Mail-Order Millionaire (28 page)
Read Mail-Order Millionaire Online
Authors: Carol Grace
Laurie kept driving and Morgan kept crying until they reached the parking lot for the viewing area of Niagara Falls. The noise of the white water was thunderous, almost loud enough to drown out Morgan’s sobs. Laurie unbuckled the baby from her seat, shoved the car keys into her pocket and grabbed Morgan’s backpack and diaper bag, all the while keeping up a line of chatter designed to soothe the child. With Morgan on her back and the diaper bag over her arm, Laurie approached the fence and gasped at the sight.
The water cascaded to a two-hundred foot drop sending a mist back up into the air. It was stunning. It was breathtaking. But not to Morgan. Her wailing reached new heights. Other tourists stopped snapping pictures of each other and looked at the baby. A man at the edge of the crowd stared at them. Probably wondering what torture Laurie was inflicting on the poor child.
“Please, Morgan,” Laurie begged under her breath. “Please don’t cry. Look at the Falls. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Laurie sank down onto a wooden bench, lifted Morgan out of the backpack and onto her lap. And Morgan continued to cry. Desperate, Laurie reached into her pocket, pulled out her car keys and rattled them in front of Morgan.
The baby stopped crying instantly, grabbed the keys out of Laurie’s hand and threw them over the fence and down into the depths of the turbulent Niagara River.
Laurie gasped, stood and looked with disbelief into the white water. “Morgan,” she breathed, “what have you done?” A better question was, what had Laurie done, handing her keys to a baby to play with?
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Here’s an excerpt from
Return to Paradise
The sun sank behind the seven-thousand-foot-high Spanish Peaks as the woman pounded the last stake into the ground to anchor her small tent to the dry earth. She was all alone in the vast valley, bordered by the Sangre de Cristos on one side and the Peaks on the other. There were no other campers and that was fine with her. Loneliness was something she'd have to get used to. She might as well start now.
In fact, she'd come to this remote camping area to get away from people, from prying eyes, from pitying glances, to find peace. To find herself. To find out who she was and what would become of her now that the future she had planned was not to be. Somber gray clouds skittered across the darkening sky. The threat of a storm didn't frighten her. Nothing frightened her anymore. The worst had already happened. A cold wind blew through the valley and the woman thrust her arms into the sleeves of a hooded sweatshirt, and built a small campfire.
Her solitary meal was soup made from a freeze-dried mix augmented with a handful of fresh mushrooms and a dash of herbs. She sipped her soup thinking that everything tasted better when eaten outside. Maybe her appetite was returning to her at last. If so, maybe her interest in the future would soon follow. Right now all she could think of was what had happened. After dinner she fished a bottle of dry white wine from the bottom of her backpack and poured some into a tin cup. Cross-legged, she sat on the ground drinking her wine and gazing into the flames as she fought a losing battle with her memories. She'd come all this way and yet they followed her still. The stillness of an empty church. Unopened presents. A wedding that never took place, a dream that never came true and never would come true. Not now. Not ever.
She glanced at the blue-black clouds above and extinguished the fire with water from a nearby stream, then quickly retired to the shelter of her snug little tent and the warmth of her down sleeping bag. But the ground was hard, even with the foam sleeping pad under her.
Restless, she reached into her pocket, took out a necklace and ran her fingers over the gold and diamonds on one side and the engraved message on the other. She should never have brought it with her, an expensive pendant like that. Why did she want it anyway, as a tangible reminder of her loss? Maybe she needed to be reminded that while diamonds are forever, love isn't.
Thunder rumbled loudly in the distance and she shivered with apprehension. She finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep, still clutching the necklace in her hand. Sometime around midnight she was jarred awake by rain drumming on the blue nylon above her and the wind howling around her tent, threatening to blow it over. Lightning forked across the sky and thunder rolled again, closer and louder.
A tremor of fear shook her. She sat up and gripped the aluminum pole that supported the tent. Suddenly a brilliant light went off in her face like a blinding flashbulb. A shaft of pain knifed through her body. An unearthly force catapulted her into the air and dropped her on the ground like a shapeless rag doll.
"Oh, my God!" she screamed, and then everything went black.
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