve. If it did that at high speed, she wouldn't see it until seconds before the collision. And then, where could she go?
    Feeling the panic she may well have felt, he whispered an urgent "Okay, okay. Not your fault. I know that. I'm sorry I suggested it. It's just . . . frustrating." Frustrating that he couldn't rouse her.
    Frustrating that the doctors couldn't, either. Frustrating, too, that the offending party was dead and beyond punishment, but he sure couldn't say that to Rachel, not if there was a chance she could hear.
    She was a softhearted woman�hardheaded but softhearted. She would be crushed to learn that someone had