Bereavements (40 page)

Woman and boy, heart to heart, arms locking each to each, looked down at a blackened head, a scroll of liquid hair gluing a golden mask to a face empty of eyes.

They stumbled out, arms still locked, one creature with four legs, so ungainly they finally fell on the steps and had to separate.

“Wait!” Angel cried, and ran back into the tomb.

Freed from her spell, relieved so in mind and heart that her state was euphoric, Mrs. Evans disregarded the moment’s delay, and before she could even begin to wonder why he had gone back, he’d rejoined her.

What reason to hurry? Why haste? No reason at all except joy. Hand in hand, laughing and awkward, constantly falling into snowdrifts they could barely see because the moon was gone from the sky, they ran up hills, down valleys, toward the house in the distance, every window of it ablaze with light, the front door opened, flooding the giant pillared porch.

And to the left, below the house, they saw a small dancing light: Dori no doubt, returned from his errand, anxious, fearful, distressed to the core of him, out searching for them both.

They had to stop because her breath was too short, and in the brief delay, they looked at the sky, a streak of violet dawn having cut a knife-blade’s thickness of brilliance in the blackness to the east.

“It’s morning,” Mrs. Evans breathed; “a new day.”

“It’s
New
Year’s Day!” Angel laughed, for a rose is a rose after all.

How sentimental can one be?

It was ridiculous, embarrassing, to have the urge and the vulgar need to say it, but she did: “A new day; a new year. Angel . . . a new life.”

And they were off again, running and laughing.

A minute later, she stumbled and fell.

As Angel’s hand helped her up, she felt the hard, cold touch of his ring. The one from the crackerjacks box?—with its ruby eye of cheap red glass?

No
way.

This one was still sticky with honey. The astonishing boy must have had the desire, the impudence, the nerve, to snatch Jamie’s ring from the floor of the tomb—because, feeling it, she read unmistakably, as she’d done once before—the blind reading braille:

This book was set by Comp/Set photocomposition in Garamond type face by Foto-Ready Production. It was designed and produced under the supervision of The Town House Press in coordination with the author, and manufactured by Hamilton Printing Company.