Angels in Pink: Holly's Story (Lurlene McDaniel (Mass Market)) by Lurlene McDaniel

“To watch over you,” he’d said. Last year, getting back together with him had made her birthday the happiest ever. This year, it would be her saddest. She cradled the figurine in her hands, pressed it against her cheek, longing to feel Hunter touch her, hear his voice say her name. There were only the sound of the rain and the feel of the cool, hard glass on her skin.
    “We’ve got to do something special for Raina’s birthday,” Kathleen told Carson. They were watching a movie in his home theater, but she wasn’t paying it much attention.
    “
We
do?”
    “Normally I’d ask Holly, but I can’t very well do that now, can I?”
    Carson paused the movie with the remote. “Point taken. What did you have in mind?”
    “If I knew, I wouldn’t be picking your brain, would I?”
    “Let’s see, I could take the three of you to a hotel—”
    She slugged his shoulder. “Be serious.”
    “Do I not look serious?”
    She started to stand, but he hauled her onto his lap. “All kidding is over. Do you have any ideas?”
    “It has to be something fun, something neither she nor Holly has ever done before. Something memorable.” She nibbled on a fingernail. “And something that doesn’t cost a lot of money. I don’t have too much saved up, and Christmas is coming.”
    “Sounds like you need a fairy godmother to show up.”
    “I don’t know how to help my two best friends,” she said softly. “They hurt so bad, and I don’t know how to help them.”
    “Still no word about Hunter’s shooter?”
    “Nothing.” Kathleen picked at a button on the front of his shirt. “People die every day in Tampa. You never think about that until it happens to someone you know. How do you fill up the hole that’s left?”
    “Maybe you have to dig another hole,” he said. “What do you say we plan something really low-key? No party. No crowds.”
    She considered his suggestion. “Sounds like an
un
birthday.”
    “Leave it to me,” he said.
    “To you?”
    “Trust me.”
    Through his mother’s connections, Carson arranged a supper for the three friends in the planetarium under a glass-domed ceiling. A waiter from the country club, dressed in a white coat, served them at a table draped with pale blue linen and adorned with bone china, crystal, silver and a centerpiece of fresh white roses—choices Teresa made, she said, “because beauty has a way of dulling grief.”
    While they ate, classical music played softly, and on one wall an enormous movie screen showed amazing photos of galaxies thousands of light-years away taken by the Hubble telescope. The star masses looked like explosions of flowers, in every color imaginable, strewn on a blanket of black. Overhead, real stars glittered in the dark sky above the dome.
    The waiter handed Raina a card that read “Happy 18th, Raina, from . . . Your Angels.” He gave Holly a card, also signed “Your Angels.”
    “This is very wonderful,” Raina said, looking at her friends. “Thanks.”
    “Kathleen’s doing,” Holly said.
    “I had some help from a guy with a vivid imagination.”
    “Lucky you,” Raina said sincerely.
    Kathleen beamed inwardly. Carson had done something extraordinary and touched all their hearts with his magic. And she knew that no matter what the future held for her and Carson, she would forever remember the night he gave her the universe.

fourteen

    “WHAT DO YOU mean we’re going away for Christmas?” Holly stared at her father, hardly believing what he’d just told her. They were sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal for supper because Evelyn was in bed with a headache.
    “I just think it’s the best thing for us this year.”
    “But we always have Christmas at home. If Mom doesn’t feel like decorating, we can do it together.”
    He shook his head. “No, we can’t.”
    “I can do it by myself, then.” She knew exactly where the Christmas boxes were stashed in the attic. “I’ll put it all away too, after Christmas is