Twelve
Sarah slept better than she had in months, and woke to see the sun streaming through the curtains in her bedroom. The room was filled with light, and Dinah was lying on the bed in the exact center of a ray of sunlight. Her ear twitched and she lifted one eye when Sarah stirred, checking to see whether food was imminent or not--if not, there was no real reason to get up. Being a cat, she had no problem with sleeping the entire day.
There was, of course, food. Canned cat food--a special treat--and tea and toast and a poached egg for Sarah, sunny-side-up, like the day. She found herself singing as she cooked the egg, and she picked Dinah up and swung her around the room in an impromptu dance, then set her down, laughing. She dressed in yellow, continuing the sun-drenched theme, even finding a string of yellow and blue glass beads at the bottom of her jewelry box. She slipped them over her head as she stepped out onto the porch.
She was slightly disappointed not to find Zach sleeping on the steps, but she shook it off as she walked to work, humming. As the day went on, though, she began to feel the old familiar panic overtaking her at the thought of getting involved with another man. She'd tried dating a few times, but while she had met men she'd liked well enough, it still felt like a betrayal to get close to anyone. She knew that was silly, but it was how her heart felt.
She had been so stunned by losing the baby, and then by James' death that it had taken her months to regain any sort of composure at all. She wouldn't have said that she and James were soulmates, exactly, but they were good companions and partners, and she knew that they would have had a good life together. They had met in college, started dating, broke up, then ended up getting married when they both wound up working in Chicago.
Having a baby was just the next step in the evolution from college kids to husband and wife to parents; she had always imagined herself with three or four children, ferrying them back and forth to school and soccer games and friends' houses. She'd never really thought of herself as the career type, although here she was, owning her own business, something she'd thought about idly through the years but never really thought would happen.
That the thing that enabled it to happen was getting James' life insurance money was something that caused her guilt every day of her life, practically, and kept her from truly enjoying it.
It was a job. She took comfort from the fact that she provided a necessary service--an independent bookstore that took an interest in its customers, unlike the large chain stores that were popping up everywhere--and that she provided needed jobs to a couple of likeable young people. Well, it wasn't like they would be homeless or anything without her, but it was something.
She had thought she might talk it over with Cate, but the store was busy, and by the time they were alone, in the early evening, she no longer felt like talking about it. Cate was in the front of the store, arranging a Christmas display in the window.
"Cate?" she called. "I'm going to go back in the office for awhile. Call me if it gets busy, okay?"
She sat down at her desk and booted up the computer, then went to the site that she had bookmarked, the one whose address was as familiar to her as her own name.
She typed:
Dear James,
I met an interesting man a few weeks ago. He says he's an angel. I wish I could believe that he was; then maybe he could tell me about Heaven, and let me know whether or not you're okay. Whether you're with Gaby, and what she's like . . .
Anyway . . . So, he says he's an angel . . .
She stopped typing. This wasn't going well at all. Usually she had no problem talking to James, strange though it might seem to other people, but she'd never before had the urge to talk to him about another man. Not that she had any feeling that he would mind, assuming, of course, that he had any awareness of what she was doing down here on Earth.
She deleted the letter. Silly. It was all so silly. And unnecessary. She could talk to them any time she wished in her mind. Typing out the words was surely unnecessary, and maybe--this was the first time she'd actually put this into words, even to herself--it was prolonging her grief, rather than helping her get over it.
Turning off the computer, she walked back out in the store, where Cate was sitting behind the counter knitting something in fuzzy red yarn. "What are you making?" Sarah asked.
Cate looked up. "Oh, a scarf for my sister. I'm still trying to make as many Christmas presents as I can. This one's going pretty fast, see?" She held up the end of the scarf on the knitting needle and let its length drop loose--it reached nearly to the floor.
"Very nice!" Sarah exclaimed. "Make me one?" Then: "Oh yeah. This is Florida. Well, never mind." She grinned at Cate. "I need to get out of here for a few minutes. I think I'll walk around the block and maybe get a soda or an ice cream or something. Can I bring you back anything?"
"Sure! Ice cream sounds wonderful, if that's what you get."
"Ice cream it is, then," said Sarah, and she walked out the door. She immediately turned around and pushed through the door again. "What flavor?" "Something funky and exotic!" Shaking her head, Sarah went back outside again, and walked down the sidewalk in the direction away from the ice cream store. She'd walk the long way around the block and hit the ice cream shop on the way back.
She was walking with her head down, trying to sort out her feelings. What if something happened with Zach? Would that be okay? Could she handle it? She wasn't exactly sure that she could, although she supposed it would be fun to try. Fun. Now that was kind of a new concept. Sure, she enjoyed some things, but her pure enjoyment of life had gone out the window the night she lost the baby. But she hadn't died! Yet she had, in essence, killed herself, too . . .
Damn. What a mess. What should she do??? She turned the corner at the end of the block and nearly ran headlong into someone coming the opposite direction. Startled, she looked up to see, of course, Zach. Who else had she been running into for weeks? If he wasn't an angel, it surely was fate.
She smiled up at him. "Hello." And he smiled back, and they fell into step with one another, naturally. "Where were you going?" she asked, and he answered, "To see you," and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. When they reached the ice cream store, she ordered strawberry, and she bought him a chocolate cone, and together they picked out the funkiest, most exotic flavor they had for Cate, which turned out to be not terribly exotic at all--Rocky Road. It was the best they could do, though, and they laughed about it as they presented it to Cate with a flourish.
Cate hardly knew what to think about this new, laughing Sarah that came in the door with a man right behind her, with flushed cheeks and a sparkle in her eye. She couldn't help but smile at them as she accepted the ice cream, but her eyes asked Sarah who the heck this man was.
"Cate," Sarah said, "this is Zach," and, "Zach, this is Cate."
"Hello, Cate," Zach said, and held out his hand. Bemused, she took it, still wondering what this was all about.
"Hello, Zach. Nice to meet you." His handshake was firm and warm, and he had lovely hands with long fingers. And he looked right into your eyes, which was nice, if a bit unsettling.
Zach was walking around the bookstore, browsing, eating his ice cream cone--and Sarah would never have allowed anyone else anywhere near the books with an ice cream cone! She waggled her eyebrows comically at Sarah when Zach's back was turned, but Sarah just smiled at her and mouthed, Later. So she finished her ice cream, gathered up her knitting and her books and said goodnight, shaking her head as she walked out.
"Would you like a cup of coffee before I dump out the pot?" Sarah asked Zach. "Or tea? There's still hot water."
"Tea would be nice," he said. She washed out the coffee urn, then made two mugs of tea with the last of the hot water and brought them over to the table in the corner. It was flanked by two overstuffed chairs, and she tucked her feet up into hers as she cradled the mug in her hands.
"So," she began. "I told you all about myself the other night. What about you? What's the story of your life?"
"I told you," he said. "I'm an angel. Your guardian angel, to be specific."
She just looked him. "So is that like those gang members in New York? The Guardian Angels?"
"No, not like that. What would it take for you to believe me?"
"Oh, I don't know. Wings, maybe?" She was teasing him; surely he was teasing her, too.
He looked up. "Ceiling's a little low for that."
She laughed at him. She couldn't help it. "Come on, Zach. Stop pretending. I know you're not an angel. Who are you, really?"
He leaned toward her, his mug held in both hands, balanced on his black-clad knees. "My real name is Zachriel. I'm an angel."
Okay, she thought. I'll humor him. "All right, so you're an angel. Did you use to be . . . human? Were you someone who died?"
"No. It doesn't work that way. Angels are . . . sort of like a different race. Not human, but . . . other."
"So what does happen to people when they die, if they don't become angels?"
"Most of them go to Heaven, but they're not actually angels. They don't become angels, they're just people who have died. They're souls." He looked a little uncomfortable at the explanation.
"Were you born?" she asked.
He took a sip of tea, then grimaced. It had obviously gone cold. "Well, in a manner of speaking. Everything is born. Everyone is born."
"When?"
"A really long time ago," he answered. "Is there any more hot water?"
"No, there's not. And I really want to know."
"Sarah," he said, "time is really irrelevant. It's measured differently in Heaven, it's . . . well, like I said, it's irrelevant. I've been alive, in a manner of speaking, since the beginning of the world. Eons."
Eons. As ludicrous as his story was, the word gave her a chill.
She leaned forward and took the mug from his hands, turning to set it on the table. "Zach," she began, "I like you. I really do. But this angel story is nonsense, surely you know that." She turned back to him, only to find his chair empty. Her gaze flew around the room, but she didn't see him anywhere, until a tap on the front window caught her attention.
He was standing on the sidewalk, a tall young man wearing a long black coat, with a pair of the most magnificent wings she could have imagined lifting to the heavens behind his shoulders.
© 2002 Willa G. Cline