Read Rose for Rose: Book Two in the Angels' Mirror Series for Free Online Page A

to bury that cloth with her.
    Tears sprung to Rose’s eyes as she tried to push the thoughts away. Poor Mother, and poor little Sarah Jene!
    “We want to wrestle,” Steven, ever the first to speak, told her with pleading eyes. “This isn’t helping much. We can still hear the storm.”
    The rest of the boys nodded, Peter giving her a shy little smile, despite his obvious fright.
    At fifteen and not always able to keep a good handle on her younger siblings, at times like these, Rose just gave in.
    It was the third set of storms since Mother had died, and she missed her very much.
    “Fine, but be careful not to knock into me,” she said, trying not to chide them before they were due it.
    She kept changing the records and stepping out of the way, thinking all the time about Father: the one man who ever called her plainly, Rose.
    Almost everyone else called her Rosie – her brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles, and even Gram-Papa and Nanama Wishart had – it just seemed the name everyone liked best. But then, there were a few who called her Rose Angela, like her mother, God rest her soul, had. She much preferred Rose on its own, as she was close to her father from the time she had been born here, in this very house. Maybe it was because it was Father who had kept her alive when her mother had gotten ill for the first three days after her birth. It was Father who refused to make her share a room with the boys, and Father who had insisted she learn to read early in life.
    For a long time, he had been her everything, save God….
    At times, when she was younger, she would pray that her father would really, truly come to know God because she had idolized him so much. But that was before he began to drink in front of her and her brothers. It was before Mother and the baby had died and the drinking and anger got worse. But even with all of that, her father had been as close as she’d had to a rock.
    Oh, Father, please be safe. Dear God, please watch over my Father and help him ride out the storm alright. The St. St. Peter’s medal felt heavy around her neck, and all of a sudden, she was hot. She thought of her father’s big burly shoulders, and his head full of dark hair, the fullness of his laughter, and weathered face.
    Father had grown old before his time since his wife had passed away in childbirth, losing Rose’s only sister, to boot.
    With a shattered sigh, she took another step back as Michael’s foot flung into the air toward her.
    “Watch out,” she said, even as she felt herself falling backward.
    The last thing she heard as she fell into the mirror was a bleak apology, and a gasp.
    Then, bright lights, and then… for a long, limitless moment… there was nothing before she heard music again. But this time, it was very different…. It was strangely mesmerizing and very much something she’d never heard before.
     
     
     
    Rose fell hard in this unfamiliar place; she could hear what sounded like birds mixing with the music, and hoped they weren’t nearby.
    After a few moments, she heard another voice asking who she was. But what she wanted to know was where she was. Absolutely nothing looked or sounded familiar, and the smell in the air was even different than what she was used to.
    Besides all that, what happened to her brothers? Where was her house?
    Oh, why didn’t she stand on the other side of the room? Then she wouldn’t have fallen through the mirror, anyway. That crazy, weird, and beautiful mirror; spooky mirror. And how could it be here and at my house at the same time , she wondered as she glanced carefully around.
    “Hello, Darling,” she heard someone else say.
    The voice didn’t sound quite human, so what was it?
    Tentatively standing, she stepped out into the light to answer the voice she’d heard. Before she spoke, she noticed a blonde woman standing not too far from her, close to what appeared to be a window.
    “It’s me,” she said. “But where am I… and who are