Broken Wings (An Angel Eyes Novel) (17 page)

But today it’s hard.

I close my eyes tighter and tighter. Try as I may, I just can’t see it.

Jake’s working again today, so I plan to grab my camera and disappear for a while. Far from Dad and whatever explanation he’s cooking up. But the second I step through the front door, I know I’ve walked into an ambush.

Pastor Noah is here. He sits on a barstool at the counter, eating a hefty serving of chocolate chip pancakes. I happen to know Dad hates this guy. Hates. More than he hates the Red Sox. Seeing him in my kitchen is bizarre—weirder than finding Dad flipping flapjacks for a koala bear. Next to him is my boss, Miss Macy. She’s pancake-free but stands there in a pair of jeans, nursing a cup of steaming coffee.

It’s always strange to see her wearing anything but a leotard.

“Elle, sweetheart.” Her lips are tipped down, her chin puckering. More sympathy. Yeah. But she squeezes me tight, smelling like fruit and sunshine, and I can’t help the tears that spring to my eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your dad asked us to stop by,” she says, rubbing my arms
like I’ve caught a chill. I turn my eyes to Dad, but he’s flipping a pancake, patently avoiding eye contact.

He’s a chicken.

A big, fat chicken.

The kitchen door opens then, and the sheriff walks in.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, removing his hat. “Cemetery’s a mess. We’re going to have to—” He sees me and stops.

Miss Macy and Pastor Noah are strange additions to the kitchen this afternoon, but Sheriff Cahill? Pretty sure I know exactly what that’s about. I can only assume Dad invited Miss Macy and Pastor Noah for moral support.

And suddenly I’m out of place here. In my own house. I know things I shouldn’t know. Things they have to tell me but would rather not.

“I’m just going to change.”

“Go ahead, Elle,” Dad says, his eyes lingering on Mom’s Bible clenched in my fist. “Get changed. We’ll be here when you’re through.”

I kick off my heels as soon as I enter my room. They skitter across the carpet, disappearing under my bed. I swap out my slip dress for jeans and a yellow T-shirt, all the while considering just why Dad included Pastor Noah in this terrifying little gathering.

Of all the people in the known universe, Canaan included, Noah is the last person I’d have expected Dad to invite into our house. Noah and Becky were old friends of Mom’s, churchy friends, and Dad’s not keen on churchy folk. Out of ideas, but still hoping to stall, I run a brush through my hair and stare at myself in the mirror over my dresser.

I catch sight of the halo on my wrist. It’s grabbing hold of the
sunlight spitting through my blinds and sending it back brighter and more beautiful than ever. I wonder what they’d all think if I put it on my head and wore it out there.

I wonder what I’d see.

I grab the white sweater hanging on my desk chair and slide it on over the halo. No point provoking Dad right now.

I leave my room, lingering in the hallway outside the kitchen. I listen, but the words are all whispers. I consider hiding in my room and calling Jake, telling him to call in sick, get over here, help me face this. Instead, I press my head against the wall and I pray. A good one. A long one. And then, sliding on my sneakers, I step into the kitchen.

But it’s empty.

Answered prayer?

“In here,” Dad calls, deflating my happy thought. “Thought we’d be more comfortable this way.”

Maybe it’s not an answered prayer, but it’s progress. I can’t remember the last time Dad thought of anyone’s comfort but his own.

I walk across the kitchen, grabbing a lukewarm pancake from the stack. I tear off a piece and shove it into my mouth as I step through the archway leading to the living room. Dad’s given his chair to Noah, which might be the weirdest thing yet. Miss Macy sits on the couch, her legs crossed, coffee cup still glued to her hand. Sheriff Cahill sits in my favorite reading chair. He’s thumbing through a magazine and puts it down as I enter.

Dad stands by the television, like he’s going to be doing magic for us or something. I expect him to produce a large, flimsy saw and a box for me to climb into.

“Sit, baby,” he says, gesturing to the couch.

Miss Macy pats the spot next to her and I sit, glad I’ll at least have a hand to hold through this whole thing.

Dad clears his throat. “Elle, last night, there was some . . . trouble out at the cemetery.” He rubs a sleeve across his brow and looks around. The cool he seems to have manufactured for this little meeting has fled, and panic takes control of his face. “I don’t . . . umm . . . Mike, you wanna?”

“Sure,” the sheriff says, leaning forward in his chair. But the pity on his face is too much, and I decide. I don’t care what I have to tell this room of people, I’m not pretending my way through this conversation.

“I know about Mom’s grave,” I say. My words are delivered to Dad, but he’s the only one in the room not looking at me.

Miss Macy rubs my arm all the harder, and Noah prays under his breath. The sheriff rolls onto his heels and pushes back so he’s sitting on the ottoman of the reading chair.

“How?” Dad says, his voice strangely gruff. “How do you know?”

This right here, this is why I should have listened to Helene.

“It was all over the news,” Noah says. “All over the papers, Keith.”

But Dad shrugs Noah off. “She doesn’t read the paper. Doesn’t watch the news. Your boyfriend told you, didn’t he?”

I shake my head, but the hatred in his eyes keeps my mouth shut.

Miss Macy saves me.

“It’s been everywhere, Keith. Knock it off.”

The room goes quiet. It seems Dad is still waiting for an answer. He wants to know how I knew, but I’m not going to lie to him.

“Why?” I say, my voice dry. “Why was the casket empty?”

Dad’s eyes snap to Mike’s.

“I swear,” Mike says, “that part wasn’t released to the press . . . to anyone, Keith. No one knows about that. It’s just like I told you.”

“You’re still trying to hide stuff? I
know
, Dad. Does it really matter how?”

“It’s a small town,” Noah says. “Word gets around.”

“I want to know how,” Dad says stubbornly.

I’m mad now. Really, really mad. “Yeah, well, I want to know why, Dad. Why was her casket empty?”

The sheriff is embarrassed, yanking at his collar, his face slick. “There are several scenarios that fit the evidence, Miss Matthews.”

“No, no, no,” Dad says. “If we’re gonna do this, let me do it right.”

“Good man,” Pastor Noah says.

Dad glares at him, forcing Noah farther back into his seat. Then he laces his fingers and turns to me. For the first time in forever he looks clear. Determined.

I’m hopeful. And then he starts talking.

“Your mother was terminal,” Dad says. “She was incredibly ill and you were very, very small. I needed help. Miss Macy was the logical choice. She was a friend of Hannah’s. In fact, when your mom made up her will, she insisted on listing Miss Macy as your godmother.”

I turn to her, surprised. “You’re my godmother?”

Miss Macy’s eyes are full of tears, her voice soft. “I can’t magic you a ball gown or anything, but yes. It’s what your mother wanted.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to,” she says, stroking my hair.

“Then why didn’t you? All these years . . .”

“I asked her not to say anything about that stuff, about your mom,” Dad says, gruff. Irritated. “I’m not ashamed of it, Elle. I was doing my best to protect you. I’m still trying, if you haven’t noticed, but I’m not the voice you listen to these days.”

He’s cheating. It’s not fair to make me feel guilty now. But it works, and my voice wobbles.

“Dad . . .”

“It doesn’t matter, kid, I’m fine. Just let me get through this.” He takes a haggard breath, his shirt stretched tight across his chest. “Miss Macy helped. To tell the truth, I couldn’t convince her not to.”

“I loved your mom, Elle.”

Dad soldiers on, brushing Miss Macy’s words aside. “So Miss Macy helped. She’d sit with your mom when I couldn’t, and she’d keep you when Grams was too tired. It was a hard time, kiddo. Impossibly hard. When we knew your mom had only days to live, that there was nothing more to be done, I brought her home. She wanted to be here. With you.”

Tears pour down my face, but I’m silent. Her pain, the cancer, these are things I’ve known or assumed. Dad’s response to it all, his own agony, is something he’s never discussed. But I see it on him now. Even without the halo on my head, without celestial eyes, his pain is all I see.

“Miss Macy and I were both here that last night,” Dad continues, producing a handkerchief and blowing his nose. “And you. You were here. You were with your mother.”

“You were brushing her hair,” Miss Macy says. “Painting her
nails with that Hello Kitty nail polish you loved so much. They were the most precious moments I’ve ever witnessed.”

I pinch my eyes shut, trying to remember, willing my mind to paint the picture. But there’s nothing. Only blackness. Only fear.

“And then she was just gone,” Dad says.

My eyes snap open.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Miss Macy was cooking dinner,” Dad says, looking at my teacher fully for the first time. There’s tenderness there—a memory shared. Miss Macy nods, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. “And I’d just stepped out to grab a book. She liked it when I read. There was this . . .” He shakes his head. Whatever he was going to say, he’s changed his mind. “It was quiet. Very, very quiet.”

“Keith,” Miss Macy says. Her voice is soft, but there’s something of a reprimand there.

Dad ignores it, his eyes back on me. “And then your mom’s machines went haywire. The alarms beeping. We’d been expecting it, knew it was coming. Her breathing had been so weak. We both dropped what we were doing and ran to the room.”

He stops, unable to go on.

“You were there,” Miss Macy says. “Asleep on your mama’s bed. A Cinderella crown on your head and ballet slippers on your feet.”

How I wish I could remember that. “And Mom?”

“She was gone,” Dad says.

Gone?

Miss Macy turns me toward her, her soft, wrinkled hands firm on my forearms. “The bed was empty, honey. She must’ve walked out, walked past us when we weren’t looking.”

“How? You said yourself she was weak, her breathing frail.”

“We don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “We’ve never known.”

“Could someone have taken her?” Noah says.

I’m still not sure why he’s here. This information seems new to him as well.

“Perhaps,” Sheriff Cahill said. “It’s a theory we considered. I was just a deputy back then, but we combed the county. Had help from other agencies. Never found a thing.”

“Several weeks passed with no sign of her, no leads. And with some . . . help,” Dad says, looking at Miss Macy, “I finally realized that even if she was out there somewhere, she was surely gone. Her body had so little life left in it, baby, she couldn’t have made it far, even with medical attention.”

My head spins. My stomach aches, and I just want to go back to wondering what happened. To come up with my own unlikely scenarios. “But why the grave? Why bury an empty casket?”

“For you. For Grams,” Dad says. “She begged me. Said you needed a place to go, to visit. Weeks before your mother . . . passed,” he says, flinching at the outright lie, “Grams had already picked out the plot, paid for it, and selected the grave marker.”

“The weeping angel.”

“She was convinced it had to be done right,” Dad says with a stiff shrug. “She convinced me.”

“Many people have a memorial for a lost loved one,” Miss Macy says. “It gives us a place to pay our respects, Elle. To mourn.”

They’re all so . . . nice. So benevolent about this deception.

They did it for me. For Grams.

Whatever.

“That grave wasn’t a memorial to Mom. It was . . . a lie.”

“Elle . . . ,” Dad says.

“I had a right to know,” I say, slamming my fist into the couch. “Maybe not when I was three. I understand that. Fine. But when I was old enough to know, you could have told me, and you didn’t.” I let my eyes rest on Dad. “You lied to me.”

He yanks at his collar. “I planned to tell you. One day. I always said I’d do it when you were older. And then you were in high school and it was easy not to. There were reasons, decent reasons not to get into it. And then you went away to Portland, to Austen. And when you came back, Elle, you had more than enough tragedy to deal with.”

I’m trying to see this from his point of view. From Miss Macy’s even. From the point of view of everyone who let me sit and stare at a stone statue for years and years and years.

But I can’t.

I want to yell now, but Miss Macy’s here, and Noah. Pastor Noah, who’s the most soft-spoken man in the world. I bet he’s never yelled. Ever.

Maybe that’s why Dad asked him here. Anything to keep me quiet. To keep me from losing my mind. I pull away from Miss Macy and stand. “You did what you thought was best, but it sucks. A lot.”

It’s an awful way to exit, but they don’t seem to have anything else to say and I’m through with the sympathetic stares, so I walk from the room, through the kitchen, my sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor.