Mercy for the Fallen (3 page)

“You called?”

The nonchalance in his voice threw me off.  Had he been expecting my call or was he just trying to play it cool?  “Do you know why I did?”

“Kitten, I know exactly why you called,” he purred, pulling me close.  “Frankly, I’m surprised it took you this long, but I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.”

“Ugh, don’t you ever stop?”  I shoved my way out of his grasp pretty easily; being stronger than he was had its advantages. 

“You know I don’t,” he said, eyes flashing playfully.

“Have you been doing something behind my back?”

“I do a lot of things.”  He gave a careless shrug.  “I’m not sure it counts as behind your back when you won’t give me the time of day though.”

Not exactly something I wanted to dwell on.  “No, I mean something with Eve.”

“I’m pretty sure my involvement with our daughter ended when you picked someone else to play daddy dearest.”  His blue eyes simmered with something that might be anger, but it was difficult to tell from his casual delivery, as if everything was a big joke to him.

“It didn’t have to be that way.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you, but you chose otherwise.”

We were getting way off topic.  “Did you or did you not show Bunny how to heal someone today?”

That got his attention.  “No, that wouldn’t be on the top of my list of nifty tricks to show the kid.  Besides, I thought that was something you’d wait to teach her until she’s older.  Wasn’t that part of your carefully conceived plan?”

“That’s the way it was supposed to go, yes.  Unfortunately, someone else had other ideas.”  I summed up the incident at the preschool, gratified to see Adam lose some of his flippant manner. 

“And you thought it was me?”

“She said the
shiny man
told her how to do it.  You’re the only angel I can think of she might have come into contact with.  Sam’s still MIA.”

“Yeah, but she knows me.  She knows my name.  She would’ve said Uncle Adam showed me this kickass new party trick, not some random shiny guy.” 

“She’s young, Adam.”  As much as I hated to say it, I wasn’t sure how much Eve remembered
Uncle Adam
at all.  “A girl her age… her memory’s pretty hit and miss.”

“Especially when I’m not around.”  Adam sobered, hands landing on his hips as he looked up at the evening sky. 

“Do you want to come in for a cup of coffee?” I asked softly.  Parker wouldn’t like it, but I knew he wouldn’t stop Adam from seeing his daughter either. 

“Sure, might as well.  Seeing as how I came all this way anyway.” 

“Came all what way?  Where
are
you living these days?”

The moment we stepped into the kitchen, Eve bounded up, her expressive little face lit with excitement the instant she saw him.  “Unca Adam, Unca Adam!  Up, up, up!”  She danced for attention, arms reaching for him, chubby hands opening and closing. 

“Hey, squirt!  How you been?”  Adam’s face split into a wide grin at the welcome, lifting her up for a bear hug.  “Christ, what’s Mommy been feeding you?  Elephant steaks?”  At her resulting giggles, he tried to guess what other outlandish things she’d been eating lately, poking the swell of her belly until she giggled so much I thought she might lose her breath.  But Adam switched to a new game, flying her around the kitchen like an airplane.   

It brought a lump to my throat to see them together like that.  Not for the first time, I caught myself wondering if I’d made the right decision.  Not that I didn’t love my life with Parker – he was a wonderful father and he treated Evie like she was his own flesh and blood.  But didn’t she deserve to know Adam better? 

“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” I found myself saying.

The invitation clearly surprised him, and Eve took up the call.  “Stay for dinner!” she all but yelled. 

Adam gave me a crooked smile as he squeezed her hand.  “Kid’s got good taste, what can I say?”

“Say yes.”

He stared back at me across the breakfast bar, his face suddenly serious.  “Yes.”

I didn’t get a chance to find out exactly what he was saying yes to, as Parker chose that moment to enter the kitchen. 

“Daddy!  Unca Adam’s stay for dinner!”

Two things happened when she ran for Parker’s arms.  Adam stiffened perceptibly when Eve called Parker
Daddy
, and Parker held Evie close, almost protectively, coming to wrap his free arm around my waist. 

“Hello, Adam.  Long time no see,” Parker nodded to him, holding tight to his family.  “So, you’re staying for dinner, I take it?”  His voice was mild, but I could tell he wasn’t happy about it. 

“Actually no, I’ll have to take a raincheck on that,” Adam replied, surprising the hell out of me.  Hadn’t he just said yes, a moment ago? 

“Stay for dinner!”  Eve bounced in Parker’s arms.

“Next time, kiddo.  You and me will go halves on a pie.  Pepperoni and gummy bears.”

“You don’t have to take off,” I offered, but I stayed where I was, in Parker’s arms. 

“I’ll be around,” he winked, slipping out the back door. 

We stood there in a rare moment of silence, arms wrapped around each other until I shook myself out of it.  “Who’s hungry?  How’s about some spaghetti and meatbulbs?”

We broke up then, Parker being dragged off to the living room to play babies with Eve and a Tupperware container of tiny, plastic Disney princesses, while I got started on dinner.  I went through the motions, pretty much cooking on autopilot while I turned over the events of the day in my head, trying to guess what it meant for us that Eve had another angelic visitor we knew nothing about.  

By the time I had dinner on the table, minus the garlic bread which I burned beyond recognition (some things resist being cooked on autopilot, go figure), the evening news was on.  Usually Eve ignored the boring news, but this night she bounced in her chair, pointing at the screen.

“That’s Miss Shari on TV!”

Miss Shari was a pretty girl in her early twenties, with wavy, shoulder length, walnut-brown hair and dark eyes.  She was being interviewed in front of the Helping Hands building earlier in the day, her expression one of wonder and joy.  The caption across the bottom of the screen read
Local Miracle or Myth?

“We’re here with Shari Lansing, one of the staff here at Helping Hands Preschool, where a report of a modern day miracle has been made.  Miss Lansing, you actually saw this happen with your own eyes?”

“Hand to God,” Shari swore, one hand resting over her heart, the other held up in the air.  “It was a real miracle.  One minute that girl had a jagged cut down the side of her leg from the bolt, and then I saw it close up like… like magic.” 

“And you say another student at the school made it happen?  What can you tell me about this child?”

“Well, she’s the sweetest little girl.  She has this light inside of her… I never really thought about it before, but that’s what it is, a light.  And when she put her hands over the wound, I
saw
the light.  I saw it, warm and healing, and she made it disappear.  No pain, no cut, no bruises, she made it all better.” 

“What’s her name?” 

“Oh… I don’t…”  Miss Shari seemed to realize all at once that maybe she’d said too much.  Or maybe it was because Ms. Hinshaw chose that moment to emerge from the building. 

“I’m sorry, we can’t release any information on our students.”  As she spoke, Ms. Hinshaw turned Miss Shari around by the shoulders and gave her a tiny shove toward the school. 

“Surely the world deserves to know more about this miracle worker,” the reporter countered.

“That’s out of my hands.  All I can tell you is the child is no longer enrolled here.  And I value the work that you do, your thirst for knowledge, but I can’t comment any further.” 

“That’s all we have on details for the moment.  We’ve received three other solid corroborations of the event, but no one wanted to appear on the record, including the family of the girl who was allegedly healed today.  Did a modern miracle happen at this Seattle school?  I’ll leave you with the following quote: Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.  Saint Augustine.”

Eve had already lost interest by the time her teacher disappeared from the screen, entirely focused on trying to spear a meatball with the end of her fork.  Parker and I absorbed the whole of it, wondering in silence what, if anything, this meant for us.  He clicked off the sound as the next news story came on, and we braced Eve for more details. 

“Did Miss Shari see you help April today?” I asked. 

“Uh huh.”

“Who else was there?”  She rattled off a few names, no one I recognized, but I took them to be other kids at the school.  “When April fell, was the shiny man already there, or did he get there after it happened?”

“He was already there.  We were playing tic tac toe.”

It was really starting to creep me out, the idea that my daughter had this unknown celestial visitor.  Especially since I knew angels weren’t always who I counted as the ‘good guys’.

The same thought must have occurred to Parker, as he took up the line of questioning.  “Can you tell me about the shiny man, sweetheart?  Have you seen him before today?”

“Oh sure, lots of times.”

Yep, definitely creeped out.
  “What does he look like?” I asked.

“Like you.”

“Like me?  With dark hair?”

“Nope, it’s yellow.”

“Blonde?”

She nodded.  “Pretty blue eyes and he shines like you, Momma.” 

“I shine?”

“Uh huh, like Unca Adam.”

“Can you see colors around Daddy?  What color is he?”

“Orange.”  She fixed me with a look like I should know better than to ask her such an easy one.  We’d never had a chat before about auras, human or otherwise, but apparently she could see them, the same as I could.  I guess it made sense, she was part angel, after all.  If she had the Grace, she probably had some of the other perks.  She’d never been sick a day in her life and I’d kept her away from doctors in general.  We hadn’t experimented much with her body’s ability to heal itself, I tended to heal anything on sight to save her the pain. 

That was all we could get out of her on the shiny man though.  Apart from learning he was “big” and “pretty”, there were few specifics she could give us.  I’d seen any number of blonde angels in my experience, but none of them had shown much interest in Eve.  Apart from one – but I didn’t dare voice his name aloud.  Both because I didn’t want to attract his attention, and because I didn’t want to freak Parker out any more than he already was. 

Evie chattered about Adam all through dinner, and Parker hardly touched his plate, turning the news back up as soon as we stopped grilling Eve for answers.  Finally, he pushed himself away from the table, declaring the need to get back to the club.

“What about dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Parker, you need to eat.”

“I’ll grab something later then.”

“Hey…” I caught onto his hand in the kitchen.  “I’m sorry if today got kind of weird, but I love you.”

“I love you too, angel.”  He kissed my hair, pulling me in close for a hug.  “I’ll see you later tonight.  Are you still waiting up for me?”

“Definitely,” I smiled as he went out the back door. 

I came back into the dining room in time to see Evie feeding Nelo from her dinner plate.  It was a sight I’d gotten used to over the years.  Eve’s appetite had never been big, but she continued to grow like a weed, so I tried not to worry much about it.  Besides, Nelo made out like a bandit.  He’d even developed a taste for baby food. 

“Nelo, if you’re hungry you can have the rest of Parker’s plate, but Bunny needs her own meatballs to grow up big and strong,” I chided him lightly.  Nelo edged away from the table, looking guilty as hell and I realized he’d already filched the meat off of that plate too.  “Really?” I raised a single brow.

“I’m sorry, Mistress.  I was hungry.”

“I can feed you after Bunny goes to bed, there’s no need to fill up on people food if you’re feeling peckish.”  I gave him a pointed look and he perked right up at the offer of Grace. 

“Thank you, Mistress.”

“Okay, you guys get a half hour of TV while I clean up in the kitchen and then it’s bath time.”  They settled in the living room with
Spongebob Squarepants
, Nelo’s favorite. 

I took comfort in the routine chores, putting away the leftovers, loading up the dishwasher – making everything neat and tidy.  It was the only order I could impose over my life, and I ordered the crap out of it.  Bath time came with plenty of splashes and suds, and Alice made it to the Mad Hatter’s tea party before Eve’s eyelids started to droop. 

With Evie tucked into bed and Nelo down watching DVD’s in the basement, I made myself a cup of decaf.  Intending to finish up my final paper of the semester before I headed upstairs for that nap, I enjoyed quiet solitude for the first time that day. 

Until Adam’s voice made me jump, spilling hot coffee down the front of my top.  “I don’t suppose you noticed, but there’s a guy out there making some kind of art out of your garbage.”

Chapter Four

I pulled the burning fabric away from my chest with a hiss, but not before it stung my skin. 

“Ooh, sorry about that.  Need a hand?”  He waggled his fingers. 

“No thanks, I’ll manage.”  It wasn’t much of a burn anyway, the pain had already started to fade.  “What were you yammering about, something with garbage?”

“There’s a guy out there.  At first I thought he was just a bum digging through your garbage cans, but he’s building something out of the junk he finds.”

My gaze flew to the window, but I couldn’t see anything through the sheers.  “Building something like what?” 

“I don’t know, it could be a rocket ship to take him back to his home planet, for all I know.  I’m not a connoisseur of crap.” 

“Okay…”  I slipped on my shoes, intent on getting some answers for myself. 

“Hey, you’re not going out there, are you?”

“Are you kidding me?  You’re not going to give
me
the helpless female lecture, are you?”  If he was, he had another thing coming to him.