by S. L. Naeole
His fingers wrapped around my wrist and as gently as he could, despite the anger I could see in his eyes, he pulled my hand down. “No.”
“Robert-”
“It’s not going to happen, Grace. You’ve chosen to die—I have to accept that because it’s your choice—but I do not have to accept what I’ve seen. Not yet.”
His voice was cracking, and the distorted sound created their own cracks in my heart as the memories of painful goodbyes that had turned out to merely be rehearsals for what still lay ahead replayed in my mind, each scene acting like a poison inside of me, tainting me and sending my thoughts spiraling down into a depression that came on so suddenly, I didn’t realize I was on the floor sobbing until I was lifted from it, Robert’s arms wrapped around me so protectively, he could have been strangling my body.
“I’m sorry, Grace. I’m sorry.”
“It’s real, isn’t it? It’s real. This isn’t just a bad dream—you and I aren’t really going to live happily ever after, are we?” I hiccupped.
“We’re going to be as happy as we can until the time comes, Grace,” he vowed, his voice a harsh whisper against the curve of my ear.
“We have to at least tell my dad that we’re married. I won’t keep that from him, Robert; I won’t.”
“Okay.”
Forgetting my clothes, forgetting the reason behind needing them, Robert carried me to the door and stepped out into the blazing summer sun that blinded me and forced my head into the shelter of Robert’s shoulder.
It was only the loss of the scent of water and sunned sand that hinted of our departure. I didn’t open my eyes—they were swollen shut from crying anyway—and instead tried to remember that Robert was mine now. We were married, we had sworn to love each other and be with each other for the rest of our lives—and though the hiccups in my chest spoke otherwise, I knew that I didn’t care about what loomed ahead for us. I had won this round, and that was one more than I had ever hoped for.
A CIRCLE OF PROMISE
I spent the afternoon of my wedding sitting in front of the kitchen table, listening to Dad rail at Robert, tossing epithets and horrid accusations his way without a single care to how awful they were. He was angry—Robert had warned me about that—but it stemmed mostly from not being there to share in the moment with me. I didn’t need Robert reading dad’s mind to know this. I could see it on his face.
“You’ve never done anything this stupid before. You’ve never acted without thinking before, Grace—this is so unlike you and I don’t approve of it.”
“Dad, whether you approve of it or not doesn’t matter anymore; I’m married.”
“For what, a few hours? That makes you an expert, does it?”
I bounced Matthew in my arms, the chubby infant content to suckle on one hand while the other clutched at my hair, tugging with every jostle. I kissed his rounded forehead and sighed. “We didn’t have to tell you, but I insisted. I would’ve liked to have had you there but I knew how you felt, and so did Robert.”
“Which is exactly why it shouldn’t have happened!” he bellowed. “You’re my only daughter. A father has a right to give away his daughter’s hand in marriage—especially when that marriage is to someone who’s more of a danger to her than anyone else could be.”
“Dad!”
Robert, silent this entire time, spoke up then. “Mr. Shelley, if Grace is in danger, it isn’t from me. I love Grace. I love her in ways that you cannot imagine-”
“Because I’m not an angel,” Dad spat.
“Yes, but it goes beyond that. I could have taken her away and you would’ve never found her again. Instead, I’ve taken on the responsibility of not only her safety, but also the safety of her family, who are now my family. Matthew is now my brother, you are now my father.
“You know that when an angel takes upon him a human mate, they sever the human ties with their family. My kind might be able to empathize with yours to an extent, but for the majority of us, familial ties are simply genealogical. There’s little love lost between father and son, mother and daughter, as children aren’t viewed by us as choices but as obligations.
“The relationship I have—had—with my mother was not the norm, so to want to embrace into my life, into my existence any family, it’s because of the love that I feel deeply for your daughter and for those she loves.”
Dad looked stricken, as though he’d just received the worst news imaginable, and I struggled for something to say to him but he lifted his eyes to me and shook his head, a warning to remain silent.
“Grace,” he began, his voice choppy as his thoughts piled one on top of the other, fighting for dominance and release. “I’m sorry. It’s been so long…it’s been so long and yet I still believe some of the lies. Robert’s telling the truth. You would be long gone from here—taken and turned without my knowledge. But he…he is his mother’s son. I’m sorry, you two, for being so set against this. I know that it was wrong of me, but there’s something to be said about being a parent who’s already lost a child and a wife. I can’t…”
He turned away from me, his hands dashing to his face quickly to wipe at tears that he was too ashamed to show. There was a stiffness in his shoulders that I took for pride, and though his head was bent down, I could see the stubbornness there that told me he was conceding a point to save himself from admitting any others.
“Dad, I know that this is hard for you. It’s not exactly easy for me—I don’t want to die. I don’t want to give up all of this now that I have it, but if it means that you’ll be safe, that you and Matthew will be safe then it’s something I’ve got to do.”
His head whipped around so fast, the slight sag of his cheeks rippled from it. “It’s not the responsibility of the daughter to keep her father safe. It should never have come to this.”
And just as quickly as it came, the look of anger left him, replaced with a sullen, dejected acceptance. “I don’t know what your mother was thinking when she allowed you to come into this world knowing that all of this would happen, but I have to try to understand that she had her reasons, even if it means hating it, and hating myself for doing it. I can only see this as my punishment for doing what I did.”
“Dad, don’t say that.”
“Being human affords us a multitude of choices, many without consequences, but the ones that come with them are the ones we never avoid and my choice cost you your mother, and me my wife and unborn child. And now, all these years later it might cost me another wife and soon a daughter. That’s the reality of being human, Grace. Angels admire and envy us our ability to choose what paths we take, but look at what we lose because of it.”
He stood up and left the kitchen, his heavy, muffled steps dictating his destination as they moved up the stairs and above me. I turned to look at Robert and I saw that the words had affected him just as profoundly as they had me, and there was no doubting that we would both lose so much because of the path our decisions have taken us on. My death, the death that neither of us could avoid, loomed over us like a storm cloud, always threatening to drench us, but never quite letting down because it wasn’t yet the right time.
I hated it. I hated every single moment and yet, at the same time, I was thankful for this delay because it afforded me more time with the people I loved. It allowed me to…say goodbye.
Dad’s return pulled me from my distracted thoughts and I stared at him, a befuddled expression forming on my face as he held out a small, velvet bag to me. “Take it,” he said before pressing it into my hand, exchanging it for a slumbering Matthew.
“What is it?”
He didn’t answer me, which left me to pull the bag’s drawstring opening apart and dump out the tiny object that had lain hidden in the soft black folds. A circlet of pale silver lay in my palm, one that looked almost identical to the one that now rested on my finger. Etched on the outer ring was a strange looking symbol, one that looked like a circle with two pointed wings jutting out from either side, their origin
ation point crisscrossing within the circle itself to form a diamond center surrounded by four large and two small triangles with rounded corners.
“That was your mother’s. It was the only way I could identify her after the accident—her wedding band had completely melted and she never took that off. She got that ring when she finally grew her wings—you’ve grown yours and I think that she always intended that this come to you when the time was right.” Dad’s voice was wistful, his eyes glossy as he looked at the metal halo that sat in my palm, cool even against the warmth of my skin.
Robert picked it up between gentle fingers and turned my palm over, slowly removing the ring that cradled my ring finger before slipping my mother’s on in its place. He slid the other on top of it, the two pale silver circles melding into one unified band, each one significant, each one different but now seeming as though neither would be complete without the other.
“They’re perfect,” he sighed before bringing my hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss against the knuckle above the two bands.
“Grace,” Dad interrupted. “When the time comes for you to turn…don’t tell me.”
“Don’t worry, Dad,” I reassured him. “I won’t.”
His eyes clouded with confusion and Robert sighed as he relayed to him what I already knew, the news coming as both a shock and a relief—neither of which I was currently feeling. “Grace doesn’t seem to understand that this is for the best—this as much for her safety as it is yours and Matthew’s.
“But who is trying to hurt her? And why?” Dad demanded to know.
“I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew,” Robert replied with anger tracing the concerned lines that formed between his brows. “It makes no sense that anyone would try to harm her when they know her death is so near.”
“But how can they know that she’s going to die and yet you didn’t even know that her mother was Avi?”
Dad’s question caught me off guard, words that had no meaning, no completion sputtering out of me as Robert sighed with a defeated sinking of his shoulders.
“It was kept from me just as Grace’s parentage was kept from her. I never met her, and neither has Lark; we haven’t met half of the angels that exist in this world. There’s never been a need to.”
“Yes, but she and Ameila were close,” Dad reminded him.
“My mother’s thoughts are very reserved, and have been since my birth. She would’ve never shared what Grace’s mother looked like with me or with anyone. If I was unaware of who she was, there was no need to even speak of her with me.”
“Well, what about Sam?”
Robert’s sigh was heavy with grief and disappointment. “In his thoughts, she was a grotesque shell that bore his face. She was the monster that was only recognizable because she was tied to him in some way. The only time I’ve ever seen her face is in Grace’s thoughts, and in them Avi is Abigail: mother, wife, and most importantly, human because that’s what she was to Grace. I believe that my mother wanted me to believe that as well.”
“But why? Why would she do that if your mother knew what your role in all of this would be?”
Robert’s gaze drifted from mine to Dad’s, and his mouth moved slowly as he answered. “I think that my mother believed had I known the truth, I would have avoided Grace at all costs. And…she was right.”
I heard the tick of my head whip up before I felt it, before I had even realized I had done so. “She was?”
As his eyes implored mine, Robert’s grip on my hand tightened, as though he knew that all I wanted to do was pull away. “I knew the moment I saw you that I loved you, Grace. I might not have recognized the emotion for what it was, but I know now, and had I seen your face in my mother’s thoughts, and seen it accompany what it was that you had been born to do, I would have still felt the same way and I would not have risked your life for it. I love you too much—I would have loved you too much to have done that to you.”
I could hear the waver in his voice, see it in the tremble of his lips, feel it in the tremor that traveled through him into my hand, which now felt like it was holding on to mine for support, rather than to keep me from leaving. “Every step we’ve been taking in our life has been to each other—even if we had tried to avoid it, we would have failed.”
He leaned in, and our foreheads rested against each other as our thoughts mingled, his filled with regret for the moment of hurt I felt, and mine filled with regret for causing his.
“My God, you two do love each other, don’t you?”
I smiled, even as the tears that I had not known were there began to fall, some absorbing into my jeans while others bounced off of my knees, plinking onto the tile below. I turned to face my father and saw that his eyes were just as red, just as glossy as I knew mine were. “Did you just figure that out now?”
“I think I’ve just been avoiding acknowledging it. I’ve always known—you wouldn’t wear a dress for someone you didn’t love.”
He moved forward and for a moment I feared that he’d pry my out of Robert’s, but instead his hand covered ours, and I felt the gentle squeezing as it transferred through Robert’s. “I didn’t like the idea of this relationship when it began but I knew that you wouldn’t hurt my daughter, Robert. I knew that you would carry it along to its natural end. When I learned what that end was, and what you…are, I couldn’t accept it. A daughter is supposed to fall in love with someone a father despises, but even though you are what you are, I can’t despise you. I can’t…hate you.
“I did my best to protect her and her mother. I failed with Abby, but I promised that I wouldn’t fail with Grace. I realize now that she needs the kind of protection that I can’t give her. I can protect angels, but I can’t protect my own daughter. She needs you, Robert, and I’m thankful that you realized this before I did. I…I’m thankful to you, son.”
Robert’s face lit up at this sudden acceptance. It made my heart fill up with something unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I didn’t know what it was, only that I was grateful for it being there. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being pulled between Dad and Robert.
“And so you won’t,” Robert said aloud, my thoughts plucked from the air and answered before a question had been asked.
I beamed at the two of them, feeling elated and overwhelmingly relieved. “Dad, you don’t know how much this means to me,” I blubbered, my breathing soon turning into hiccups.
“Grace, the last thing I want is to spend the last few moments I have with you fighting. It would be pretty stupid of me to waste this time after all that I’ve lost already.”
I threw my arms around him, startling poor Matthew into a pitiful wail. I rubbed the soft down on his head in an effort to comfort him but my main focus was on my dad, the ruddy complexion that had taken his face hostage was spreading as his emotions got the better of him as well.
“I love you, Dad,” I said to him, kissing his cheek and squeezing him as tightly as I could. He’d had given me the only wedding gift I could have asked for, the only wedding gift I wanted which was acceptance of Robert for who he was.
“I love you too, Kiddo.”
I was reluctant to let him go, unwilling to end this father-daughter moment that had surely not been plausible just a few hours earlier, but I did finally release him, even as my arms struggled to latch on to him once more. It seemed strange how, the further I grew away from him, the closer I wanted to be.
Dad began to bounce Matthew on his shoulder and looked at the clock on the wall. “It looks like it’s Matt’s feeding time, and you two have some packing to do I imagine.”
“Packing?” I looked at him, unsure of what he meant by that. “For what?”
Dad looked around him and then let his eyes drift back towards mine. “You can’t possibly mean that you’re going to be staying here, under my roof as a married couple, can you? I mean, I know what the plan was, but everything’s changed and I’m not going anywhere; especially not with Janice in the hospi
tal.”
“I-I…”
“What, you thought I meant packing for your honeymoon or something?” he asked, shifting Matthew to his other shoulder as he walked over to the refrigerator to pull out a bottle.
“I…I-I”
His eyes rolled—actually rolled!—and he shook his head. “Grace Ann Shell—excuse me, Bellegarde, you may be an adult, and you may be Robert’s wife, but I am still your father and if there’s one thing I know it’s that you will not be going on any honeymoon before you graduate from high school.”
I looked over at Robert and saw the bemused expression on his face, one that told me in no uncertain terms that he agreed. “You mean I actually have to go to summer school? As a married woman?”
I was dumbfounded. Shocked. Speechless.
Matthew starting bawling and I reached for him to allow Dad the use of both his hands as he filled up a pot with water to warm up the cold bottle. “At least someone understands how I feel,” I mumbled, even as Dad and Robert both chuckled, the new ground they had gained together holding much more firm even as my grip on reality seemed to slip just a bit.
DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
Robert had my things packed in the same amount of time that it took me to throw my last load of laundry into the wash. Boxes were produced from out of nowhere, and everything I owned, everything that I had forgotten I owned were packaged neatly and tidily in seven boxes that sat on the floor of my bed, still dressed in the comforter that Janice had purchased for me.
I sat down near the nightstand and pulled open the little drawer. Inside was the old phone that I’d used to speak to Graham almost every night. It was obviously being left behind. The lamp that sat atop the small table was gone, and a dustless ring lay as a reminder that something had been there.
My closet was empty. I hadn’t changed out of the white jeans I’d been married in, and already they showed signs of staining.
“Where are we going to take all of these things?” I asked as I realized that we wouldn’t be returning to the white room at the back of that large house that Robert had called home.
