by S. L. Naeole
Matthew let out a deep sigh and I looked down to see that he had fallen asleep. I couldn’t help but smile at his blissful face, and envy him the ability to just close his eyes and shut everything out without fear of consequence or the ugly visions of death and fear floating behind his lids.
“But you got caught, Dad.”
“Not really. Sam didn’t want me; he wanted your mother. I didn’t realize that until it was too late, and now I’m paying the price for it twice over. I lost your mother, and now I’m going to lose Janice. If I do, you and Matthew will be all I’ll have left. If I give him to Jessica and he ever decides that this isn’t the life he wants for himself, what will happen to him?”
I grabbed a hold of his robe with my free hand, balling it into a fist and pulling it as I forced him to look at me. “Robert can keep him safe, Dad, he’ll keep Matthew safe. He’ll protect him from them.”
“No,” Dad growled. “I don’t want him near you or Matthew.”
“Dad, you don’t know Robert if you think he’s like all of the others,” I tried to explain, but he cut me off.
“Grace, you don’t know anything about them. You saw Sam, you saw him at his worst—as an Innominate—but you’ve never seen the others, the ones whose dark callings are so full of evil that they’ve changed themselves physically to resemble the darkness inside them.
”Samael, as evil as he was, was still your mother’s son and still had some good in him. The others…they’re demons, monsters that only care about causing harm and suffering. Robert leads them. He controls them. Millions of people die every single day in this world, Grace. How do you think he oversees them all when he’s with you?”
It bothered me how little faith he had in Robert, how little he understood despite the lifetime of knowledge that he had about angels. “Dad, I know that what he is isn’t exactly what you expected. I know that what he is bothers a lot of people, but no one more than him. You don’t know what it’s like for him, to be responsible for the deaths of so many people. Did you know that before he got his call that he could heal people? Did you know that?”
Dad shook his head, doubt plain in the lines around his mouth as it drew into a grim line. “It’s not possible—healers don’t end up as dark ones.”
“It’s true. He could heal others. My God, did you never stop to wonder why I healed so quickly after being hit by Mr. Frey? Did you never stop to wonder why my burns disappeared after one day? It’s because of Robert.
“Healing people was his gift, Dad. It was his ability, and when he got his call it…it’s like the call took it away from him. Do you know how devastating that was for him? He went from being able to save lives to taking them. You know better than anyone that he couldn’t choose his call anymore than you could choose whose family you were born into. How can you hold what he is against him when he’s never done anything to give you reason to?”
The storm of emotions that displayed on dad’s face before he turned away from me pulled at every string in my heart. “Dad, Robert loves me. I know you cannot understand that, and maybe you never will, but please, please try to see that whatever he is, I don’t care. I love him, and no matter how short my time is here, I cannot see spending it without him.”
“How do you know he loves you, Grace? He’s an angel—they can charm anyone to feel anything they want.”
I shook my head in denial, the very idea so laughable, I chuckled. “Dad, you don’t get it. He’s never been able to charm me into doing or feeling anything. Maybe it’s because I’m not completely human—I don’t know—but I’ve never felt anything for him that wasn’t real.”
The air in the room was beginning to grow thick with dad’s doubt, and I knew that there was only one thing left to tell him. “He tried to get me to leave him, you know.”
“What?”
He looked at me, and I could see the uncertainty in his eyes begin to waver, even if only slightly. This bolstered me, and I continued. “Last Halloween. He told me he didn’t love me. He knew that I had been unsure about his feelings, and he used that against me by telling me that he didn’t love me.”
Dad’s voice was raspy when he asked, “What happened?”
My gaze was steady, but my voice shook with emotion as I answered. “He died.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s true, Dad. I was there, I saw everything. I ran away from him when he rejected me; it was like Graham all over again, only a million times worse. I couldn’t be near him; I couldn't even look at him—it hurt too much—so I ran. And that’s when the screaming started. It was the most awful sound I’ve heard in my life. If dying had a sound, that would’ve been it.
“I followed those screams until I found Robert. He was in so much pain, and I didn’t know how to help him, I didn’t know what to do for him. He was dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it…that’s when he told me that he’d lied; he did love me.”
Dad’s snort caught me off guard. “He was just saying that to make you feel better. That was the lie, Grace.”
“No, Dad,” I contradicted. “That wasn’t the lie. It was the most significant thing to have ever happened to me in my life. He wasn’t telling me he loved me to save himself—he knew it was already too late. There was no reason for him to say it to me, no reason to say it at all, but he did. I felt his heart stop and I thought that was it, my life was over.
“Robert had put me back together, he had given me a reason to see myself as something other than Grace the Freak, to believe that I actually deserved to be loved by someone, and now he was gone? Just like that? I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it—it wasn’t true.
“I hated him then, Dad. I hated him for making me love him; I hated him for telling me he loved me only to leave me without giving me a chance to love him back. He was dead, and hating him wouldn’t do anything, but I had nowhere else to go emotionally. It felt like my own heart was dying—I would have died right there with him, Dad. I wanted to die right there—I prayed for it—because without him I knew that my life would be meaningless-”
“You barely knew each other!”
“I knew enough to know what he was, and to know that he lied to protect me, despite what it would cost him. He died, Dad. He died, and I thought that was it—the world was going to end and I’d never get to hear him say that he loved me again. Every single moment, every person that had existed then didn't matter to me anymore. My life was Robert; if he didn't exist anymore than neither did I. And then the most amazing thing happened.”
“What?”
My face beamed, and I answered proudly, “His wings came.”
“His wings? After he died? That's impossible-"
"It's not impossible. Nothing is impossible when you're talking about angels."
Dad's voice was a shadow of itself when he exclaimed in wonder, "That means…you’re his wing-bringer.”
I nodded triumphantly, a hot tear slipping past my lids and rolling down my cheek. “Lark and Ameila were there, they were there and they did nothing to help him. They just cried, and I got angry. I got so angry, at them, at him, at myself. I lost it, Dad. I lost it, and I began to hit him. I slapped him, punched him, I hit him and then hit him again until my hand started to hurt. And I kept hitting him and hitting him until the pain went away. I didn’t care what it meant, I didn’t care what it looked like—my entire life was gone because he was.
“And then something stopped me—someone stopped me. I thought it was a dream, a really bad nightmare when I looked down and saw that Robert was holding my arm. But it wasn’t anything like that. Robert was alive—he was alive and all I knew was that he had come back to me. You don’t come back to someone because you want to see them dead, Dad. You don’t come back to someone because of something you said to make them feel better. You come back because you love them—you love them so much that it defies death and dying.”
My chest was rising and falling heavily, the impact of my own words doing s
omething to me that I knew Dad could not ignore—the notion that love could resurrect the dead was not one that was lost on him. I could see that it brought to question why, if he loved my mother so much, and she loved him as deeply, could she not return as well? Remorse came to me quickly at this revelation, but Dad saw this and his response was quicker.
“Grace, don’t think that I now doubt the love your mother and I shared; I don’t. Your relationship with Robert merely drives home the truth that your mother’s time here was done. She had fulfilled everything she’d been created to do—the most important of which was to bring you into this world. But loving me—that was something she did all on her own. She chose to love me, to marry me and give up eternal life to be with me. I cannot know that and not believe that she loved me every bit as deeply as you claim Robert loves you. However, knowing now what you have endured, the tests your relationship with Robert has been put through…I…”
“Yes?” I urged when his voice faded away.
“I suppose I must reconsider how I feel about him, if only because you love him that much.”
My free arm wrapped around his neck, while a whoop of joy left me, flew right out of my lips, startling Matthew, who had remained contentedly asleep through all of the other outbursts, and he expressed his disapproval with a plaintive wail. “Dad, that’s all I ask. That’s all I want, is for you to see him the way that I do,” I whispered into his ear.
I felt Dad’s head bob up and down, but I could also sense the rigidity in his body that had not yet let go. “I won’t tell you that I approve, Grace—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to now that I know who and what he is—but…he’s done more for you than his kind normally would-”
“Because he loves me, Dad,” I finished for him. “Because he loves me.”
“The pain an angel endures when they lie has been compared to being set on fire and having every nerve that dies out be reborn, only to be destroyed again in an endless cycle that increases with intensity—no angel would willingly endure that, even for love. What he feels for you must be something much, much more.”
It was a strange thing, hearing Dad speak to me about what it must have felt like for Robert. I knew what it felt like—I had felt it inside of me. The screams had made it seem like my blood was exploding in my veins, and that my head was caving in even as it expanded to allow for the horrible visions that I had tried to block out. Sitting there, with my thoughts pulling from the air the memories that I thought didn’t exist, I saw the images that hadn’t been important enough, significant enough to recall later.
But now, now that I had opened myself up to them, they flew in, one after the other like raindrops making up a storm that shook me. “It’s not true,” I whispered before pulling away from my father and his confused expression.
“What’s not true?” he asked.
“N-nothing,” I lied quickly. “I’m just overwhelmed by all of this-” I pointed to the charred image in front of us “-it’s so much to take in.”
He glanced over at me skeptically, but turned his attention back to the blackened lines that told in vague detail the cost that dedication to the darkest of angels could wreak on a family legacy. “It doesn’t matter what this says—or doesn’t say—this is not my family. I gave up that life a long time ago. I cannot do anything about you—you’ve already made up your mind about this world—but I can do everything in my power to keep Matthew from being a part of it. He deserves a normal life, the life his mother and I want for him.”
Dad’s voice cracked at this last part, and his hand flew to his eyes, pinching them, fighting the burning and stinging I knew he felt behind closed lids. “Dad…”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if she dies. She’d been so distant since that night, and I don’t blame her. I told her to leave me, to take Matthew and raise him as far away from me and the mess that I had thrown her into, but she said no. She had gotten angry at me for even suggesting it, can you believe that? She was more upset at my suggesting she leave than at what she had just learned about who I was, about who we were involved with.
“She told me that she and Matthew were staying. She said that we were a family, and that she didn’t care if the devil himself appeared and called me his uncle; she wasn’t going to break up our home. I believed that if she wasn’t screaming and trying to harm herself or Matthew that she was fine, and just adjusting to things in her own way.
“I should have insisted that she leave. I should have insisted that she take Matthew and go somewhere. Because of my own stubbornness and willingness to believe that things could go back to normal, Matthew might grow up without a mother. What’s going to happen to him if she dies?”
I grabbed my father’s hand and pulled it away from his eyes so that he could see the earnest expression in my face when I told him, “Dad, she won’t die. I won’t let it happen. But…but if she does, I grew up without a mother, remember? You raised me all by yourself, and you did a very good job of it, too.”
“What good came of it, Grace? You’re in love with Death. How could I have done anything good if I’m going to be gaining the angel of death as my son-in-law? How can I introduce him to my poker buddies? To the people at work? ‘Hey guys, this is my son-in-law, Death. Death, the guys.'”
I smiled at his half-hearted attempt at humor. “By knowing that I was able to find someone who loves me as much as you loved mom.” Almost at once, my tone turned somber. “And besides, if Robert and I are putting off getting married until after summer school, there probably won’t be a wedding anyway.”
Dad’s eyes lit up with immediate recognition of what I had just hinted, and the theories rolled around in his head before he finally came to the right conclusion. “You think you’ll be dead before the end of the summer?”
“I have no reason not to,” I answered simply. “When I read the letter from Mr. Kenner, I suggested to Robert that we elope-”
“Grace Anne Shelley, you did not!”
I rolled my eyes at the outburst. “I did. But don’t worry—Robert insisted that we wait because we had agreed to getting married after graduation.”
“It’s about time he did something sensible,” I heard Dad mutter under his breath before coughing and then looking at me with seriousness in every line on his face. “You know that I still refuse to believe that you are going to die, right?” He waited for me to nod before continuing on, never giving me a chance to utter another sound.
“The call inside of you was postponed once—there’s never been such a thing before, not that I’m aware of anyway, but then again there’s never been one of you before—which makes me believe that it can be put off again, and again if need be, until-”
I cut him off, exasperated at his refusal to accept the unavoidable. “Until what? There is no ‘until’ here, Dad. It’s not something that you can just put off! We did that and look at what’s happened—Katie, Erica, and Mr. Branke, all dead. And Janice-”
“This has nothing to do with Janice!”
“It had everything to do with Janice, Dad! Janice didn’t hang herself in the closet! Why would Janice refuse to leave you, only to hang herself a week later? She didn’t do this to herself, Dad—Janice loves you too much to do that to you.”
“If she didn’t try to kill herself then who did, and why?” he demanded to know.
“I don’t know, Dad,” I answered softly, almost futilely. “I don’t know.”
STONES
One week after Janice was found hanging in the downstairs closet, she was moved to a different hospital. It was one that specialized in severe brain injuries, where they could monitor her brainwaves and see whether or not she would recover. A part of me wanted to say that I knew someone who could figure that out just by closing her eyes, but I kept silent.
Dad set up the room exactly as she would have liked it, and brought pictures of Matthew to put beside the bed. He opened the curtains to let in the light, and adjusted a pillow beneath her head, being careful to not disturb t
he wires that floated around her head and down the side of her neck. He then sat beside her, forgetting everyone else in the room.
A hand slipped into mine, and I looked up into green eyes that smiled down at me. Graham had arrived at the house last night and had not left my side, insisting that as my best friend he belonged with me. It had brought tears to my eyes, and I could say nothing for a good hour, too overwhelmed by the need to tell him everything that had been running through my mind and the need to keep it all to myself until I had figured it all out. Instead he began to tell me what I didn’t have the courage to ask.
“You know, when you told me about this Sam person, I was expecting some kind of monster or something, some four-eyed, horned devil-looking dude who spit out fires and stuff. Instead, he was like a blonde version of Robert, including the whole creepy sneaking-into-the-house-through-the-window part.
“He seemed friendly at first; I thought he was a friend of Lark’s or something the way he talked about her, about her childhood. I felt comfortable around him, which I realize was probably stupid since I didn’t know him, and Lark’s never talked about any friends of hers except for you and Stacy.
“And then I felt this crushing sort of pain in my head, like I’d just been sacked by a three-hundred pound lineman. I know I passed out, and I remember thinking when I woke up that I was such a wimp for letting it happen. I wanted to do one of our epic face-palms, you know? That was when I realized that I couldn’t move. I didn’t understand it. It wasn’t like I wasn’t trying; it was like my brain and my body were in two separate rooms.
“I couldn’t even move my eyes. All I could see was the ground; it looked like I had been dumped in some hole, like I was trash or something. I stared at ants crawling in the dirt for what could have been hours—it actually made me miss French class, can you believe that? I started to get hungry and those ants were looking really good by then, which is really gross and I can’t believe I’m even telling you that but then, I always tell you everything. I thought things couldn’t get any worse after that, but I was wrong because right then a toe—a big, hot-pink painted toe—appeared in front of my nose.
