Heart Echoes Read Free Page B

unbearable noise of sirens, helicopters, and crying people and stared at her photo.
    It had helped at first, talking with the boy about Maiya and River. But now the apprehension slammed into her again, a literal twisting of her heart. Where were they? Were they all right? How long would this unknowing continue? How long could she take it?
    And how long could they take it not knowing about her? River would be having an especially hard time of it.
    If he were okay.
    He had to be okay.
    She noted other people checking cell phones like she had been. Sometimes a signal appeared, but the lines were jammed. There was no getting through. Supposedly no one should even be trying to get through except for emergencies.
    She wasn’t sure what this was if not an emergency. It wasn’t dire, though, at least not for her. She was hot and tired and anxious, but she was walking and talking. She could leave soon in her own car. She was not lying under those tons of broken concrete.
    The photo was fairly new. She had done some legal work for a photographer, saw samples of her artistic flair, and decided this year’s Christmas card would include a professional family picture taken far in advance. Teal bribed River and Maiya with the promise of homemade chocolate chip cookies. They dressed for the occasion and grinned on either side of her next to a palm tree with the ocean as a backdrop—Currier and Ives, West Coast style.
    Maiya’s fashion concoctions usually worked. For the picture her black hair was brushed straight back and held in place with a wide tortoiseshell headband. As usual, her vivid green eyes drew attention to themselves. She wore only one pair of earrings—large silver hoops—and a long multicolored neck scarf. Over a white T-shirt hung a loose-knit purple vest and several strands of beads. Black leggings allowed the bun-hugging gray skirt to pass muster.
    River, Teal’s earthy husband, wore his wavy, nut-brown hair as usual in a low, short ponytail but left the ball cap at home. He had exchanged jeans for khakis and put on a red button-down oxford over a white San Sebastian Academy T-shirt. He smiled, his teeth a slash of white in his perennially tanned face, his cobalt-blue eyes all but hidden behind thick lashes.
    Now there was the hottie. Even five years after meeting him she thought so. Totally not her type, though. No one was more surprised than herself when five minutes after he stepped into her office, she was writing down his phone number, and not because he was her client Jenny Nelson’s brother.
    He worked with at-risk teenage boys. He sat with them during drug withdrawals and at parole hearings and taught them how to plant gardens and say please and thank you. She got regular manicures and haircuts and wore suits and heels. When push came to shove, she raked moguls over the coals until they bled money.
    They were an odd threesome.
    But they were a threesome, the sort of three-stranded cord that was impossible to break.
    Teal put the photo back in her wallet. It was best not to think about them.

Chapter 6

    River sat on the garage floor, his head between his knees. He had managed to stand up briefly before nausea suggested sitting might be the wiser choice.
    It wasn’t so much the pain of cracked bones that sickened him. It was a deeper pain, yanked by its roots up and out of its burial place to sneer in his face.
    â€œThey’re all right.” He gasped the words, determined to fight back. “They are all right. Krissy and Sammy are . . . Oh, God. Oh, God.”
    He was losing his mind.
    Teal and Maiya were all right. Teal and Maiya .
    Tears stung his eyes.
    What would Sammy have looked like as a ten-year-old?
    â€œStop.”
    It was a stupid game to play. Extreme exhaustion brought it on. Sometimes the sight of a towheaded boy in the grocery store. Once his fingers tracing the hollow at the base of Teal’s neck sparked it. He could now add earthquakes to