Read Online Mammoth Secrets by Ashley Elizabeth Ludwig - Free Book Online

still married in God’s eyes.” Nana’s ice blue eyes flashed with intensity. “She can’t go hanging around with single men.”
    “People get divorced every day.” Jake splayed his hands around his coffee cup, then reached for the glass of ice water. “It’s part of life.”
    “Not part of our Lord’s plan, surely.” Nana turned her disdain from the new pastor to her wayward granddaughter. “He should know the truth of it. He’s your pastor, after all. You followed someone we barely knew out to California ’bout five years ago.” Nana’s words sliced deep. “Thankfully, she’s come back to us. But, what’s done is done.”
    “Apparently, that means our romantic interlude over fish guts is off,” Lilah spat before she could bite the sarcastic comment back. Her stomach dropped, but she hid it with a wavering laugh. “Sorry, Jake.”
    “I suppose you think that’s funny?” Nana shook her head, turned to face her new pastor. To give him a lesson in what was moral, no doubt.
    Back to them, Lilah grabbed a cloth, and set to drying coffee cups.
    “She’s still married in God’s eyes,” Nana challenged with her piercing gaze.
    “I think God knows I’ve not been married for quite some time.” Lilah shot the barb back at her grandmother. “Not in the Biblical sense.”
    Jake choked on his ice water, coughing into another napkin.
    “Lilah Dale!” Nana snapped.
    “Order up!” Eden called cheerily as she clipped tickets to the teetering wheel, blatantly ignoring all the tension from Nana and Lilah’s tight exchange.
    “Excuse me, everyone.” Lilah angled past her sister. “This bit of damaged goods has work to do.”
     
     
     
     
     

10
     
    That afternoon, Lilah dragged her feet in the cooling rush of water, her fishing pole in its Y-branch rest at the river’s muddy edge. The constant roar from the river’s head did its work to douse the fire of her anger.
    Some folks said the pool beneath went down ninety feet, others said only twenty. No one agreed how deep, and no one cared enough to do a study on the matter. Most thought the fish didn’t stay after the hatchery dumped them off every Friday.
    Lilah knew otherwise, and that’s why she came here to fish. She cast her line toward a fallen tangle of tree roots from a stump. That shady spot, this time of day, was a perfect hiding place. Her gift was knowing more than anyone ever needed to about the best hiding places.
    Lilah tilted her head back to the pre-dinner sun. Its warmth through the cotton clouds wrapped her in a golden glow. Just her private chapel here at the water’s edge. With ear buds in place, she watched the line and flipped to the playlist carefully designed to mourn her failed marriage.
    A singer crooned of letting go, and someone had to go. That someone was her, though it hadn’t been love that she had abandoned back in California. It was icy-cold indifference. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s bitter, unexplainable resentment of everything she did or said.
    It didn’t take counseling to see the mistakes she’d made with Ryan Simpson. One thing she had stood her ground on: getting married in Vegas, on their way to California, as if that bit of subtle propriety would matter to her grandmother. She’d hoped it would have meant something to Papaw.
    Ryan delivered on one or two of his dangled promises in the beginning, then left the brunt of his dreams weighing on her shoulders. He’d worked her, made a name off of her recipes in public, while he’d broken her spirit in private.
    It shamed her to the core, how many nights she’d stared into the darkness and prayed to return to the edge of those falls. Walk that thin bridge by the old electrical plant and grain mill. To gather up one of those big, heavy millstones and just let the cool of the spring wash over her while she took the plunge. To find out how deep the water really went.
    Freeing her ear, music was replaced with the pounding chaos of water. Hand to head, a gasp