Loving Your Lies (40 page)

“
Merci
,”
I replied, accepting
the drink.

She sat down on my lounge chair in front of
my legs and fumbled with the seam of the three layers of my skirt.
“That dress suits you so well. You should wear it more often.”

I winced. “I don’t feel well in it. You
shouldn’t have picked it out for me today.”

Her sneaking into my room and placing the
dress on a hanger outside my wardrobe before I woke had really
startled me this morning. Especially, since she never walked into
my room uninvited. A habit of both my aunt and uncle that I
appreciated.

A confused smile tugged on her lips, and she
glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “What are you talking
about? I never pick outfits for you to wear, you know that.”

“But you placed the hanger on my wardrobe
door,” I replied, suddenly not so sure. “How else would it get
there?”

And how indeed
?

“Maybe you put it there before you went to
bed last night?”

“You know me. When have I ever chosen a
color like this to wear?” I arched a brow and lifted the top layer
of the skirt demonstratively. “I don’t even know why this was still
in my wardrobe. I thought I’d given all the fancy colored clothes
back to you ages ago.”

Marie cupped my chin, searching my face with
compassionate eyes. For the flash of a second her mind was
transparent. I dreaded her next words.

But sure as hell, she didn’t disappoint. “Is
this like the piano playing in the middle of the night?”

Hell yeah, it was. And just because none of
them had heard the music at night, it didn’t mean that no one had
played the damn piano. My song.
Hallelujah.
The melody that
had stuck in my head since I was a child.

After I had found the parlor empty that
night and screamed my head off, Marie had made me a cup of warm
milk with honey and tucked me back into bed. “So soon after your
mother’s death, it’s only natural that your mind plays tricks on
you sometimes. Everything will get better in time,” she’d assured
me.

If only.

The music kept playing in my mind. And I
knew it could only be
there
—in my mind—because I used to
lock the lid over the piano keys in the evening and took the small
brass key up to my room. The metal felt hot in my palm when I lay
in bed, tense and anxious that something was seriously wrong with
my brain, while the softest melody played downstairs.

But as so many things in life, I got used to
it over the months. I never spoke of it again. And damn sure I
wouldn’t start now.

I lowered my gaze from Marie’s questioning
eyes, but snuggled deeper into her soft hands, soaking in the
tender feeling of being held. In all the months I had been living
with her and Uncle Albert, she had grown on me like a second
mother. At times, I found it hard to return her love with the
sadness eating me away, but I was still grateful beyond words.

Pressing a kiss onto her palm, I cleared my
throat. “I’ll go pay a visit to my mum. Do you want me to bring
buns from the baker?”

“Thank you, dear, but I’ve already been
there this morning.” She rose from the lounge-chair and went to
break a red rose from the bush next to the vine-ladder. “But you
may want to bring your mother this.”

“Sure.” I took the flower from her and
kissed her cheek.

The trip down to the cemetery took me only
five minutes, and I could have walked it blindfolded by now. I knew
the exact step count between ours and the light green house of
Madame DuValle. Recalled every roughness on the street where
puddles would form on a rainy day.

As usual the big iron-gate at the entrance
to the graveyard was closed and creaked eerily at my push. The
pebbled ground sank softly underneath my flat sandals. One of the
tiny sharp stones slid through the straps of my left shoe and
pinched my sole. I shook my foot, but the pebble wouldn’t come out,
so I leaned against my mother’s tombstone and worked it out of my
shoe.

When the stone dropped to the ground, I
placed Marie’s flower with the bunch of white roses in the copper
vessel. Then I traced the inscription underneath her name on the
marble with my finger.

May your angels take care of you,
always.

I never knew why, but when the chiseler had
taken the order from my aunt before the burial, I’d asked him to
carve those words into the stone. Marie found this a lovely way to
say goodbye to my mum, but for an undefined reason the line had a
deeper meaning to me.

One more of the many mysteries my life
seemed to be filled with. A deep sigh expanded my chest, containing
a lot of the confusion and longing that wearing this bright yellow
dress had brought on today.

“God, Mum, I’m not going mental, am I?”
I
mean other than talking to thin air at a cemetery.

Movement to my right caught my eye. I
whirled about, expecting to face the old lady with the gray
chignon. She came here regularly to tend the grave of her recently
departed son. The tiny woman used to gawk at me like I was a dead
fly in her glass of wine whenever she caught me talking to
myself.

But there was no one there. I pressed my
palms to my eyes and groaned. “Who’s doing all this to me?” Through
my splayed fingers, I peeked at the small square picture of my
mother on the white marble. “Are you still hanging around,
Mum?”

Girl, you better stop thinking such
nonsense
, I scolded myself. And if I had to think it, then at
least keep it to myself. The long argument over the shrink still
loomed in the back of my mind.

But something unnatural was going on around
me. Something no one else seemed to notice. And why in the world
did I keep dreaming of a man whose beauty took my breath away every
morning when I woke up?

Because you’re bat-shit crazy.

Yes, that must be it. I arranged the flowers
in the vase, brushed the curve of the stone and said a silent
goodbye to my mother. “See you tomorrow.”

After dinner, where I’d mostly stared at my
food, a strange impulse sent me out onto the balcony. Annoyed with
my fear of heights, I had started to train myself to overcome the
vertigo that had bothered me my entire life.

At the beginning, my bones shook like the
tail of a rattle snake each time I stepped onto the fragile
structure, but by now I could lean over the railing to talk to
Marie or Albert below without going into hysteria.

The guestroom next to mine had a French door
that led to the balcony, too. On warm days, Marie would open the
door to air out the completely furnished room, like someone was
going to move in any day.

I liked the dark blue bedding. On some
evenings, I just sat on the center of the queen-size bed and rocked
back and forth in a trance-like rhythm with my legs hugged to my
chest.

Peeking into the room through the gently
swaying curtains now filled me with a longing I couldn’t
understand. With my mother gone, I often felt alone—like during the
days when I had lived in the orphanage. But there came moments when
I felt even lonelier.

I closed my eyes. In my mind, I saw a pair
of gorgeous blue eyes staring back at me from inside the room.

“Who are you?” I whispered when the rays of
the setting sun touched the side of my face. If only I could plug
my mind to a printer and get the picture of this man on paper. A
photograph I could stare at when I was by myself, like now.

Tired from another day filled with thoughts,
I stripped off the yellow dress and hung it inside the wardrobe.
The fluffy pillow welcomed me, and I drifted off to sleep within
minutes.

The dream returned.

I saw nothing but a beautiful face with
glowing blue eyes. When I lifted my hand to touch it, the person
inched back just out of my reach. In an eerie dreamlike way, I knew
I would be chasing the smiling man all night again until I woke
with a sigh in the morning.

But this time something was different.
Although he wouldn’t allow me to touch his face, I felt a soft
caress on my skin. Fingers curled around my hand, warm and smooth.
Tender. The sensation seemed so real that in my dream, I struggled
to wake. To see who was holding me.

It was a long and hard fight against the
numbness of my mind, but finally I managed to open my eyes at least
to slits. Dawn filled my room like a sea of gray fog. Nothing
seemed changed inside, but a soft squeeze of my hand dragged my
glance down to the side of my bed.

A man knelt on the floor. The beauty of his
face took my breath away just like every time I woke after my
dreams. But this time a shadow of him still lingered in front of
me. He slouched over the edge of my bed, with his chin resting in
the crook of his elbow. He gazed at me with his intense blue eyes.
The golden strands of his hair falling over his forehead entangled
with his long lashes and twitched at each of his slow blinks.

He was clad in a white robe, and a set of
giant wings sprouted from his shoulder blades, covered with soft
feathers everywhere. They lay like a blanket over the floor. Warmth
seeped into me from the hands that held mine.

“I know you,” I breathed, surprisingly calm.
“You’ve been there. In my dreams.”

The angel nodded.

“Am I dying?” Maybe I should be afraid. But
the image of the angel instilled me with calmness.

A smile played around his sensual lips.
“No.”

“Then I’m dreaming?” Or hallucinating like
the last eight months when I heard music when no one played it.

He lifted his chin from his arm and shook
his head slowly. “Not quite. And I can only stay as long as you
haven’t fully broken out of the dream.” His whisper was as soft as
the wing beat of a dove.

“But you look like an angel. What are you
doing in my room? On the floor.”

“I came to return something to you.
Something that I’d stolen from you a while ago.” He cupped my hand
with both of his, then brought it to his lips and planted the
softest kiss on my curled fist.

I squinted, struggling to fully awake and
make sense of what was going on. I should have heeded his warning
instead. One heartbeat later, the figure tinted in a misty white
halo wavered before my eyes and disappeared.

“Don’t go away. Please stay! Tell me your
name!”

As I reached for the vanishing angel in a
useless attempt to hold him back, a small paper ball slipped from
my fingers and dropped to the floor.

30

RETURN OF THE ANGEL

AS THE SUN rose above the trees, warm rays
danced on cream walls. The comforter tucked around my waist, I sat
up in my bed and scanned the room for any sign of the illuminated
angel. The experience had seemed so real, it had left me with the
impression I’d been fully awake.

Stoned
?
I rubbed the bridge of
my nose, squeezing my eyes shut. Holy crap, what did Marie put into
the hot milk she served me every evening? If the hallucinations got
any stranger, I might reconsider seeing the shrink.

But hadn’t there been something left behind
in my vision? A small balled paper had dropped to the floor.
Scooting to the edge of the mattress, I peeked under my bed.
Nothing.

But, holy crap, there was a crumpled paper
ball under my nightstand. The angel had really left a souvenir.
Anticipation sped up my breathing as I unfolded the sheet. I
recognized my own handwriting, but not the note itself. The
headline read
Julian’s spooky dual life
.

“Julian…” Was that his name? The man from my
dream—the angel?

“Inflicts happiness by touch,” I whispered
the first line. A tingle started in my stomach, wringing my insides
to a tight knot. The sensation spread fast through my body to my
head.

Revitalizes the dragon. Resurrected duck
today.
Reading each line slowly pulled me into what seemed like
a roller coaster ride back in time.

I recalled the day my mother had brought me
to France, only this time a young man sat between us on the plane.
His hand covering my clenched fist had sent waves of happiness into
me.

The same happiness that swamped me now.

Julian
. The memory was back. It was
him who had come outside Abe’s office the very first day we’d met,
and he’d freed me from the steel cuffs. The memories of how he’d
sat in my room in the orphanage when it was time to get to the
airport flooded me. I reveled in the sensation of his protective
arms wrapped around me, keeping me safe, when he’d dragged me onto
the balcony.

The vision was clear like one of Marie’s
freshly polished crystal glasses.

Breathing fast, my eyes skimmed over the
lines time and again. Each time a new wave of memories washed over
my mind. In the end, I was filled with three weeks of memories that
must have been the best time in my life. For I’d spent them with
Julian.

The angel.

“Oh my God. How could I forget?” But that
part wasn’t a secret any longer either. The moment my mother had
died, he’d pressed his palm to my brow and pulled all my memories
of him out. Each of them. He’d left me hollow and unknowing.
Empty.

“What have you done to me?” My lips trembled
with the whisper. The past eight months I went through a depression
that had consumed me. I’d doubted my sanity, when it must have been
him who had played the piano for me at night. And of course he
would have place the dress on the door of the wardrobe. Had it not
been a present from him the day that he’d first kissed me on the
beach?

I covered my mouth with my hand, struggling
not to wince with a mix of happiness and despair. My gaze moved to
the bottom of the paper. Another line was scribbled to the listing
of Julian’s extraordinary behavior, but in a different handwriting
than mine.