Angels in Pink: Holly's Story (Lurlene McDaniel (Mass Market)) Read Online Free

potter?”—an answer that annoyed her and solved nothing.
    Holly heard a gurney coming down the hall and backed away from the sleeping girl. “I’ll say a prayer for you,” she whispered. She fled the teen wing, grateful to be away from the depressing place that housed people her own age wrestling with disease and pain—and ever so grateful that she wasn’t one of them.
    “You missed dinner,” Raina’s mother said as soon as she walked in the door that night.
    “Kathleen’s mother had a little party for her to celebrate Kathleen’s new job in the hospital gift shop. No more volunteering for her this summer . . . steady work and steady pay,” Raina answered stiffly.
    “Good for Kathleen. You could have called me,” Vicki said.
    “Sorry,” Raina said, without conviction.
    “Are you going to be angry at me for the rest of your life?” Vicki crossed her arms.
    “I’m not sure. Do you have any more secrets you ‘forgot’ to tell me?” Raina was talking about Emma, of course, the baby whom Vicki had given up for adoption years before Raina was born.
    “Don’t be hateful. I was trying to get on with my life.”
    “And if my sister hadn’t gotten sick and needed bone marrow, and if I hadn’t put myself in the national registry on a whim, would I have ever known about her?”
    “I would have told you eventually.”
    “And will you tell
her
about our having the same father? She should know that.”
    “Maybe someday. She’s struggling with so much right now.”
    Exasperated by Vicki’s excuses, Raina fired at her, “You’re playing God, Mother. She has a right to know.”
    “She has terrific adoptive parents who love her and who never expected me to walk back into her life. Plus her biological father is dead, so why muddy the water? What purpose would it serve except to make
you
feel better, or whatever it is you’re feeling toward her? She’s not a part of our lives, Raina.”
    “She’s part of my life!” Raina cried. “I saved her life. Just because you don’t want anything to do with her—”
    “Stop it!” Vicki glared at Raina. “How dare you assume what I want? Do you think it’s easy to give up a baby? Do you think I haven’t thought about Emma every day since I gave her up? But I had
you
to think of and to raise, and a career to plan so that I could make a life for us. Because it’s about us, you and me, and what’s best for
us.
”
    “How nice to know I was the perfect substitute for the baby you really wanted.”
    Vicki’s hand shot out at Raina’s mouth so quickly that Raina never saw it coming, but she felt the sharp sting—it made her eyes water. For a stunned moment, neither one of them spoke. Raina’s head was reeling. In spite of all the yelling matches they’d had over the years, she couldn’t remember her mother’s ever striking her. She watched Vicki’s eyes fill with tears. “That hurt,” Vicki whispered.
    Raina couldn’t answer. Shock mingled with fury. Her mother had slapped her.
Slapped
her.
    Vicki backed away. “I’ve made so many sacrifices. And for what? For a daughter who doesn’t think about my existence. And for another who hates me.” She turned, her back ramrod straight, and ascended the stairs.
    Raina watched her mother leave without apology, without concern for having slapped her. Raina seethed, but held herself in steely control. She would be eighteen in November. She would graduate next May. She could hang with Hunter all next summer, maybe go to college in the same area. Maybe she would forget college and get a job near Hunter. Anyplace would be better than here with her mother, who had once been like a best friend but who now seemed like her worst enemy.

four

    AS THE JULY Fourth weekend approached, Holly realized that her summer was going to be a good one. She hadn’t had any major blowups with her parents. She was well liked and trusted at the hospital, and had been put in charge of the annual ice cream social for the pediatric