How I Came to Sparkle Again Read Online Free Page B

like hers, from a lifetime of being unloved in that particular way, a lifetime of agreeing to be disrespected by men with intimacy issues who would never ask her to sacrifice her freedom, a lifetime of bad choices and freedom. Was it really freedom? On one hand, yes. If she felt like going somewhere, she went somewhere. If she felt like eating ice cream for dinner, she ate ice cream for dinner. If she felt like buying new ski boots, she bought new ski boots. She didn’t have to run anything by anyone. She loved that. But there was another way in which it didn’t feel so free.
    She looked at her grandmother’s face and wondered how sad it would make her to know that not only was she no one’s wife, she dated men who wouldn’t even call her their girlfriend, men she didn’t want to call her boyfriend. Maybe friends with benefits. But did they even qualify as friends? Not really. Fuck buddies. She nodded slightly. Yep, that’s what she was. That was her title. Fuck buddy. Free—overall, yes. But respectable? No, not really. She felt shame looking at her grandparents’ faces knowing they had wanted more than this for her. They had wanted her to be valued and to think enough of herself to demand that.
    “It was the price of freedom,” she whispered to the photograph. “Don’t judge me,” knowing full well it wasn’t her grandparents who were judging her. The scent of Cody haunted her and inflamed her shame. She got out of bed, stripped off the sheets, and walked down the hall to the linen closet for new ones.

 
     
    chapter two
    SNOW REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 18
Current temperature: 28F, high of 34F at 3 P.M., low of 20F at 4 A.M.
Clear skies, winds out of the southwest at 15 mph.
35" at the base, 51" at the summit. 0" new in the last 24 hours. 1" of new in the last 48.
    Jill drove through the night and into the morning. The vast prairie finally gave way to the rise of the Rockies. The white bark of the mostly bare aspens glowed in the low November sun. As the road slipped between two large mountains, Jill finally felt safe, as if she had been running from something and had just ducked around a corner.
    She ascended higher and higher until she was among the snow-covered peaks, finally making it to the turnoff for the town of Sparkle. A mountain everyone called Big Daddy separated the little town from the main highway, and as she drove around it, she looked for tracks down the waterfall area. There were three sets down an impossibly steep and narrow chute. Crazy, she thought.
    She crept higher on the windy road, all the way to the sign welcoming her to Sparkle, elevation 8,896 feet, population 1,284. Behind the historic little mining town towered Sparkle Mountain, covered in snow and striped with ski runs. People that looked like little dots traversed down.
    Even though technically Midland was her hometown and Austin was her home, she found herself thinking, I’m home. I made it home. She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.
    To her left, two women, one in a fur coat and the other in large fur boots, walked into an art gallery. They were clearly guests at the historic lodge near the base of the mountain. Just beyond them, a man wearing ski pants patched with duct tape walked into the drugstore. He was a local. She smiled in spite of her circumstances, having forgotten how comical the polarity of Sparkle could be.
    She crept past the three blocks of brick buildings in the historic downtown to see what had changed and what had stayed the same. There were several new cafés and bakeries. Woodall’s Hardware, Dick’s Barber Shop, and the Gold Pan Bar were still there. The brick downtown gave way to another two blocks of businesses in colorful old mining houses before Main Street became residential.
    She drove past the little red house that Uncle Howard had rented for them during the two years that she had lived with him here. She had been so frail and thin when she’d first showed up. Uncle Howard had convinced her mom that