Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates

by Elizabeth Chandler

  Terrific, thought Tristan.

  “So you decided to go to the lake after all?” Beth asked. She was trying on a shower cap that looked like a silver mushroom.

  “The lake!” Suzanne said, surprised. “She’s staying home, and you’re staying with her, Beth.”

  Beth frowned. “Suzanne, you know I can’t miss my family reunion. I thought she was going to Philly with you.”

  Ivy had turned away from both of them.

  “Ivy!” Suzanne commanded.

  “What?” She started sorting through a bin of barrettes and didn’t look up.

  “What are you doing this weekend?”

  “Staying home.”

  Suzanne raised her perfectly shaped black eyebrows. “Your mother’s letting you stay alone?”

  “She thinks that you and Beth will be with me. And I’m counting on you two to cover for me,” Ivy added.

  Lacey glanced over at Tristan.

  “I don’t know what the big deal is,” Ivy went on. “I’d like to have the house to myself for a change. I’ll have plenty of time to practice for the festival, and Ella will keep me company.”

  “But Ella can’t protect you,” Tristan protested.

  “I just don’t like the idea of you moping around all weekend by yourself,” Suzanne said.

  “That house is too big, too lonely,” Beth added. “Listen to them, Ivy,” Tristan urged.

  “I told you both, I won’t go to Juniper Lake! I can’t!”

  “This is some kind of Tristan thing, isn’t it?” Suzanne said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Ivy replied.

  It was. Tristan remembered the plans they had made the night he died. Ivy had told him how she was going to float in the sunlight in the deepest part of Juniper Lake. “I’ll swim in the moonlight, too.”

  “The moonlight?” he’d said. “You’d swim in the dark?”

  “With you I would,”

  Lacey touched Tristan on the arm. “You’ve got to get through to her this time.”

  He nodded.

  They followed the girls out of the store. Tristan was tempted to slip inside Beth’s mind right then, to direct her toward a table where she could take out her writing pad, but he didn’t want to give her too many instructions. She might begin to resist.

  Beth stopped suddenly in front of Electronic Wizard, and Tristan followed her eyes to a display of computers inside.

  “Look at her. Look at her!” Suzanne said, nudging Ivy. “You’d think Beth was checking out guys.”

  “There’s the laptop I want,” Beth said.

  Then Lacey came up quickly behind her. Tristan saw that the tips of her fingers had stopped shimmering. She gave a swift push. Beth stumbled through the door and looked back in surprise at Suzanne and Ivy. They followed Beth inside, with Tristan and Lacey right behind them.

  “Can I help you?” asked a salesman.

  “Uh, I’m just looking,” Beth said, blushing. “Can I try out your display models?”

  He flicked his hand in their direction and walked away.

  “You’re on, Tristan,” Lacey said.

  It didn’t take Beth long to find the word-processing program. Tristan had to struggle to keep up with her, to think what her next thought might be, which was the way Lacey had taught him to slip into the minds of others.

  When a writer looked at an empty computer screen, what did she see? Tristan wondered. A movie screen ready to be lit with faces? A night sky with one small star blinking at the top, a universe ready to be written on? Endless possibilities. Love’s endless twists and turns—and all love’s impossibilities.

  Beth started typing:

  Impossibilities

  What did she see when she looked out every night at the lonely black screen of sky? Possibilities. Love’s endless twists and turns, and, oh, bitter heart, all love’s impossibilities.

  Phew! Tristan thought.

  “Phew!” Beth typed, then squinted at the screen.

  “Stay with her, Tristan,” Lacey said. “Keep your focus.”

  Back up. Delete word. Oh, bitter heart, Tristan prompted Beth.

  “Oh, bitter heart, lonely heart,” Beth typed, then paused.

  They were both stuck, then Tristan saw the connection: You should not stay home alone.

  “You should not stay home alone,” Beth typed.

  It’s not safe alone, he thought.

  “It’s not safe alone,” she typed.

  Then, before he could send her a message about anything else, she wrote on: “But is my heart safe alone with him?”

  No, he thought.

  “Yes,” Beth replied.

  No!

  “Yes!”

  No!

  “Yes!” Beth frowned.

  Tristan sighed. Of course, she wanted the romance to work out and have the girl who was gazing at the night sky not be lonely anymore. But Tristan wanted to issue a warning. If Ivy was alone with the wrong guy …

  “What’s wrong?” asked Ivy.

  “I’ve got that funny feeling again,” Beth said. “It’s really strange, like there’s someone inside my head, saying things.”

  “Oh, you writers.” Suzanne snorted.

  Ivy bent down to look at the screen. “‘No! Yes! No! Yes!’” she read, then laughed a little sadly. “It sounds like me when I first met Tristan.”

  “It’s Tristan,” Beth typed quickly.

  Ivy stopped smiling.

  Tristan pressed on, and Beth typed as fast as he thought: “Be careful, Ivy. It’s dangerous, Ivy. Don’t stay alone. Love you. Tristan.”

  Ivy straightened up. “That’s not funny, Beth! That’s stupid, and mean!”

  Beth stared at the screen, her mouth open in disbelief.

  Suzanne leaned down to read it. “Beth!” she said. “How could you? Ivy, wait!”

  But Ivy was already halfway out of the store. Suzanne ran after her. Beth stared at the screen, her entire body shaking. Tristan slipped out of Beth’s mind, exhausted.

  “Would you like to print that out now?” the salesman asked, walking toward her.

  Beth shook her head slowly and keyed in Delete Page. “Not this time,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  Every effort Tristan made to reach Ivy that week failed. What was worse, his attempts at warning her had pushed her further away from him and from those who cared for her. She was avoiding Beth, and now Philip too, after the little boy told her his angel said she must not stay alone. Tristan could have tried once more through Will, but he knew Ivy would just build another wall, a higher one.

  Thursday night he headed for Riverstone Rise Cemetery, planning to get some rest, hoping to stave off the dreamless darkness so that he could keep watch over Ivy through the long weekend. On the way to his own grave, Tristan decided to go by Caroline’s plot and see if fresh roses had been left there. He thought that Lacey was right: they had to find out who Caroline’s visitor was and what he knew about her death.

  Tristan crept along the cemetery road as if he were still flesh and blood, afraid of rousing the peaceful dead. In the moonlight, the white stones made a stark cityscape: obelisks towering like skyscrapers, mausoleums standing as mansions, the low rounded stones and shiny rectangular blocks marking neighborhoods of ordinary people. It was a still and eerie city, the city of the dead—my city, he thought grimly. Then he recognized the stone that marked one corner of the Baines family plot.

  It was a well-kept plot with some ornate statuary, figures that seemed to watch Tristan as he approached Caroline’s grave from behind. When he walked past her marker, he spun around with surprise. Sitting on Caroline’s grass, lying back against her stone as if he were lounging in bed, was Eric. His arms and legs were limp, and his head was turned sideways, his cheek flat against the stone. For a moment Tristan wasn’t sure if Eric was breathing. Moving closer, he saw that Eric’s pale eyes were open, his pupils so dilated they looked as if he had drunk up two pools of night.

  He was breathing soft
ly, and he was mumbling something—something that made sense only to a mind high on drugs. Tristan wondered if Eric was capable of certain actions in this state. Could he stand up, could he walk? With his mind messed up like this, could he do something he’d wish later on that he hadn’t done? Materializing his fingers, Tristan ran them across Eric’s upturned palm.

  Eric grabbed Tristan’s fingers and for a moment Tristan was caught. Then he let his fingers dissolve and pulled himself free.

  “Been a while,” Eric said; flexing the hand that had grabbed hold of Tristan. “Been too long, Caroline, sorry about that. A lot’s been going on, a lot more than anybody knows.” He laughed quietly and pointed, as if he could see her directly in front of him. “Of course, you know.”

  “I don’t know,” Tristan replied. “What’s going on? Tell me.”

  Eric cocked his head, and for a moment Tristan thought he had heard the question.

  “Yeah … probably,” Eric said, answering some other question. “But it could be, you know, messy. I don’t like things … messy.”

  Messy? Tristan wondered. What did that mean? Complicated? Bloody?

  Eric sat straight up now, blinking his eyes, attentive to the voice he was hearing in his head. His hair was almost white in the moonlight, and his shadowed eyes stared holes through Tristan.

  “You mean Ivy. Her name’s Ivy,” Eric said, waving his bony hand in the air. It passed directly through Tristan, chilling him like the touch of a skeleton.

  “Well, what can I do?” Eric said. “You know where I’m at, Caroline. Don’t push me! Back off!” He jumped to his feet and stood there, teetering.

  Then he started to laugh low in his throat. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “This weekend everyone’s going to the lake but Ivy.” Eric smiled as if he’d just heard something funny. “Now, that’s not a very nice thing to say!”

  What, in his drug-crazed mind, did he think Caroline had said?

  “Hey!” Eric shouted. “I said don’t push me.” He took two steps sideways. “Back off, Caroline. I don’t want to listen to you anymore. Back off!”

  Eric started running then, stumbling into markers and lurching from side to side, shrieking in a weird, high-pitched voice, “Back off, Caroline! Back off! Back off!”

  Tristan watched him until he disappeared down the road. He tried to imagine the other half of Eric’s conversation. What did Eric think Caroline wanted him to do?

  Terrifying thoughts flooded Tristan’s mind. Then he calmed himself and, focusing all his energy, called out, “Caroline, are you there?” He called her three times, hoping each time that she’d answer back. But his angel senses had already told him what the silence proved: There was nothing there but a cold body, and its answers were rotting with it.

  P2-6

  Friday morning Gregory waved a piece of paper with a phone number on it at Ivy. “Promise me,” he said.

  She shrugged, then nodded halfheartedly.

  “Juniper Lake is an hour and a half away, and the way I drive, just an hour,” he added with a grin. “Promise me, Ivy.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she told him, and rearranged the food in the ice chest for the fourth time. Maggie was feeding Andrew, Gregory, Philip, and herself that weekend but had packed enough additional food for a family of bears.

  “I know you can take care of yourself,” Gregory said, “but you still might get down or freaked out. This place can be pretty scary when you’re alone.” He rattled the paper. “If you need me—I don’t care if it’s in the middle of the night—call me,”

  Ivy gave a little duck of her head, which didn’t mean that she would or wouldn’t, then started packing the variety of cookies and chips that her mother had set out on the kitchen counter. “I hope you’re ready to eat twenty-four hours a day,” she told Gregory.

  He laughed and opened one of the bags she was holding, snagging two cookies. He held one up to her mouth, and she bit it.

  “I told you, Ivy, I won’t squeal about you being alone here,” Gregory said, “but the deal is that you have to call me once each day.” He held her with his eyes. “Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Promise,” he said, his face close to hers. He held her with one finger hooked through her belt loop. “Promise.”

  “Okay, okay, I promise,” she said, laughing.

  He let her go. For a moment she wished that Gregory would stay home.

  “I know what you’re really up to,” he teased. “As soon as we clear out of here, you’ll be calling up people from all over and throwing a big bash.”

  “That’s it,” said Ivy, tossing a pack of napkins on top of the snack bag. “You’ve got me figured out.”

  “Have you thought about calling Will?” Gregory was still smiling, but his suggestion was serious.

  “No,” she said firmly.

  “Why don’t you like him?” he asked. “Not because of those angel drawings—”

  “No, it’s not that.” Ivy checked the packs of paper plates and cups. They were from ’Tis the Season and decorated with Thanksgiving turkeys and Valentine hearts. “I like him all right. He just makes me uncomfortable. I can’t quite explain it. When I look at him, there’s something in his eyes….”

  Gregory laughed out loud. “Love? Or is it just raging hormones?”

  “Right, right,” Ivy said. “That must be it.”

  “I think so.” He put his hands on her shoulders and would not let her turn away. “One of these days you’ll realize that there are guys you don’t even suspect who are looking at you … with something in their eyes.”

  Ivy looked down at her feet.

  He laughed again and dropped his hands. “Be nice to Will,” he said. “He’s had some rough times in the past.”

  Before Ivy could ask what kind of rough times, Maggie and Philip came into the kitchen. Philip was wearing the Yankees cap and T-shirt that Gregory had bought him at the game.

  Little by little, Philip was warming up to Gregory, and Gregory seemed pleased by it. Philip’s talk of angels still annoyed him, but that was probably because it upset Ivy.

  Philip gave Ivy a light punch in the arm. She had noticed lately that when others were around, her little brother wouldn’t hug her. Maggie, who was dressed for the great outdoors from the neck down and made up for a photo session from the neck up, gave Ivy a squeeze and a kiss.

  Gregory and Philip immediately rubbed their faces in the same place. Ivy grinned at them but left the fresh, red print of lips on her cheek.

  “That’s my girl,” Maggie said. “Got us all packed up. I swear, I raised you to be a better mother than me.”

  Ivy laughed.

  Gregory carried out the ice chest, and the others followed with bags and suitcases, putting them in Maggie’s car. Gregory planned to take his own car, and Andrew, who had been held up by a late-afternoon meeting, would drive up to the lake afterward.

  There was a lot of car door banging and loud spurts of music. Philip, who wanted to ride with Gregory, was fooling around with his stereo. At last both cars drove off, and Ivy stood alone, cherishing the silence. The afternoon was warm and still, and only the trees, the very tops of them, rustled dryly. It was one of the few moments of real peace that she had felt since Tristan’s death.

  She went inside and grabbed a book, one that Beth had given her, so it was sure to be a torrid romance. Beth had sent it via Suzanne with a note of apology, afraid to face Ivy and afraid to call her up. Ivy had telephoned Beth to let her know she wasn’t angry anymore.

  She was still mystified, however. It was such an odd thing for Beth to have done—creating computer messages from “Tristan.” Beth was usually so sensitive to other people’s feelings. Well, she had thought that Will was sensitive, too, and look what he had done: put a pair of wings on Tristan.

  In spite of the pain of that memory, Ivy smiled a little. What would Tristan have thought about Will turning him into an angel?

  She read for more than an hour and a half up in the
tree house, occasionally gazing out through the branches at the distant glittering strip that was the river. Then she stuck the book in the waistband of her jeans and swung down on the rope. In the mood for a walk, Ivy circled around the front of the house and headed down the winding drive. She quickened her pace, and kept it up as she climbed the hill again, returning to the top, sweaty and exhilarated.

  Maybe she could finally play “Liebestraum,” she thought. With all this quiet around her, maybe she’d play up a storm, and work all the way through the love song. She had been practicing for the festival every day but hadn’t been able to get to the end of the piece. At some point the memories always came back to her, a slow tide turning in her, and washed out all her music. Maybe that day she could hold on to the notes.

  Ivy grabbed a soda from the kitchen and hurried upstairs to take a shower. Halfway through it, she wondered if she should have locked the back door. Don’t be silly, she told herself. No one ever comes up on this hill. She intended to enjoy these days of peace and wouldn’t let the worrying of Suzanne, Beth, and Gregory put her on edge.

  When Ivy climbed the steps to her music room, Ella scooted ahead of her and leaped up onto the piano bench.

  Ivy smiled. “You’re practicing for the festival, too?”

  She thought about the triplets of notes that Ella had “played” the week before, then pushed it out of her mind; the song would make her start thinking of Tristan.

  Ivy began her warm-ups, then played melodies that were Philip’s favorites, and finally began “Liebestraum.” She was pleased by her playing, her fingers flying over the keys, caught up completely in the vibrant cadenza. Just before she returned to the opening theme, in the moment she paused to turn the page, she heard a noise.

  Immediately she thought of glass shattering. Her flesh turned to goose bumps, but she fought against her fear. She reminded herself that breaking glass was a sound from her nightmares. If anyone really wanted to get in, all the person had to do was open the back door. The noise wasn’t a window breaking, she told herself. A tree branch fell against the house, or something had blown over downstairs.

  Still, Ivy felt uneasy. She glanced around the room and saw that Ella was gone. Maybe the cat had knocked over something. The best thing to do would be to investigate and prove to herself that it was nothing. Ivy went to the top of the attic stairs and listened.