Christmas at Timberwoods - Fern Michaels [63]
Angela’s voice began to rise with the onset of panic. “I think it crashed. There was a little girl who might have died—I hoped she was asleep. She was very pretty and she had gold circlets in her ears. She was tiny and so still . . . she had a lot of dark curls. I didn’t want her to be dead.”
Tears trickled down Angela’s thin cheeks as she talked. Wearily she shook her head from side to side. “You see, you can’t do anything about this, either. No one can do anything.” She looked to Noel, as if for reassurance.
Noel was off the chair and kneeling beside her. “Right now I don’t have any answers for you. But I want you to listen to me. You had this vision a few hours ago. Is that right?”
“Yes. I’ve already told you.”
“Where was the plane? By that I mean, was it here in Woodridge, or was it some place farther away? Could you tell?”
“No. It could be anywhere.”
“These other visions, the ones you’ve had in the past—were they all more or less around here, let’s say within a twenty-five mile radius?”
Angela nodded.
“And you couldn’t tell if it was day or night?”
“No, because of the bright light. I couldn’t see beyond the light.”
“Did the plane crash or was it on fire?”
“I think it crashed because it was on fire. The whole scene was fire.”
“What color was the plane?”
“White with some red on the wings and black letters on the side.”
Noel’s voice rose in excitement. “Did you see the letters?”
“Yes, I saw them. P-654RT. Big black letters.”
“The little girl—think again. Do you know what happened to her?”
“I wasn’t sure. But she was so still.”
“How old was she, Angela? Do you know? Could you guess?”
“Three years, maybe four. It would be hard to say because she was so tiny. And she had those little gold earrings, almost covered by the dark curls.”
“Angela, if the plane was burning, wouldn’t she have burned, too? Or was she thrown clear?”
Angela frowned. “There wasn’t any fire around her. She wasn’t burned at all.”
“Where did she come from?”
Angela looked puzzled. “I don’t know. At first I thought she was asleep.”
“How do you know?”
Angela appeared confused. “I don’t know. Her mother was nearby, like she’d been watching over her. She seemed awfully sad. And don’t ask me how I know that, either. I just know.”
“Think. Was there anything else, anything you might have forgotten? Was there anybody else in the plane? What about the pilot? Were there any other passengers?”
Angela shook her head. “Just what I saw.”
“Is there any way for you to know how soon these things happen after you see them, how—”
“I don’t know!” Angela cried, jumping up. “A day, two days . . . I don’t know! Sometimes just a few hours. I don’t want to talk about it anymore!” Her voice rose to a shriek. She’d had enough. More than enough. She’d told them all she knew and they still wanted more. But there wasn’t any more. She buried her face in her hands and tried to erase the little girl’s face from her mind.
Charlie! She wanted Charlie! She wanted to know that when she left here she could go to him and that he would be waiting for her with open arms and no questions. But now she didn’t even know that, because he wasn’t home or he wasn’t answering the phone.
Amy heard her pathetic cry and was through the swinging doors in a flash, rushing to her side and wrapping her arms protectively around Angela.
“You stop it right now! Right this instant! Come on, honey, you come with me. We’re going to have chocolate cake and milk, and you clods can sit here and drink. You aren’t getting any of my cake.”
“Chocolate?” Harold asked longingly.
“Devil’s food,” Amy said tartly as she led Angela into the sweetly fragrant kitchen.
As soon as the swinging doors closed, Noel turned to the others, giving them a serious look.
“Hey, you believe her, don’t you?” Eric stared at Noel, a peculiar expression on his face. “Going on faith? From the look