Summer Of My Secret Angel (40 page)

But as so many things in life, I got used to
it over the months.

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 to be like a second
mother. At times, I found it hard to return her love with the
sadness eating away at me, 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 mom. Do you want me to bring
something 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 patio. “But you may want
to bring your mother this.”

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

The trip down to the cemetery only took me
five minutes, and I could have walked it blindfolded by now. I knew
the exact step count and also every patch of 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 steps. One of the tiny
sharp stones slid through the straps of my left sandal 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 in the copper vessel with the bunch of white
roses. Then I traced the inscription on the marble underneath her
name with my finger.

May your angels take care of you,
always.

I never understood 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 mom, but for an unknown 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, Mom, I’m not going mental, am I?”
I
mean other than talking to stone 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,
Mom?”

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

But I knew 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 had shaken 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 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 as the rays of
the setting sun touched the side of my face. If only I could plug
my mind into 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 again be chasing the smiling man all night 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 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
.

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

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

He lifted his chin from his arm and shook
his head slowly. “Not quite. But 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. But I should have heeded his
warning. One heartbeat later, the figure tinted in a misty white
light 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.

1. RETURN OF THE ANGEL
   

AS THE SUN rose above the trees, warm rays
danced on the cream-colored 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.

Holy crap, what had Marie put in the meal
yesterday? Magic Mushrooms? I rubbed the bridge of my nose,
squeezing my eyes shut. If the hallucinations got any stranger, I
might have to 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
into a tight knot. The sensation spread fast through my body up to
my head.

Revitalizes the dragon. Can jump 15 feet
high. Resurrected duck today.
Reading each line 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
. It was him who had come out
of Abe’s office the day of my hearing and freed me from the steel
cuffs. The memory of how he’d sat in my room in the orphanage when
it was time to leave for 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 as clear as one of Marie’s
freshly polished crystal glasses.

Breathing fast, my eyes skimmed over the
lines in the list again and again. Each time a new wave of memories
washed over my mind. Eventually, I was filled with three weeks of
memories that must have been the best time of 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 out all my
memories of him. Every single one. He’d left me hollow and
unknowing. Empty.

“What have you done to me?” My lips
trembled. The past eight months I had gone through a depression
that had consumed me, causing me to doubt my sanity. But it must
have been him who had played the piano for me at night. And of
course he would have placed the dress on the door of the wardrobe.
Had it not been a present from him the day that he’d first kissed
me out 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 had been scribbled onto the
list of Julian’s extraordinary behavior, but in a different
handwriting than mine.

Loves you more than he can possibly
understand.

My heart exploded. An unstrained smile
stretched my lips. He’d never really left me, and with the subtle
actions that only I would notice, he’d made sure that a small part
of me remembered him. Even if it was only the shadow of a face in
my dreams.

Flipping the comforter to the side, I jumped
out of bed, slipped into my jeans, and tugged on a t-shirt.
Barefoot, I strode out the door, crossed to his room, and stopped
in the threshold with his name on my lips. But he wasn’t there; the
room was empty.

My heart sank.

Reluctant steps carried me further into the
room. My gaze wandered over the furniture that no one had used for
so long. But Julian had stayed here for many weeks. His aura had
left its imprint—it closed in, enveloping me.

In front of his bed, I stopped as I glimpsed
something that had long been wiped from my mind. A gray hoodie lay
sprawled on the blanket.
He gave this back to me, too?
And I
had never even noticed he’d taken it from me along with all the
precious memories of him.

Sinking onto the mattress, I pulled the
sweater into my lap. Uncertain what rush of emotions and longing
the scent would evoke, I hesitated to bring it to my face and
sniff. But the joy filling me as the fog lifted from my mind was
too great. I buried my face in the hoodie.

Ocean. Sun. Warm, wild wind. Happy day. A
kiss.
I drowned in the wonderful flood of remembrance. In his
arms, the world had stopped turning. He’d taken me to a place
between times. To live in a special moment.

“I miss you so much.” The words hurt in my
tight throat. And now it was all clear why I had never seemed to
recover from the loss of my mother. Because the day that she died,
I had also lost the love of my life.

It was hard not to break out into tears, but
by pressing my lips together I managed to stay strong. I slipped my
arms into the sleeves of the hoodie, which was a few sizes too big
for me, and brought the cuffs to my nose to draw in another deep
breath of him.

I would have given everything to hold him
again, just once more. Julian was the best thing that had ever
happened to me.

“I love you,” I croaked into the fabric.
“I’ve always loved you. From the moment you broke through my
protection and walked straight into my heart.”

“It’s about time you realized that.”

A breath caught in my throat. I snapped my
head toward the French door where the chuckle had come from. Julian
sat on the railing of the balcony, his feet dangling. It was a good
thing I was already sitting, or I would have collapsed on the
spot.