An Angel for Dry Creek (4 page)

“How about a check? I can pay for the brushes with a check,” Glory offered in relief. She wasn't totally stranded, after all.

“A check is fine,” Matthew said heartily. He'd remember to pull it out and replace it with cash from his own pocket before he took the checks to the bank. He had no doubt her check would bounce as high as her credit card had and he didn't want to embarrass her further. “It's $12.64 for the brushes and turpentine.”

“Good.” Glory started to write the check. “And I'll add a little extra for you—”

“You don't need to tip someone who works in a hardware store,” Matthew said stiffly. A red flush settled around his neck. “The service is free.”

“Of course,” Glory said quickly. There she'd gone and offended him. She finished the check. “Twelve sixty-four exactly.”

Glory counted the checks in her checkbook. She had ten left. That was enough to pay for meals and a hotel for a few nights.

“Where's the hotel from here?” she asked. She couldn't remember seeing one, but there must be one. Every town had a hotel.

“There's no hotel here,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she nudged Matthew.

“Oh. Maybe a bed-and-breakfast place?”

There was a long pause as Mrs. Hargrove nudged Matthew again.

Matthew finally said, “I'm sure there's someone in town with an extra room who would let you—”

“Well, aren't you in luck, then,” Mrs. Hargrove said with a determined enthusiasm. “Since Matthew hurt his knee, his room will be empty. The doctor says he can't climb the stairs with his sprain, so I'm sure no one will think anything of it. Besides, the twins are good chaperones.”

Matthew felt trapped and then guilty. The least he could do was provide her lodging. “We'd be honored to have you stay with us for a few days.”

“There's no one who does this more like a business?” Glory asked. The thought of staying in this man's room made her feel uneasy. She'd smell his aftershave on the pillows and see his shirts in the closet. “I can pay.” Surely one of those families that wanted a job would take in a boarder for a few nights. “I'll even throw in a turkey for Christmas dinner.”

“I'm afraid there's only Matthew and his boys,” Mrs. Hargrove said.

Glory bent her head to start writing her check. “How does one hundred dollars a night sound?”

“One hundred!” Matthew protested. No wonder she had financial troubles. “We're not the Hilton. Besides, you'd be our guest.”

Glory had finished the check by the time he finished. No wonder he had financial troubles. “I can be your guest and still pay a fair price.”

“No, there's no need,” Matthew said.

“I insist,” Glory said as she ripped off the check and presented it to him.

Matthew raised his eyebrows at the amount of the
check. He supposed it didn't matter what amount she wrote the check for when it was going to bounce anyway, but three hundred dollars was a lot to pay for several nights' food and lodging.

“Consider it a Christmas present,” Glory said grandly. “For the twins.”

“They'll appreciate it,” Matthew said dryly.

Glory flipped her wallet to the plastic section. “You'll want to see my driver's license.”

“Henry doesn't bother. He knows the folks here who write checks,” Matthew said as he took a sidelong look at the driver's license anyway. He was pleased to see she was Glory Beckett. She might be a bad risk from the credit company's viewpoint, but she wasn't a thief. That is, unless she was so polished she had gotten a fake driver's license to go with her story.

“He doesn't know me,” Glory said as she moved her driver's license so it came into Matthew's full view. “You'll want to write down the number.”

“All right,” Matthew said as he noted her driver's license number.

“Good,” Glory said as she put her checkbook back in her purse and turned to walk back to her easel.

“You're not going to cash those checks, Matthew Curtis,” Mrs. Hargrove demanded in a hushed whisper as they watched Glory sit down to her easel across the store in front of the display window.

“Of course not,” Matthew agreed as he slipped the checks out of the drawer.

Carl Wall, the deputy sheriff, was running for reelection and his campaign slogan was No Crime's Too Small To Do Some Time. He'd happily jail an out-of-towner for writing a bad check and brag about it to voters later.

Ten minutes later, Glory repositioned the easel. Then she arranged her brushes twice and turned her stool to get more light. She was stalling and she knew it. She suddenly realized she'd never painted a portrait as agonizingly important as this one. The sketches she'd done of criminals, while very important, were meant only for identification and not as a symbol of love.

“Do you want your mother to be sitting or standing?” Glory asked the twins. The two identical heads were studying the bottom of a large display window. They each had a cleaning rag and were making circles in the lower portion of the window while Matthew reached for the high corners, standing awkwardly with one crutch.

“I don't know.” Josh stopped rubbing the window and gave it a squirt of window cleaner. “Maybe she could be riding a dragon. I've always wanted a picture of a dragon.”

“Mommie's don't ride dragons,” Joey scolded his brother. “They ride brooms.”

Matthew winced. Susie had been adamantly opposed to celebrating Halloween and, consequently, the twins had only a sketchy idea of the spooks that inspired other children's nightmares.

“No, sweetie, it's witches who ride brooms.” Mrs. Hargrove corrected the boy with a smile as she picked up a cleaning rag and joined Matthew on the high corners. “Maybe you could have a picture painted of your mother praying.”

“No,” Matthew said a little more loudly than he intended. His memories of Susie praying tormented him. He knew she would be heartbroken that her death had brought a wedge between him and God, but his feelings were there anyway. If he lived to be a hundred,
he'd never understand how God could have answered his prayers for so long on the small things like good crops and passing tests but when it came to the one big thing—Susie's recovery—God had let him down flat. No sense of comfort. No nothing. He'd expected his faith to carry them through always.

Matthew didn't feel like explaining himself. His arms were sore from the crutches and he hobbled over to a stool that was beside Glory. “I want the twins to remember their mother laughing. She was a happy woman.”

“Well, that'd make a good picture, too,” Mrs. Hargrove said, and then looked at the twins. The twins had stopped wiping their circles and were listening thoughtfully. “You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

The twins nodded.

“Okay, smiling it is,” Glory said. This Susie woman sounded like a saint, always smiling and praying and baking cookies, and Glory had no reason to resent her. None whatsoever, she thought to herself. “I assume she had all her teeth.”

“What?” Matthew seemed a little startled with the question.

“Her teeth,” Glory repeated. “If I'm going to paint her smiling, I need to know about her teeth. Were there any missing?”

“Of course not.”

“Were any of them crooked?” Glory continued. “Or chipped? Did she have a space between the front ones?”

“They were just teeth,” Matthew said defensively. Why did he suddenly feel guilty because he couldn't remember what kind of teeth Susie had? He knew her image was burned onto his heart. He just couldn't pull
up the details. “Her eyes were blue—a blue so deep they'd turn to black in the shadows.”

“Eyes. Blue. Deep,” Glory said as she wrote a note on the butcher paper she'd stretched over her easel. “And her nose, was it like this? Or like this?” Glory sketched a couple of common nose styles. “Or more like this?”

“It was sort of like that, but more scrunched at the beginning,” Matthew said, pointing to one of the noses and feeling suddenly helpless. He hadn't realized until now that the picture Glory was going to paint was the picture that was inside his head. He'd spent a lot of time trying to get Susie's face out of his mind so he could keep himself going forward. What if he'd done too good a job? What if he couldn't remember her face as well as he should?

“Pugged nose,” Glory muttered as she added the words to the list on the side of the paper. “Any marks? Moles? Freckles? Warts?”

“Of course not. She was a classic beauty,” Matthew protested.

“I see,” Glory said. She tried to remind herself that she was doing a job and shouldn't take Matthew's words personally. “I have freckles.”

Glory winced. She hadn't meant to say that.

“I noticed them right off.” Matthew nodded. “That's how I knew you couldn't be an angel.”

“I see,” Glory said icily. Couldn't be an angel, indeed. Just because Susie didn't have freckles. She'd show him who couldn't be an angel. “Any other identifying facial marks?”

“I liked the way your hair curled,” Matthew offered thoughtfully as he remembered lying on his back after his fall and looking up at Glory. “It just spread all out
like a sunflower—except it was brass instead of gold.” He had a sudden piercing thought of what it would be like to kiss a woman with hair like that. Her hair would fall around him with the softness of the sun.

“I meant Susie. Did she have any other identifying facial marks?” Glory repeated.

“Oh,” Matthew said, closing his eyes in concentration. Could Susie have had freckles after all? Even a few? No, she'd made this big production about never going out in the sun because her skin was so fair—like an English maiden, she used to say. What else did Susie always say? Oh, yes. “Peaches and cream. Her skin was a peaches-and-cream complexion.”

“Well, that's a nice poetic notion,” Glory said as she added the words to her list.

“What do you mean by that?” Matthew opened his eyes indignantly. Glory had gone all bristly on him, and he was trying his best to remember all the details just as she wanted.

“It's just that peaches have fuzz—and cream eventually clots. The whole phrase is a cliché. It doesn't describe anything. No one's skin looks like that. Not really.”

“Well, no,” Matthew admitted. “It's just hard to remember everything.”

“True enough.” Glory softened. She had gotten descriptions from hundreds of people in her career. She should know not to push someone. Often a victim would have a hard time recalling the features of their assailant. She imagined the same thing might be true when grief rather than fear was the problem. “Don't worry about it. We'll do it one step at a time. We'll be done by Friday.”

“But Friday's not the pageant. You've got to stay
until the pageant,” Josh said solemnly. “They've never had a real angel before in the pageant.”

“I'm not an—” Glory protested automatically as she turned to the twins. They both looked so wistful. “I'm sorry, but I can't stay. Even though I'd love to see my two favorite shepherds in their bathrobes.”

“How'd you know we're wearing bathrobes?” Josh demanded.

“She's an angel, that's how,” Joey said proudly. “She's just an undercover angel, so she can't tell anyone. Like a spy.”

“Do you know everyone's secrets?” Josh asked in awe.

“I don't know anyone's secrets,” Glory said, and then smiled teasingly. “Unless, of course, you do something naughty.”

“Wow, just like Santa Claus,” Josh breathed excitedly. “Can you get me a
Star Trek
laser light gun for Christmas?”

“I thought we talked about that, Josh,” Matthew interjected. “You know Santa is just a story.”

“I know,” Josh said in a rush. His eyes were bright with confidence. “But she's an angel and she can tell God. That's even better than Santa Claus. God must have lots of toys.”

“We'll talk about this later,” Matthew said. He'd have to sit down with Josh and explain how the universe worked. Whether he asked God or Santa Claus for a present, it didn't matter. Neither one of them could buy Josh a gift unless it could be found in Miles City for twenty dollars or less.

“Can you tell God?” Josh ignored his father and whispered to Glory. “I've been a good boy, except for—well, you know—the bug thing.”

Glory didn't think she wanted to know about the bug thing. “I'm sure you have been a good boy,” she said as she knelt to look squarely at the boy. “I'll tell you what, why don't you draw a picture of this laser gun and color it. That way, if you want to send God a picture, He'll know what it looks like.”

“Me, too,” Joey asked. “Can I make a picture, too?”

“Why not?” Glory said, and included him in her smile. Even if her credit card wouldn't live again by Christmas she could send a check to one of her girlfriends. Her friend Sylvia ran a neighborhood youth center and would be visiting that huge toy store in Seattle anyway. Even though most of the kids Sylvia worked with were more likely to own a real pistol than a water pistol, Sylvia insisted on treating them as though they were ordinary children at the holidays. The kids loved her for it.

“But…” Matthew tried to catch Glory's eye.

“Daddy needs one, too,” Joey said. The twins both looked at her with solemn eyes. It had taken her several hours to figure out how to tell them apart. Joey's eyes were always quieter. “But Daddy's old.”

“No one's too old for Christmas wishes,” Glory said.

“Really?” Joey smiled.

 

It was dusk by the time Glory finished her sketch of Susie and they all went home for dinner. Glory offered to cook, but Matthew declared she had already done her work for the day. Glory was too tired to resist. Sketching Susie had been difficult. Matthew had never wanted to look at the full face of the sketch, and so she'd pieced it together an eyebrow at a time. Even
when she'd finished, he'd pleaded fatigue and asked to look at the sketch on the next day.