Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates

by Elizabeth Chandler

  “What kind of friend are you?” Suzanne cried. “You and I both know that you’ve been after Gregory since Tristan died.”

  “But he’s been after me since—” Ivy saw Gregory glance at her out of the corner of his eye, and she broke off her sentence.

  She knew she had lost the battle.

  Suzanne was trembling so, she could hardly get the words out. “Leave,” she said in a low, husky voice. “Get out of here, Ivy. Don’t ever come back.”

  “I’ll clean up—”

  “Leave! Just leave!” Suzanne shouted.

  There was nothing she could do. Ivy left her friend crying and clinging to Gregory.

  P3-11

  Ivy didn’t think about how she was getting home. She ducked into a bathroom farther down the hall and washed her mouth out with toothpaste. After buttoning and tucking in the blouse, she raced downstairs, snatched up her purse, and hurried out of the house.

  She struggled to hold back the tears. She didn’t want Gregory to hear stories later on about how upset she was. Philip’s words came back to her once more. “He can smell it if you’re afraid.”

  Now Ivy was terrified—for both herself and her friends. At any point they could stumble upon one of Gregory’s secrets. And his ego was big enough, he was crazy enough to assume that he could get away with silencing not just her, but Suzanne, Will, and Beth, too.

  Ivy walked briskly along the side of Lantern Road. The houses in Suzanne’s neighborhood were far apart, and there were no sidewalks. It was another dark mile to the intersection and two more miles into the town itself. The only light was a soft yellow moon.

  “Angels, stay with me,” Ivy prayed.

  She had walked about a third of a mile when the headlights of a car bore down on her. She stepped quickly off the road and ducked into some bushes. The car drove ten feet more, then screeched to a halt. Ivy scrambled to get deeper into the brush. The driver suddenly extinguished his bright lights, and she could see the shape of the car in the moonlight: a Honda. Will’s car.

  He climbed out and looked around. “Ivy?”

  She wanted to rush out of the bushes and into his arms, but she held back.

  “ivy, if you’re here, tell me. Tell me you’re okay.”

  Her mind raced, trying to think what she could tell him without spilling the whole and dangerous truth.

  “Answer me. Are you okay? Lacey said you were in trouble. Tell me if there is some way I can help.”

  Even in the pale light, the look of worry on his face was visible. She longed to reach out to him and tell him everything. She wanted to run to him and feel his arms wrap around her, keeping her safe for a moment. But for his sake she couldn’t—she knew that. Her eyes burned. She blinked several times to clear them, then emerged onto the road.

  “Ivy.” He breathed her name.

  “I—I was going home,” she said.

  His glance flicked to the bushes behind her. “Taking a shortcut?”

  “Maybe you could give me a ride,” she said softly.

  He studied her face a moment, then silendy opened the door for her. When he had locked and dosed it again, Ivy leaned against the door, feeling safe. She would be safe till she got to the house on the ridge.

  Will got in on the driver’s side. “Do you really want to go home?” he asked.

  In the end, she’d have to. She nodded, but he didn’t start the car.

  “Ivy, who are you afraid of?”

  She shrugged and looked down at her hands. “I don’t know.”

  Will reached over and laid his hand on top of hers. She turned it over and examined the small flecks of oil paint that the turpentine rag had missed. Ivy could picture Will’s hands with her eyes closed. The way his fingers felt now entwined with hers made her feel strong.

  “I want to help you,” he said, “but I can’t if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Ivy turned her face away from him.

  “You have to tell me what’s going on,” he insisted.

  “I can’t, Will.”

  “What happened that night at the train station?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer him.

  “You must remember something now. You must have some idea about what you saw. Was someone else there? What made you try to cross the tracks?”

  She shook her head and said nothing.

  “All right,” he said in a resigned voice. “Then I’ve got just one more question for you. Are you in love with Gregory?”

  Ivy was caught off guard, and her head spun toward him. Will looked into her eyes. He studied her whole face. “That’s what I needed to know,” he said quietly.

  What had she given away? Ivy wondered. What had her eyes revealed? That she hated Gregory? Or that she was falling in love with Will?

  She let go of his hand. “Please take me home,” she said, and he did.

  “And now,” said a voice quivering with emotion, “we return to today’s program … For Love of Ivy.” A soap opera tune was hummed loudly—and pretty badly, Tristan thought.

  Will heard it, too. He glanced around the school darkroom, where he had been working alone, and saw Lacey’s purple shimmer. “You again,” he muttered.

  As always, Tristan found it remarkably easy to match thoughts with Will. He slipped quickly inside him, so he could communicate with both Will and Lacey.

  Will blinked. “Tristan?” he said aloud.

  “Yeah,” he replied. The soap opera music continued in the background. “You’re off key, Lacey,” Tristan told her.

  The humming stopped, and the purple shimmer moved closer to him and Will.

  Will quickly put a roll of film behind him. “Could you step back a little, Lacey? You might expose my film.”

  “Well, excuse me!” she replied. “I guess you two heroes don’t need me around. I’ll be on my way.” She paused to give them time to protest. When neither of them did, she added, “But before I go, let me ask you lover boys a few questions. Who got Rip van Winkle here out of the darkness before the next hundred years had passed? Who directed him to this darkroom?”

  “I’ve been calling for you, Tristan,” Will explained. “I need your help.”

  “Who played guardian angel at Suzanne’s party?” Lacey continued. “Who told you when Ivy was in big trouble?”

  “Ivy was in trouble? What happened?” Tristan asked.

  “Who, tell me, who’s playing secretary to this pitiful Ivy fan club?”

  “Tell me what happened,” Tristan demanded. “Is Ivy okay?”

  “Yes and no,” Will replied, then told Tristan about the incident at the party, including Gregory’s account of it. “I don’t know what really happened,” he said. “I caught up with Ivy afterward on the road. She was upset and wouldn’t tell me anything. On Sunday she worked, then went straight to Beth’s. At school today she’d talk only to Beth but wouldn’t tell even her what really happened.”

  “Lacey, did you see anything?” Tristan asked.

  “Sorry, I was, uh, socializing at the time.”

  “What do you think she was doing?” Tristan asked.

  “Throwing the shoes of ungrateful movie fans into the pond,” Will told him.

  “I’m talking about Ivy!” Tristan snapped, but he was more upset with himself than Will. Twice now Will had been there for Ivy when Tristan had not

  “I’ve been calling you—” Will began.

  “And calling and calling,” Lacey said. “I told him you were in the darkness. I knew love was blind, but I guess it’s deaf too. I guess—”

  “You’ve got to tell me some things, Tristan,” Will interrupted her. “You’ve got to tell me now. How can I help Ivy if I don’t know what’s going on?”

  “But you know enough,” Tristan challenged him. “More than you’ve admitted to Ivy.” He began to probe Will’s mind, but was swiftly pushed aside. “I know you looked in the envelope, Will,” Tristan said. “I was watching when you pulled out the key.”

  Will didn’t seem s
urprised or apologetic. He slipped the film into a canister. “What does the key go to?” he asked.

  “I thought you might have figured it out,” Tristan baited him.

  “No.”

  Tristan tried again to probe Will’s thoughts, completely silencing his own, moving slowly and carefully. He got slammed like a hockey player against the wall of Will’s mind.

  “Okay, okay, you two, what’s going on?” Lacey asked. “I can see your face, Will. You’ve got the same pigheaded expression that Tristan gets.”

  “He’s blocking me out,” Tristan charged.

  “Like you haven’t done the same thing to me,” Will replied heatedly. “First you send me racing up the ridge to save Ivy’s life. I let you take over. I go along with you and do just what you say, and I find Ivy with a bag over her head. Gregory’s there with a strange excuse, but you won’t tell me a thing about what’s going on.”

  Will set down the canister and walked up and down the narrow room, picking up and putting down filters, markers, boxes of paper. “You get me to speak for you. You get me to dance with her and warn her and tell her you love her.” Will’s voice trembled a little. “But you don’t tell me anything to explain why this is happening.”

  Ivy won’t let me, Tristan. thought, but he knew that wasn’t the only reason. He resented the fact that he needed Will, and he didn’t like the way Will was calling some of the shots now.

  “I don’t like this mind-control stuff,” Will went on angrily. “I don’t like your trying to read my mind. If there’s something you want to know, ask it.”

  “What I want to know,” Tristan said, “is how I’m supposed to trust you. You’re Gregory’s friend—”

  “Oh, grow up, you two!” Lacey interrupted. “I don’t like mind control. How can I trust you?” she mimicked. “Puh-lease don’t bore me with the rest of your excuses. You’re both in love with Ivy, and you’re jealous of each other, and that’s why you’re keeping your little secrets and squabbling like two kindergarten kids.”

  “Are you in love with her, Will?” Tristan asked quickly.

  He felt Will thinking, he felt Will dodging him.

  Will picked up the film canister again and shifted it from hand to hand. “I’m trying to do what’s best for her,” he said at last.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I don’t see why it matters,” Will argued. “You were there when I danced with her. You heard what Ivy said. We both know she’ll never love anyone the way she loves you.”

  “We both know you hope it’s not true,” Tristan replied.

  Will slammed the canister down on the table. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “So do I,” Tristan said, and slipped out of Will before he could be thrown out.

  He knew that Ivy would love someone else someday and that that person might be Will. Well, if he had to leave her in Will’s hands, he was going to check him out thoroughly first.

  As Tristan left the darkroom he heard Lacey’s soap opera voice. “And so our two heroes part,” she said, “blinded by love, neither of them listening to the wise and beautiful Lacey”—she hummed a little—“who, by the way, is getting a broken heart of her own. But who cares about Lacey?” she asked sadly. “Who cares about Lacey?”

  P3-12

  Ivy sat at the kitchen table glancing over legal forms that she had just pulled out of a manila envelope—Philip’s adoption papers. Across from her, her brother and his best friend Sammy dug spoons into a peanut butter jar.

  Sammy was a short, funny-looking kid whose hair stood straight up from his head like bristly red grass. Ivy saw him eyeing her. He nudged Philip. “Ask her. Ask her.”

  “Ask me what?”

  “Sammy wants to meet Tristan,” Philip said. “But I can’t get him to come. Do you know where he is?”

  Ivy instinctively glanced over her shoulder, but Philip assured her, “It’s okay. Mom’s upstairs, and Gregory likes to hear about angels now.”

  “He does?” Ivy asked with surprise.

  Philip nodded.

  “I really want to see an angel,” Sammy said, pulling a little camera out of his grubby school pack.

  Ivy smiled. “I think Tristan’s resting now,” she said, then she turned to Philip. “What kind of angel things have you and Gregory been talking about?”

  “He asked me about Tristan.”

  “What exactly did he want to know?” Ivy asked.

  She had suspected that the train incident haunted Gregory. After all, there was no way Philip could have gotten to the station that quickly without help from someone. Did Gregory guess that he was up against more than herself, more than just a person?

  “He asked me what Tristan looked like,” Philip told her. “And how I know when he’s there.”

  “And how to get him to come,” Sammy said. “Remember, he asked that.”

  “He wanted to know if you ever talked to Tristan,” Philip added.

  Ivy tapped the manila envelope against the table. “When did you talk about all this?”

  “Last night,” her brother replied, “when we were playing in the tree house.”

  Ivy frowned. She didn’t like the idea of Gregory’s playing with Philip up in the tree house, where one accident had already occurred during the summer.

  She glanced down at the adoption forms. Andrew hadn’t told Gregory that he was about to make Philip his legal son. Ivy wondered if Andrew had the same kind of fears that she did.

  “When will Tristan be finished with his nap?” Sammy asked.

  “I don’t really know,” Ivy replied.

  “I have a flashlight, in case I see him at night,” he told her.

  “Good idea,” Ivy said with a smile. She watched as the two boys licked the last bit of peanut butter off their spoons and ran outside.

  Since Saturday night, she too had been trying to reach Tristan. Rumors about the party were flying at school. Gregory and she had managed to avoid each other in the halls. So had she and Suzanne, but while Gregory slipped past Ivy, Suzanne dramatically played out each snub. Her anger at Ivy was obvious to everyone.

  Ivy was relieved when Beth had told her that Gregory and Suzanne were going to the football game that afternoon. Having slept little in the past two nights, she could finally rest, knowing that Gregory wouldn’t walk in on her. Even though she locked her bedroom door now, she never really felt safe.

  Ivy slipped the envelope and forms in her stack of schoolbooks and was about to head upstairs when she heard a car pull up behind the house. It sounded like Gregory’s BMW. Her first instinct was to rush up to her room, but she didn’t want Gregory to think she was afraid of him. Sitting back down, she opened the newspaper and hunched over the table, pretending to read. The kitchen door was pushed open, and instantly Ivy smelled the perfume. “Suzanne.”

  Suzanne responded with a sullen look.

  “Hi,” Gregory said. His tone of voice was neither warm nor cold, and his face was expressionless—though ready to flash into a smile if anyone else happened to walk into the kitchen. Suzanne continued to look at Ivy with pouting lips.

  “This is a surprise,” Ivy said. “Beth said you were going to the football game.”

  “Suzanne was bored, and I had to pick up something,” Gregory told her. He turned his back to Ivy, reached into the cupboard, and pulled out a tall copper cup. “Would you get her a drink?” he asked, handing Ivy the cup.

  “Sure.” Gregory exited the kitchen quickly.

  Ivy checked the refrigerator for sodas. “Sorry, no cold ones,” she told Suzanne.

  Suzanne remained silent.

  Except you, Ivy said to herself, then reached under the counter for a bottle. She wondered why Gregory would leave them alone to talk. Perhaps he was standing outside the kitchen door, waiting to hear what she would say. Maybe this was a test to see if she’d tell Suzanne what she knew about him.

  “How are you doing?” Ivy asked.

  “Fine.”

  A one-w
ord answer, but it was a start. Ivy dropped some ice cubes into the soda and handed it to Suzanne. “At school a lot of kids were talking about your party. Everyone had a good time.”

  “Downstairs and upstairs,” Suzanne replied.

  Ivy remained silent.

  “How bad was your hangover?” Suzanne asked.

  “I didn’t have one,” Ivy told her.

  “Oh, that’s right, you got rid of all the booze in you.”

  Ivy bit her lip.

  “I couldn’t sleep in my room Saturday night,” Suzanne said, and walked around the kitchen, swirling the drink in her cup.

  “I’m sorry about that, Suzanne. I really am. But the truth is, I didn’t have anything to drink,” Ivy said firmly.

  “I want to believe you.” Suzanne’s lip trembled. “I want you and Gregory to tell me I dreamed it all.”

  “You know he won’t. And I won’t, either.”

  Suzanne nodded and dropped her chin. “I know everybody cries when they break up with a guy. But I never thought I’d get out the tissues because I was splitting up with you.”

  “You’ve known me longer than any of your guys,” Ivy replied quickly. “You trusted me for ten years. Then one guy says something, and you don’t.”

  “I saw you with my own eyes!”

  “What did you see?” Ivy almost shouted. “You saw what he wanted you to see, what he told you to see. How can I convince you—”

  “You can stop fooling around with my boyfriend, that’s how! You can keep your hot little hands where they belong!” Suzanne took a large gulp of her drink. “You’re making a fool of yourself, Ivy, and you’re doing it at my expense.”

  “Suzanne, why can’t you admit that it’s at least possible that Gregory viras coming on to me?”

  “Liar,” Suzanne said. “I’ll never trust you again.” She took another angry gulp of soda, leaving a print of her lipstick on the shiny metal. “I warned you, Ivy. But you didn’t listen to me. You didn’t care enough to.”

  “I care about you more than you realize,” Ivy said, taking a step toward Suzanne.

  Suzanne turned on her heel. “Tell Gregory I’m on the patio,” she said as she walked out the kitchen door.