Read Online The Color of Heaven by The Colour of Heaven (html) - Free Book Online Page B

doctor, and he was the first to examine her when the ambulance brought her to the hospital, but he never spoke about it. For
    a long time afterward, I had nightmares because Matt’s mother had been so beautiful, with long, black hair and red lipstick, and enormous, long-
    lashed blue eyes that always smiled. The thought of her dying like that had made me fear for the loss of my own mother at any given moment.
    “Are we going or not?” Matt asked, his hair stil sweeping the grass.
    “No,” Peter said. “We have school tomorrow.”
    Matt flipped forward and dropped to his feet. “That’s a shame, because it sure is a nice night. I bet the lake is just like a mirror.”
    o0o
    So that was how we were together, Sophie. Matt and Peter were my two best friends.
    I realize now that I was the link that held our trio together. Without me, I doubt they would have been friends. They were two very different people.
    o0o
    About two years later, I was studying for a math test after supper, and after more than an hour of practice questions, I decided I was ready.
    I closed my textbook and rubbed the sting from my eyes, then slid off the bed and crossed to the open window to inhale the fresh, salty scent of the
    sea air. Far in the distance, the sun dipped into the water and seemed to boil the waves on the horizon. I watched a sailboat cruise across the bay
    and wished I were out on my father’s boat instead of indoors.
    A familiar splash of red on the beach below caught my eye. It was Matt in his autumn jacket and denims, sitting alone. Writing a story, no doubt.
    I let out a sigh. He, more than anyone, should have been studying for the math test. It was his worst subject, the one he disliked most of al .
    Turning from the window, I reached for my blue cashmere sweater and pul ed it on while I descended the stairs. A moment later, I was crossing the
    beach and climbing up onto the rocks.
    “What are you doing out here?” I asked, taking note of the smal coiled notepad on his lap and the pen in his hand. “You should be studying.” I
    adjusted my skirt and sat down beside him.
    “I did try,” he explained, “but after about fifteen minutes I thought my head was going to explode.”
    “That bad?”
    “Yeah.”
    We gazed out at the water. “So you came here instead. I can hardly blame you.”
    A soft breeze blew in off the bay. The waves were slow and lazy, foaming like soapsuds as they spread across the dark sand beach, then retreated.
    I shut my eyes and inhaled deeply the familiar coastal smel s that were such a part of my life – the salt and seaweed, the wet rocks and al the little washed up snails and jel yfish.
    “You’re lucky everything comes so easily to you,” Matt said, draping a wrist across his knee. “You always do wel in school, you get top marks. I wish I was smart like that. Maybe then my dad would be in a better mood.”
    “You are smart, Matt, in ways that I’m not.”
    “Like how?”
    I glanced down at the notepad.
    He stared at it, too, then flipped it closed.
    “What’s this one about?” I asked.
    He leaned back on his elbows. “A kid who gets real y bad grades.”
    I laughed. “I should have guessed. How does it end?”
    “He drops out.”
    “Oh, no!”
    Matt chuckled. “But then he meets a gorgeous older woman who hires him as a night watchman in an abandoned warehouse, and he writes about
    the things that go on there.”
    “Such as…?”
    He grinned suggestively. “The woman drags a wooden crate into her office every night. She pul s it across the tiled floor from a room she keeps
    locked during the day.”
    “What’s in the crate?” I asked, but he kept me in suspense for a few seconds.
    “The bones of her dead husband.”
    I sat forward. “Did she murder him?”
    “No, he died of natural causes, years before, but she couldn’t accept it so she dug up his bones to keep them with her.”
    “That’s gruesome, but I like it. Does she get caught?”
    Matt squinted out at the