Earth Angel

by Siri Caldwell

  “I’m not attracted to her. If we both pretend it’s about my healing abilities, we can both save face.”

  “Hmm.” Abby flipped through her sheet music. She seemed to sense this wasn’t a conversation Gwynne wanted to have, and she was right.

  “And she’s dating someone!” Friends were always teasing them that one day she and Dara were going to give in to the inevitable, and the fact that Dara actually did have feelings for her—and that the attraction was completely one-sided—made those comments uncomfortable for both of them. Because if Dara felt anything for her at all, it had to hurt to be reminded.

  Abby didn’t ask for more details, but Gwynne volunteered them anyway. “I’ve never hidden my healing abilities, so anyone who goes out with me ends up either idolizing me or deciding I’m too weird for them. Except for Megan, but she and I were never going to work out because Megan—even though I love her dearly—takes everything way, way too seriously.”

  Abby stopped flipping through her music. “Kira’s Megan?”

  “I guess it’s been so long, nobody cares anymore so they don’t gossip about it. Or they’ve forgotten.”

  “And now you’re friends,” Abby said. “That’s impressive.”

  “It’s not that hard to do when neither one of you secretly has the hots for the other.”

  “Or hates each other,” Abby pointed out.

  “Megan’s too nice to hate anyone.”

  “What about you?”

  “Do we have to talk about me?”

  “Maybe you’re too nice to hate anyone, either.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” Gwynne leaned back in her chair.

  “So you’re saying you’re a jerk, if I heard you correctly when you were arguing with Dara, but it seems to me you’re not a jerk, because you don’t hate Megan, except that’s only because she’s too nice?”

  “I feel like I need to say something mean now to make you stop.” How had Abby heard all that, anyway? Wasn’t she focusing on her music? She must be good enough that the playing didn’t take all her concentration.

  “Let me know when you think of something.” Abby turned to her harp and ran her index finger up the strings, creating a waterfall of sound that led into an enchanting, complicated melody that put an end to their conversation.

  The tension in Gwynne’s neck eased. The days that Abby worked at the spa had quickly become her favorite. Even full of clients, the lounge felt empty without her—without her cheerful presence and her bizarrely attractive fairy-tale dresses and her music. Her mood lifted whenever Abby showed up for work, and she was starting to wonder if that was because the harp generated a healing vibrational frequency—she could feel the air molecules pulsate—or whether it was due to Abby herself.

  Gwynne closed her eyes and imagined the music seeping into her body, into every cell, making her feel alive, waking up the dead, numb places she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Was she kidding herself to think that someone else playing the same notes with the same perfection wouldn’t make her feel quite the same? This wasn’t the glow of music appreciation, this buzz that made everything more beautiful when Abby was around. This was something deeper.

  Abby played on and on and on, until eventually, as the last note hung in the air, her hands floated to the wooden body of her harp and she hugged it to her chest.

  “You’re an amazing harpist,” Gwynne said.

  “Harper,” Abby corrected with a quirky smile that was part apology, part sass. “Harpists play the pedal harp. You know, the kind you see in an orchestra. When you play the lever harp you’re a harper. It sounds more Celtic-y.”

  “You’re kidding. People really make the distinction?”

  “Says the woman who calls herself an energy healer instead of a faith healer.”

  Gwynne quirked her brow. “You noticed that, huh?” Abby must have been paying attention when she talked to her former clients. She didn’t remember the exact conversation Abby might have overheard, but it was true the faith healer label was one she was constantly trying to shake. She hated it when people put her up on the faith pedestal, like she had some special connection to God. Especially now. “Point taken.”

  “Every profession has its lingo,” Abby acknowledged. “Gotta keep the riffraff in its place.”

  Okay, that was so not her reasoning, but if it was Abby’s…“Maybe you shouldn’t have told me about the harper thing. I don’t want you to get in trouble with the other musicians.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Abby’s pale blue-gray eyes flashed with amusement.

  Her eyes were…She’d never noticed before how compelling they were, how they sparkled like ancient starlight, a glint of something beautiful in the vast darkness.

  Gwynne regrouped before she got lost in those eyes. “I didn’t realize your harp was a different type. Although I did notice you don’t have a Grecian column with all the sparkly, sparkly gold leaf.” She’d never paid much attention to harps, but that was her memory of them.

  “Not a fan of gold leaf?”

  Not a fan of sparkly, Gwynne almost said, except everything about Abby was sparkly, lit up by her bright aura. Sparkly looked good on her.

  “Watch.” Abby plucked a string on her harp and then flipped one of the little metal levers near the top where the strings were attached. She plucked it again, and the note had changed. “Pedal harps do the same thing with pedals instead of sharping levers.” She flipped more levers, her left hand flying across the instrument, and then began to play, her tapered fingers alternately curling into her palm and extending to pluck the strings with lightning-fast precision.

  It was beautiful. As beautiful to watch as to listen to.

  “You don’t have to play when no one’s here,” Gwynne said. There was something about the look of crazy joy on Abby’s face when she made music that reminded her of her mother, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be reminded. Her sister had had that same look when she was little, when she was playing tag and racing on her little-girl legs as fast as she could go. She didn’t want to be reminded of that, either.

  “There isn’t no one here. You’re here,” Abby said. “I’ll play something you can sing along with if you want.”

  “Trust me, your harp sounds a lot better without me.” She smiled ruefully at the harpist…uh, harper. “But you can feel free.”

  “I don’t sing.”

  “You too, huh? Never?”

  “Not in public,” Abby conceded. “I don’t want you to run screaming from the room—you might not come back.”

  “My mother sang,” Gwynne said, despite herself, embarrassed by the hint of wistfulness she was sure Abby could hear in her voice. “She would have loved to hear you play.”

  “What kind of songs did she like?” Abby asked, picking up on Gwynne’s use of the past tense—if someone hadn’t already told her what happened. “I’ll play something for her. For you,” she corrected herself. “For her memory.”

  “She sang opera. She studied voice when she was young.”

  “Opera. Okay. Wow. What do I know that would be…Oh! I know. How about Lascia ch’io pianga?”

  “I don’t know the titles, but…sure, okay. Maybe I’ll recognize it. I mean, she could sing anything.”

  She sang along with the radio when she drove Gwynne and her friends to T-ball and later softball practice, singing the wrong words, making her die of embarrassment. She sang when she made dinner, belting out the recipe. She woke her for school by singing historical dates because she thought it would help, and the funny thing was, it did. Gwynne aced her tests because she’d hear her mother’s ear-splitting opera voice in her head singing battle trivia. Come to think of it, she should have asked her for help in massage school when she struggled to memorize all those muscle attachments, but it never occurred to her. Her mother’s singing had been an embarrassment. It was only now that she could admit to herself that her mother had a beautiful voice and a sense of fun Gwynne was lucky enough to have known.
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  “Was she the one I saw you with at the hospital? I don’t remember if I saw the patient, if it could have been your mother or…”

  “It was,” Gwynne said dully, guilt twisting like a knife in her gut, tangling with the grief. Her mother shouldn’t have died that day. Not her mother, not Heather. None of it should have happened.

  “I’m sorry,” Abby said.

  Someone had definitely told her what happened, because she didn’t seem surprised, just sympathetic. Which was good. It meant she didn’t have to explain. It was too soon to talk about it to someone she barely knew, someone who would listen politely and make her feel worse. Even though there was something about Abby that made her want to tell her everything.

  “Do you still want me to play the aria?” Abby asked. “I won’t if you don’t want me to, if you don’t want to be reminded right now.”

  “No, it’ll be nice. She always sounded so happy when she sang.”

  Abby started to play and Gwynne was glad it wasn’t anything she recognized. It meant she wouldn’t lose it.

  * * *

  Dara was back at the spa for her weekly appointment with Megan, early as usual because, Gwynne suspected, she liked hanging out in the lounge.

  “Are you still doing magic shows?” Dara asked her. “My niece is turning seven and my sister’s trying to figure out what to do for her birthday party.”

  “Are you referring to The Great Gwynnini, Illusionist and Rabbit Conjurer?” She hadn’t performed as The Great Gwynnini in ages. “Sure.” Gwynne handed her a glass of Kira’s latest experimental beverage, a blend of grenadine, lime and coconut water. She gave one to Abby too, who was taking a break on one of the guest sofas. “I’m a little rusty, but I can do it.”

  “Fantastic!”

  “I’d need an assistant, though.” As soon as she said the words, Gwynne almost changed her mind, because it was her sister who had always been her assistant. Doing a birthday party magic show without her was going to be hard, emotionally.

  “I’ll be your lovely assistant,” Dara said.

  “You’ll be busy with your niece,” Abby interjected. “I’ll be Gwynne’s assistant.”

  Was that jealousy in Abby’s voice? Hard to tell. Gwynne kind of wanted it to be, and that made it hard to be an accurate judge of what, exactly, Abby might be feeling. No, stop, she didn’t need this right now. She didn’t want to be interested in anyone romantically. There was no jealousy in Abby’s voice. She was offering to help, nothing more. Gwynne was reading something into it that wasn’t there.

  “I always wanted to wear a top hat,” Abby said. “Do I get to wear a top hat?”

  “If you want to.”

  See? Maybe Abby was a fan of magic shows. Nothing to do with Gwynne at all.

  “I can wear a top hat,” Dara said.

  “Wouldn’t you rather spend the afternoon focusing on the kids?” Abby rose from the sofa and moved to a chair closer to Gwynne, which to Gwynne’s overactive imagination felt like she was staking a claim on her.

  “Yeah, but…” Dara trailed off, looking conflicted.

  “It’s up to you,” Abby said graciously, blowing Gwynne’s theory. “Or we could flip for it.”

  “I guess I would rather sit with the girls,” Dara decided.

  “Great,” Abby said. “I really want to do this.”

  “Why?” Dara asked.

  Good question. Gwynne was interested to know the answer to that herself. Was Abby attempting to protect her from having to spend time alone with Dara? Because the alternative explanation would be that Abby was fighting Dara over her. Politely, subtly, so subtly as to border on imperceptibility, but nevertheless…

  “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Gwynne said, because if Abby thought a relationship with her was a good idea, she was not as smart as she looked.

  Abby draped one arm over the back of the chair and swiveled to face her. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. “You’re not going to saw me in half or anything, are you?”

  And if she was really smart and could read her mind, she’d just made a deliberate choice to misunderstand her.

  “Not in front of little girls, no.”

  She was losing it if she thought Abby could read her mind.

  “From what I hear, it’s more of a live animal show,” Dara said.

  “Just rabbits,” Gwynne clarified.

  Abby’s eyes widened, still twinkling. “So you’re saying I just volunteered for rabbit poop cleanup duty?”

  “They’re litter trained,” Gwynne said. “And I will clean up.”

  “So chivalrous,” Dara murmured.

  Gwynne shrugged it off. “Your job is mostly to distract the audience,” she told Abby, as businesslike as possible. Her heart, though, was singing. “We can go over it the morning of the party.”

  “No rehearsal?” Abby said.

  “You’ll do fine.” It would be easy to insist on days and days of rehearsal just for a chance to be alone with her, but the show didn’t need days of rehearsal. Based on listening to her play the harp she knew Abby was comfortable improvising, so it was a good bet she wouldn’t need much of a run-through. “If we mess up, we wing it.”

  She turned to Dara and winked, hoping Dara wasn’t worried the party would be a disaster. “Don’t tell Dara I said that.”

  Chapter Six

  Gwynne arrived early at Abby’s apartment Saturday afternoon to help her lug her harp to the beach wedding of someone named Penelope. Abby had said if she wasn’t dealing with sand she’d roll her harp on a hand truck, but in this case, she was going to have to hoist her instrument across the beach to the mini-platform that would be set up for her. Gwynne had volunteered to help because…uh…why did she volunteer? It just kind of happened. Well, why not? Nothing wrong with being helpful. There was also a stool and an amp to carry, but the main thing was the harp, which was apparently not the small one she used at the hospital nor the large one she played at the spa, but an even bigger, better one. “You have three harps?” she’d asked, and Abby had laughed and said, “Come to my apartment and I’ll show you.”

  As soon as Gwynne walked through Abby’s front door, she understood. There were at least a dozen harps spread around the room, with several folding chairs and music stands littered among them, leaving no room for the overstuffed sofa which had been relegated to the corner.

  “I used to have a room called a living room,” Abby said, smoothing the hem of a thigh-skimming crocheted sweater over her jeans and gesturing for her to come in. She laughed, seemingly not the least bit embarrassed to laugh at her own joke, and harp strings all around the room responded, resonating with her voice and filling the air with a burst of unexpected sound. For that one magical moment they sang on their own, without being touched, as if they were real, live beings.

  “You have quite a collection.” Gwynne picked her way through the room, careful not to bump into anything. “I had no idea.”

  “I know it’s a lot, but I figure when you really love something, it’s worth going overboard.”

  “They’re beautiful.” The harps were all different sizes and made of different types of wood. Some were decorated with intricate carvings or mother-of-pearl inlay; others were unadorned, elegant in their simplicity.

  “This monster is the one we’re dragging to the beach.” Abby ran her hand lovingly over the gleaming cherry and maple. It was not dramatically bigger than the harp she played at the spa, maybe between five and six feet tall, but it had a lot more decoration. Nearly every surface was covered in swirling Celtic knots accented with—aack—gold leaf. And the most striking thing about the harp was the carved dragon that emerged from the wood like a gargoyle, clutching the pillar at the front.

  “I have never seen a harp like that.” She’d never even imagined a harp like that. It should have been the first thing she noticed when she walked in the room. She ran her hand over the dragon’s scales. The workmanship was amazingly detailed. “Where did you find
this?”

  “I met the luthier at a summer music festival.” Abby patted the dragon on the head. “Do you want to get going or can I introduce you to the others?”

  “We have lots of time.” Anything Abby wanted to do was fine with her. It wasn’t like the wedding would start without the harpist…er, harper…what the heck, without the musician…and anyway, they really did have plenty of time. She had made a point of being early.

  Abby turned to the harp closest to the door. “This is the one I use at the spa, of course. It has gorgeous resonance, which is perfect for meditative music, although the sound can get muddy when I play fast.” She ran her index finger up the strings and a blur of notes filled the air. “The one I’m playing tonight has a tighter feel.”

  She went from harp to harp, pointing out differences in tone that Gwynne didn’t have the ear to appreciate, never mentioning anything she didn’t like about any particular harp. Despite the sheer number of harps she owned, it was clear she loved each one.

  “Listen to this one.” Abby sat on a folding chair and rested a diminutive harp between her thighs. She played a lullaby that rung like crystal raindrops, clear and high-pitched. “It’s fun, even though it’s only twelve strings, which is useless. You can’t get any low notes when the strings are so short.” Reluctantly she set the harp on the floor and gazed at it longingly. “I rescued it from a client’s neighbor’s basement. Stringed instruments lose their tone if you abandon and ignore them. But the richness is starting to come back.” She reached down and plucked a few more notes. “I should get my stuff together so we can go.”

  “No rush,” Gwynne said. She could listen to her play all day.

  “I don’t want to be late. What time is it?” Abby checked her watch. “Oh, we have plenty of time. I could give you a tour of the rest of the apartment, if you want.”

  She’d rather listen to her play, but she supposed she could do that at work. Resigned, she followed dutifully through the kitchen, the bathroom, and to the door of the one room she most didn’t need to see: the bedroom. While Abby waltzed in, Gwynne hesitated in the doorway. A polite glance revealed a sewing machine on a desk, a bed she averted her eyes from, and a wall lined with a series of framed charcoal drawings of angels.