Falling for Heaven (Four Winds) (10 page)

“Why did her destiny matter so much?”

“Why?  She birthed the Virgin Queen.  Queen Elizabeth the First, one of England’s most pivotal rulers.  Elizabeth set a precedent for rulers to come and eventually brought the country to the heights that they enjoy today.”

“So, God’s not Catholic?”  She joked.

“God’s not anything, Heather.  He’s God.  He’s everything.”  Uri said simply.

“Why are you here
now, then?”  How elaborate this delusion was!  Heather tried to think of ways to get him to a doctor, before she shook the thought out of her head. 
He's not my problem.  I have enough complications.

“You are my assignment this time.”

She scoffed at him again, then stopped herself when she saw the look on his face.  “Look, I’m not going to be inventing some life changing thing or develop some miracle process that will keep everyone from developing cancer.  I won’t have any ideas that will change the way the world thinks.  I’m a stripper.  Nothing there.”  She pointed to her head.  She could humor him for now, and then after tonight, she would limit contact.  He seemed nice and might make a good friend.  She would have to put romantic notions aside until he got treatment.

He sighed again.
  “That’s what I told Him, but He just told me to get to know you, and I would eventually see the destiny.  I must admit, you are an enigma to me.”

She was pretty sure that he didn’t realize what he’d just said, so she let it slide.  “You’ve spoken to God about me?”

“Yeah.  He usually tells me what the destiny is, but He didn’t with you.  I don’t get it.  I’m flying blind here.”

Heather made the decision to take Uri with a grain of salt.  So he seemed to be crazy.  Something in his voice spoke to her, though, told her he wasn’t going to harm her, might even be good for her, somehow.  But she couldn’t listen to this nonsense anymore.

“Uri, I like you.  You seem like a nice guy.  Really.”  She reached across the table and grabbed his hand.  He turned his palm upward and clutched hers back, sending a shock of electricity up her arm, which she tried to ignore.  “But I can’t talk about this with you.  I’m sorry.  It’s too…”  She squeezed his hand.  “Weird.  You know?”  Not letting him answer, she continued.  “It’s a little much for me to take.  I have enough craziness in my life without this.  Can we talk about something different?”

“I’m not delusional, Heather,” h
e said softly.

“Okay, I just can’t talk about this anymore right
now.”  She stood from the table and grabbing her wine glass and the half-full bottle, walked into the living room. Uri followed, bringing his glass.

“Tell me about you, Heather.  How was your visit with your sister?”

”You don’t know?  I thought you were omniscient,” she said, sarcastically.

“The Boss
is, I’m not.  I only know what He lets me know.”  He sounded hurt, and she looked at him closer.  His eyes did seem to hold a wisdom that contradicted the age of his body.

She sighed.  “It didn’t go well.  My sister’s an addict, and has been since…”  She paused, not sure how much she wanted to tell him.  “For more than half her life.  I take care of her, whether she wants me to or not.”  She played with the end of her hair, twisting it around a finger.  “She would be living on the streets if I didn’t go in and help her.  There’s no telling what would hap
pen to her, if I weren't here for her.”  Heather shuddered at the thought.               

She had caught Tiffany living on the streets once, the second time she’d lost an apartment.  Heather had been riding her bike to pick up s
omething from the grocery store and had seen her sister begging for money on a corner.  Fate must have intervened that day.  As large as this city was, it was pure chance that she had run across Tiffany before she managed to get into a car with a stranger for money. 

She had brought her home with her right then.  Not that it had worked out.  Eventually, they had come to the current arrangement, which worked out for Tiffany, though not so well for Heather.  It did keep her sister off the streets, though, which was her goal.

“What all do you do for her?”  Uri inquired, breaking her reverie.

Heather waved her hand, dismissively.  “Oh, I pay her rent, buy her food, try to get her to eat, bathe her, make sure she has clean clothes to wear.  Nothing much.”  She was trying not to be bitter and sarcastic, but it was hard to keep the emotions tamped down.

“Why?”

She looked at him, surprised.  “Because she’s my sister.  As many mistakes as she has made in her own life, I still love her.  I can’t seem to help myself.”  She looked down at her lap.  “I know I’m enabling her in her addiction, all the self-help groups say so, but I can’t let her live on the streets.  She would kill herself.”  She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to fight back the tears that had suddenly sprung to her eyes.  “I’m not going to lose her that way.”

Uri reached for her hand and held it reassuringly.  She felt comfort radiate from him, and she let him pull her closer, so that she was laying her head on his chest.  She could hear his heartbeat, and the serenity that emanated from him calmed her down.

“Do you have other family?”  He asked
, quietly.

“My mother has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.  She lives in a home near here.  I used to have her living with me, but it got to where I couldn’t take care of her.  She burned down the house.  She was lucky to get out alive.”

“I’m sorry, Heather.  I didn’t know.”  His hand stroked her back, like she was a child.  Heather admitted to herself it felt really good to be in somebody else’s arms, to have somebody else comfort her for a change.  She decided to go ahead and tell him everything.  Something about him made her feel at ease.  Besides, she must be drunk.  He'd just told her he was an archangel, and here she was spilling out her life story, something she'd never done with anybody else.

“We use
d to be such a happy family."  Her voice was quiet, as if talking too loudly would make all her demons appear here in her living room.  The tears that were threatening to spill had gone, but she felt the need to tell him everything.

“We went on family vacations.  We went to church.  We had dinner at the table at six o’clock every night, as a family.”  She took a fortifying breath.  “Then Dad and Bryan went on their annual hunting trip.  Man time, they called it.  Bryan had just turned sixteen.”  She still had her head on his chest, and was looking at his legs.  “Dad let Bryan
drive and nobody knows what happened after that.  But the accident killed Bryan instantly, and Dad died at the scene.”  She wiped her nose with her hand.  “That’s when Tiffany started smoking pot.  We had just turned thirteen.  Mom stopped cooking meals for us.  Not on purpose, I don’t think.  But she just went into a depression that spiraled out of control.  We started living on Ramen noodles and TV dinners.  Mom and Tiffany never fully recovered.  Tiff’s pot habit turned into more serious stuff, and the next thing I knew, she was in bad shape.  Mom never got out of the depression...then the Alzheimer’s hit.  It was slow, at first.  She would forget little stuff.  Stuff that I thought was the depression, like laundry or not going to the bank.  A whole bunch of checks would bounce because she forgot to deposit something.  Little stuff.”  Heather sat up, running her hands through her hair.  She couldn’t stop now.  She had to finish telling him.

“Then she started cooking more than one dinner.  As soon as we’d finished
eating, she would do the dishes and start cooking again.  She’d forget where we kept stuff, like the coffee.  By this time, Tiff and I had graduated high school but were still at home.  Tiff was scarce, her addiction having taken over her life.  I was taking classes at the community college where we lived.  I was going to start dancing at the club and live at home.  I took Mom to the doctor, thinking maybe she needed stronger anti-depressants or something.  That’s when she was diagnosed." 

She looked at Uri, tears brimming in her eyes.  He was staring at her, wide-eyed, a
sympathy in his face, a downward twist to his mouth.  "She was forty-eight years old, diagnosed with a disease that hits people twenty years older.  It was so unfair.  And it progressed rapidly.  Two years later, I had forgone college to stay at home with her.  I was still working at the club because Dad’s SSI checks didn’t last all month, and the life insurance money was gone.  She was waking up in the middle of the night and doing stuff around the house.  At first it was safe stuff, like watching TV in the nude, stuff like that.  One night, though, she decided to make a batch of fried cauliflower for some reason.  She burned down the house.  I had to put her in the home after that.”

She stopped talking, and Uri was silent, but his hand
was still stroking her hair.  The gesture was unbelievably comforting, and Heather found herself turning her face to his hand, so it cupped her cheek.  She looked into his eyes.  “I’m not sure why I told you all that.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a surprisingly intimate gesture, coming from him.  “You are the light of your family, Heather.”  His voice was soft, and Heather was struck again by the intimacy of it.

“Yeah, well.  Whatever.”  Her head dropped again to his chest, and he continued to stroke her hair.  His breathing was even, warm on the top of her head, and his heartbeat was strong in his chest, lulling her into a sense of peace.  Before she realized it, her eyelids were droopy, and her own breathing eased.

“Uri…”

“Yes, Heather?”  He murmured quietly, his breath warm against the top of her head.

“I’m tired.  Would you mind?”  She started to sit up.

“No, not at all.  I should go.”  He rose from the couch, and reached for her arm.  “Thank you for telling me that.  I know you probably don’t trust everyone with that information.”  Clasping her hand in his, he squeezed once before letting go.

“Well, aside from all that angel business, you seem pretty okay.  Compared to the rest of the people in my life, you seem normal.”  She giggled, a nervous sound coming from within her.

He laughed and pulled her into a hug.  Surprised, she froze an instant before relaxing into his powerful embrace.  The warmth that emanated from him seemed to intermingle with the heat in her belly and infused her with a satisfying comfort that she hadn’t known since her father was alive.

She in
haled deeply of his spicy scent and released him.  “Thank you, Uri.  For coming over and…listening to me.”

He looked at her steadily.  “And thank you, for feeding me.  I can’t remember when I’ve had a meal as good.  And thank you for listening to me.  Maybe someday, I can do something to make you have a little faith.”  Leaning forward, he brushed a kiss across her forehead, turned, and walked out her door.

Locking up behind him, Heather felt a strange sense of loss at his absence.  He was definitely a strange man, but something about him brought her comfort.  A comfort that she hadn’t realized she needed.

Heather had never told anybody the things that she'd told Uri tonight.  She'd never felt comfortable enough to let anyone into her life like that.  She'd never trusted anybody the way
she trusted Uri.  It was weird that he thought he was an archangel.  But there was something about him that made Heather feel comfortable in his presence. 

Chapter 11

              Uri sat in his sparse apartment surrounded by the items that he’d collected through the millennia.  He thought back to his various assignments.  He remembered each one, since Eden.  Once he and his brothers realized that times were changing, they needed to change along with them to fit in, so they each got some sort of storage system. 

For Uri, it was a box car.  He kept it loaded with clothing, books, and mementoes of certain assignments.  He kept the items until they were hopelessly out of date, no longer of use, or rotten.  It was a weakness he indulged in.

When he began a new assignment, the box car was shipped to him, and he unloaded it into new lodgings.  It usually worked out well for him and kept him from having to start over from scratch each assignment.

This assi
gnment was still a puzzle, though.  He could not figure out what this woman’s destiny was.  The fact that the Boss wouldn’t tell him, was an enigma in itself, although Uri knew from millennia of experience not to question the Boss.  He knew best in all situations, and it did no good to question.

Heather was special, though.  Uri could see that.  He just didn’t see any special talents, or ideas, or world-changing events in her future.  He didn’t see
anything
in her future, and that bothered him.  Not that that meant she didn’t have a future.  It just bothered him that he couldn’t see it.  He could usually see some sort of future for his targets.  That was the point of his job here.  To show the target their future, if they chose a certain path…

Heather’s admissions to him last night about her family had managed to stir something inside Uri that he hadn’t felt in thousands of years.  Empathy.

He used to empathize with the humans long ago.  But their sins became too numerous, too vicious, too immoral.  Humans had become corrupt, greedy, and weak in Uri’s eyes.  He continued to do the work he was created to do because he didn’t know anything else.  But while his motivations were ethereal, his targets' motivations were much less so.  It had been a long time since one of his assignments had fulfilled their destiny to please God, instead of going for the fame involved.  Uri longed for something more, but he had no idea what.