Angels Fall

clouds of smoke. For reasons she couldn't name, the plumes and the fuss caused Recce more embarrassment than anxiety. "It started up on me about ten miles east, I guess. I wasn't paying enough attention. Got caught up in the scenery."
    "Easy to do. You heading into the park?"
    "I was. More or less." Not sure, never sure, she thought and tried to concentrate on the moment rather than the before or after. "'I think the car had other ideas."
    His companion came over to join them, and both men looked tinder the hood the way Recce knew men did. With sober eyes and knowing frowns. She looked with them, though she accepted that she was as much of a cliche. The female to whom what lurked under the hood of a car was as foreign as the terrain of Pluto.
    "Got yourself a split radiator hose," he told her. "Gonna need to replace that."
    Didn't sound so bad, not too bad. Not too expensive. "Anywhere in town I can make that happen?"
    "Lynt's Carage'll fix you up. Why don't 1 give him a eall for your'
    "Lifesaver." She offered a smile and her hand, a gesture that had eonie to be much easier for her with strangers. "I'm Reece. Reece Cilmore."
    "Mac Drubber. This here's Carl Sampson."
    "Back East, aren't you?" Carl asked. He looked a fit fitty-something to Reece, and with some Native American blood mixed in once upon a time.
    "Yeah. Way back.Boston area. I really appreciate the help."
    "Nothing but a phone call." Mac said. "You can come on in out of the breeze it you want, or take a walk around. Might take Lynt a few to get here."
    "I wouldn't mind a walk, it that's okay. Maybe you could tell me a good place to stay in town. Nothing fancy.
    "Got the Lakeview Hotel just down a ways. The Teton House, other side of the lake's some homier. More a B and B. Some cabins along the lake, and others outside of town rent by the week or the month."
    She didn't think in months any longer. A day was enough of a challenge. And homier sounded too intimate. "Maybe I'll walk down and take a look at the hotel."
    "It's a long walk. Could give you a ride on down.'
    "I've been driving all day. 1 could use the stretch, but thanks, Mr. Drubber."
    "No problem.' He stood another moment as she wandered down the wooden sidewalk. "Pretty thing." he commented.
    "No meat on her." Carl shook his head. "Women today starve off all the curves."
    She hadn't starved them off, and was, in fact, making a concerted effort to gain back the weight that had fallen off in the past couple of years. She'd gone from health club fit to scrawny and had worked her way back to what she thought of as gawky, too many angles and points, too many bones. Every time she undressed, her body was like that of a stranger to her.
    She wouldn't have agreed with Mac's pretty thing . Not anymore. Once she'd thought of herself that way, as a pretty woman—stylish, sexy when she wanted to be. But her face seemed too hard now, the cheekbones too prominent, the hollows too deep. The restless nights were fewer, but when they came, they left her dark eyes heavily shadowed, and cast a pallor, pasty and gray, over her skin.
    She wanted to recognize herself again.
    She let herself stroll, her worn-out Keds nearly soundless on the sidewalk. She'd learned not to hurry—had taught herself not to push, not to rush, but to take things as they came. And in a very real way to embrace every single moment.
    The cool breeze blew across her face, wound through the long brown hair she'd tied back in a tail. She liked the feel of it, the smell of it. clean and fresh, and the hard light that poured over the Tetons and sparked on the water.
    She could see some of the cabins Mac had spoken of, through the bare branches of the willows and the cottonwoods. They squatted behind the trees, log and glass, wide porches—and. she assumed, stunning views.
    It might be nice to sit on one of those porches and studv the lake or the mountains, to watch whatever visited the marsh where cattails speared up out of the bog. To have that room around, and the quiet.
    One day maybe, she thought. But not today.
    She spotted green spears of daffodils in a half whiskey barrel next to the entrance to a restaurant. They might have trembled a bit in the chilly breeze, but they made her think spring. Everything was new in spring. Maybe this spring, she'd be new too.
    She stopped to admire the tender sprouts. It was comforting to see spring making its way back after the long winter. There would be other signs of it soon. Her guidebook boasted of