Fallen Angel (5 page)

She had no illusions that the letters she wrote were reaching their intended destinations. No, in fact, her intention was quite the opposite. She prayed, and she talked to Gabrielle and James in her thoughts constantly, but there were things she found she needed to say that needed to be written in order for her to put closure to them. She wrote about her dreams and hopes and fears, she wrote about her unending grief, and sometimes she wrote about her anger at having been left behind.

Writing to the Dead Letter Office was like talking to a tree, or like talking to herself--she had absolutely no hope or feeling that anything she said ever reached another's eyes or ears, and that was why she felt so safe in writing there. She had been using the site for a year and she had never had any inkling that there was anyone with any interest in her or what she wrote there; in fact, there was nothing about the site that gave any indication that there was anyone involved in it at all. Of course, there had to be, someone had had to build the site and put it up for people to use, but for as long as she had been using it, it hadn't changed, and there was something comforting about the fact that it was always there, always the same, unchanging and available.

She had never told anyone about it. It seemed too personal, and somehow strange--she wasn't sure that anyone would understand the compulsion she felt to pour out her heart and then let her words be destroyed . . . did that make any sense at all? It did to her, but she had never wanted to share it with anyone else. She didn't want anyone to think she was crazy, and above all, she didn't want their pity.

Cate was the only one here that knew her history, although Sarah assumed Cate had probably given at least the bare minimum of information to Jason. He had never said anything to her about it, but she had noticed him treating her a little more delicately lately, not teasing her quite so often. She remembered the night she had told Cate. They had been working late at the store shelving a shipment of new books, and when they finished, they had both been reluctant to head for home alone, so Sarah had invited Cate home with her for a glass of wine.

They had ended up having several glasses of wine, and on her way back from a trip to the bathroom, Cate, having detoured through Sarah's bedroom, stood in the doorway holding the framed photograph and asking, "Sarah? Who's the baby in the picture?"

Sarah fought down the panic she felt at the question; if not for the wine, she probably would have made something up. But she walked to the bedroom and took the photograph from Cate, set it back on the altar, and sat down on the bed.

"I was married."

"Yes, I knew that. I never knew what happened, though. I assumed you'd been divorced."

"No." She paused, and took a deep, shuddering breath. "No. We'd been married a little over a year. I was pregnant. Eight months pregnant. I'd painted the nursery, and hung mobiles from the ceiling--The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, that was the theme. I'd had someone come in--someone like you--to paint a mural on the walls. There was this gorgeous big cow with black spots jumping over a big, fat moon . . ."

She sat, staring into space, as her eyes began to fill with tears. Cate thought, she's somewhere else entirely. She's not here at all.

"It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. No," she said again, the tears spilling down her cheeks. "That's wrong. That mural wasn't the most beautiful thing I ever saw."

She looked at Cate then, her eyes shiny with tears. "Gabrielle was. My baby. She died." She began to sob then, and dropped her face into her hands. Cate leaned forward and took her in her arms, and then she was crying, too, and their tears mingled on their faces. "Oh, Sarah," she said,"I'm so sorry." They sat that way for a long time, their arms wrapped around each other. Sarah spoke into Cate's shoulder.

"I was eight months pregnant, and she stopped moving. I went in to the hospital, and they did the tests and found out that she was dead, and I had to deliver her, knowing it, and it was the worst thing I've ever had to do. I didn't think I could bear it, but I did, somehow, and my husband, James, was there, and it was the only time I've ever seen him cry . . ." She broke off and wiped her hand across her face, smearing the tears. "He told me that we would get through it somehow, that we would survive even though I couldn't imagine how."

Cate waited.

"I was in the hospital for a few days; there were complications. I was pretty doped up, and while I was sleeping, he left for a little while, and . . ." She took another deep breath. "He got into a car accident and they came and woke me up and told me that he died. We had two funerals on the same day. I named her Gabrielle, and they dressed her in a little white christening gown with a white bonnet on her head, and I buried them both the same day."

This was worse than anything Cate might have imagined. She had assumed that Sarah was divorced; maybe a terrible, bad divorce--Sarah had all the signs--but nothing like this. How did you ever come back from grief like this? She reached out for Sarah again, but Sarah said, "No, it's okay. I'm okay. I haven't talked about it for a long time. I probably needed to." She wiped her face again.

"Our parents were wonderful, both his and mine, but they were smothering me. I felt so guilty all the time, guilty that I lived and he didn't, that I hadn't been able to give them their first grandchild, that if only I had done something differently, maybe Gaby wouldn't have died, and then James wouldn't have died. And I thought that maybe I should have died . . ."

"Oh, Sarah, it wasn't your fault! None of it was your fault! You shouldn't feel guilty."

"I know. But guilt isn't a very rational emotion, you know? They didn't mean to make me feel guilty, but I always felt like I was trying to hold myself together because of them, for them, that I had to be strong because if I fell apart, then they'd fall apart, too, and I just couldn't stand it."

"Is that why you came here?"

"Uh huh. We had come here on vacation a couple of times and I'd always liked it, and I had the insurance money and a job I didn't much like, and I just felt like I had to get away from all the memories. So I came here and after I'd been here awhile, I bought the shop, and here we are."

Cate got up off the bed. "Is there any more wine?" she asked. "I think we need another drink. And if you don't, I do." She walked off into the kitchen to investigate the refrigerator, while Sarah went into the bathroom and washed her face. She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink and sighed. She had assumed it would get easier with time, but so far it hadn't seemed to. The memories were still as painful as the fresh wounds, and she couldn't imagine that they would ever heal. As soon as Cate left, she'd write another letter. Maybe that would help.

7.

She hadn't gotten back on the computer after Cate left, after all. By the time she was in the house alone, still a little tipsy from the wine and exhausted from crying, she had fallen into bed and collapsed into sleep within minutes. It was a relief to escape her grief, even for the brief periods of time that sleep afforded her. She knew that the insomnia was probably partly guilt--somewhere inside she believed that she didn't
deserve
to escape her grief. The therapist she saw for awhile in Chicago had said that before she could recover from it, she had to be ready to let it go.

She knew that was true, and she wasn't ready. She still somehow felt that to let go of the grief would mean letting go of the memories, and while she knew it wasn't healthy, she just couldn't do that yet. The memories were all she had left of them. She kept them inside her like a stone in her heart, and to even contemplate removing that stone made her palms sweat in panic.

If the memories were gone, if she let them go, what would take their place? What would be left of her?

* * *

Sarah was working in her office when she looked up to see Cate standing in the doorway. "Hey, boss?" she said. "When did we get these in?" She held out a box of cards the size and shape of tarot cards. The box was dark blue, with an image on the front of a kneeling woman with hair the color of spun gold, holding her arms around what looked like a pregnant belly.

"I don't know," Sarah answered. "I don't remember seeing them before. What are they?"

"Soul Cards. They're really cool. I just hadn't seen them before, and wondered if they were new."

Sarah shrugged. "Maybe Jason got them in one day when we weren't here. I don't remember ordering them, but I may have."

Cate wandered back out to wait on someone, and Sarah turned back to her work. By the time she looked up again, it was getting close to closing time.

She put her books away and walked out into the main room. Cate was sitting behind the counter reading a paperback--a Carl Hiaasen, it looked like--and yawning. "Ready to close up, kiddo?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah." Cate yawned again. She had put her short red hair up in little clumps on top of her head, and was wearing heavy black-framed glasses that Sarah suspected she didn't really need, but just wore for effect.

"Late night last night?"

"I was painting. I got on a roll and didn't want to stop. You know. You take the inspiration when it comes . . ."

"What are you working on?"

"Well, it's funny. Angels, mostly. I'm not normally an angel kind of gal, but they just sort of showed up and wouldn't go home. So I painted them." She grinned. "Of course, knowing me, they're not your usual kind of angels."

Sarah grinned back at her. "I can imagine. So when can I see them?"

"I don't know. Awhile yet. They're pretty embryonic."

"Okay. I'll wait."

Sarah started counting the money in the cash register while Cate walked around the store straightening the books on the shelves and running a feather duster over the spines. They worked quietly and efficiently; they'd done this too many nights to count. Cate was a painter in, as she liked to say, her "real life," who liked to sleep in and stay up late, so she generally tried to schedule her hours at the bookshop for the evenings. Jason was more of a morning person, and he usually opened up in the mornings, worked a few hours, and then took off for afternoon classes. They occasionally overlapped, but Sarah couldn't afford, and didn't really need, to have both of them work at the same time except on rare occasions like special sales and the pre-Christmas period.

Speaking of which: "Hey, Cate?" Sarah called.

"Yeah?"

"Will you remind me tomorrow that I need to figure out the schedule for the next couple of weeks? I'll need both of you guys here for some extra hours, I think. It's getting close to Christmas, we're going to get busier soon."

"Sure. I can use the extra hours. I'm going to have to buy some of my Christmas presents this year. I wasn't nearly as productive as I had hoped. I didn't even have time to make Christmas cards this year. My mom and dad are getting a painting, but that's it."

"Okay. Good. Thank you. I mean, good that you can work, not good that you didn't get your Christmas stuff done . . ."

"It's okay," Cate said.

Cate was actually fairly famous in their small corner of the world, selling her paintings in several small galleries, and taking commissions for portraits when she had time. She also made small sculptures and collages--Sarah didn't know how Cate found the time, but suspected that she survived on very little sleep most nights. Oh well. Sarah knew how that was, and knew that lack of sleep wouldn't kill you. It just sometimes made you feel like you wanted to die . . .

As they finished tidying up the shop for the next day, Sarah slipped the box of Soul Cards into her skirt pocket. She didn't remember ordering them, but they looked intriguing, and she wanted a chance to look at them a little closer.

"Nite, Sarah," Cate called, as she slipped out the door, and then stopped and turned back. "Want me to wait for you?"

"No, that's okay," Sarah said. "You go on, I won't be long. Good night!" She took one last look around the store, then went back into the office to pick up her bag and say goodnight to the cat. She squatted down in front of Sophie's chair and took the cat's face in her hands. "You be a good girl tonight, Sophie. Catch a mouse or something." She turned out the light, locked the door, and walked silently home.

* * *

She sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, her grandmother's quilt draped over her shoulders. Music was playing softly on the stereo, and she had turned off the lamps and brought every candle in the house into the bedroom and lit them, so that the whole room glowed.

She had opened the box of Soul Cards and spread them around her on the floor. According to the booklet included in the box, the cards were meant to be used as a focus for meditation or journaling, or as altar cards. The pictures were all stylized, and many of them were pretty obscure; there were no interpretations offered, apparently you were supposed to decide what you thought they meant. Sarah generally preferred her divination tools to be a little more cut-and-dried, more concrete; she liked picking a card and having something tell her exactly what it meant, exactly what she was supposed to expect. She realized that was a little silly, but she didn't like trusting her intuition too much. Where had it gotten her so far?

She gathered up the cards and straightened them, then spread them out again, facedown this time. She sat and thought.
Please give me some guidance here. Tell me what I need to do. Help me figure out what to do.
She picked up a card and turned it over. It was mostly beige and pink, like the inside of a seashell. It showed a woman sitting in the middle of a swirl of what might be a seashell, or might be sand. The edges of the swirl were blurred, like the tide had just gone out.