The Snow Angel (7 page)

That had the desired effect. Lily already loved Max almost as much as I did, and I knew that she would do anything to preserve our afternoons in his tranquil shop. “No,” she said. And then she pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key. It was a reluctant pantomime, but I breathed a sigh of relief all the same. A moment later I heard the sound of the vacuum roaring to life.

After transferring the garlic chicken from the Crock-Pot to a roasting pan, I took a pot of potatoes I had peeled and
quartered that morning from the refrigerator and set it to boil on the stove. The table was already set, and I stood in the middle of the kitchen, turning a slow circle and trying to see everything as Cyrus would see it. Did anything look amiss? Was it obvious that I was letting my home life slide?

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I nearly jumped out of my skin at the staccato of cheerful raps on my front door. Someone was knocking, and it was so unexpected I didn’t know what to do for a moment. The Price family didn’t get visitors, at least, not unannounced visitors. I swallowed nervously. Had someone seen me sneaking in the back door of Max’s shop? Had they come to confront me?

Straightening my apron, I hurried into the entryway of our elegant home. There were no windows in the solid oak door, so I wasn’t afforded a sneak peek at my guest. I took a deep breath and fixed a smile on my face. In the moment before I grabbed the handle I caught a glimpse of a telltale silver thread that wound its way around my arm. I plucked it off and let it drift between the leaves of a potted plant in the corner.

My knees were almost shaking by the time I finally opened the door, but the person standing on my front step regarded me with concern, not accusation.

“Sarah,” I said, trying to hide my confusion. “What are you doing here?”

The pretty woman before me reached out and put a
hand on my arm. “We missed you at Bible study today,” she said.

Sarah Kempers was short and spirited, with a thousand-watt smile that she wasn’t afraid to offer lavishly. Some would call her plump, but I thought she was faultlessly proportioned and disarmingly cute—it was next to impossible to be defensive in her presence. It didn’t hurt that she was the pastor’s wife. The friendly couple practically oozed benevolence.

“Oh,” I said distractedly, trying to come up with an excuse that wasn’t a blatant lie. “I guess I forgot.”

“I called a few times today, but no one answered. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

“I was … out,” I fumbled. “Bible study must have slipped my mind.”

She bit her bottom lip for a moment. “It’s not like you to forget, Rachel. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Sarah seemed genuinely worried, and a faint smile tugged at my mouth in spite of the fear that had gripped me only moments before. “I’m fine,” I said. “It means a lot to me that you would stop by.”

“It’s no bother.” She grinned back. “I guess we’re just such a tight-knit group that it’s painfully obvious when one of us is missing. We missed you today.”

Although I was furious with myself for letting something as important as my weekly study slip, it was wonderful
to hear that they had missed me. “I’ll be there next week,” I assured her, and I promised myself that no matter what was happening at Max’s shop, I would sneak out for the next Bible study. I couldn’t afford to make such a huge blunder again.

“We’ll look forward to it,” Sarah said. Then, looking past me, her smile seemed to harden a bit. It was an almost imperceptible change, and I wondered if maybe the sun had slanted just so and altered the shadows on her face. But before I could contemplate it further, I heard footsteps on the tile of the entry hall. Lily loved Sarah and I knew she would want to say “hi” if she was done vacuuming.

“Lily, honey, are you done with—?” My breath caught in my throat as Cyrus slid an arm around my waist.

“Done with what?” Cyrus asked, looking down at me. He smelled faintly of exhaust and the overpowering floral air freshener that clung to everything in the dealership offices. In spite of a long day at work, his suit looked clean and starched, and his eyes were bright and curious. “What was Lily doing?”

“Her homework,” I said, thankful that the house was silent. She had stopped vacuuming. I just hoped that she had put the appliance away. Cyrus couldn’t stand it when things were left lying around the house. “When did you get home?” I asked, hoping that the question sounded light and cheerful. He seemed to be in an unusually good
mood, but I knew from personal experience how quickly that could change.

“Just a minute ago. I saw the Kemperses’ van parked on the street and thought I’d come say hello.”

“Hi, Cyrus,” Sarah said. Her voice was perfectly normal, and I decided I must have imagined the sudden steel of her smile.

“Hello, Sarah. What brings you to the Price home today?”

Please don’t tell him, I silently begged, terrified that she would explain that I had missed Bible study. I couldn’t think of a single plausible excuse, and besides, Cyrus always seemed to know when I was lying. If Sarah said that I was a no-show, it would come out—all of it—and he would force me to stop seeing Max. Though I had spent twelve years without him, now that he was a part of my life again I couldn’t imagine losing him. And Max was just a piece of the whole. The freedom, the acceptance that I had known in just one short week of working at Eden Custom Tailoring made me feel like a new person. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the way things had been.

Sarah’s eyes found mine and something unspoken passed between us. It startled me, the brief intensity of her stare, and I held my breath as she turned her attention to my husband.

“Actually, I’m just returning Rachel’s book,” Sarah said.

I glanced down and found that she was holding out a small, paperback study guide. I hadn’t even noticed that she had anything in her hands.

“She forgot it at Bible study this morning.”

“She’d forget her head if it wasn’t screwed on.” Cyrus laughed, taking the book from Sarah. “Thanks for bringing it by. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Sarah shrugged. “But, hey, I don’t want to interrupt family time. You guys have a great night.”

“Thanks, Sarah.” There was a bit of a wobble in my voice but I coughed to cover it up. “I mean, really. Thank you.”

Sarah turned around at the bottom of the steps and gave me a quick, searching look. Then she laughed her characteristic, sunny laugh and waved good-bye to the two of us standing side by side. We must have cut a strange silhouette hovering just inside the door. I wondered if she could tell how stiff I was, how aware of the heft of Cyrus’s body next to mine.

“I’m here for you, Rachel,” Sarah said.

Somehow, those five words brimmed with meaning.

October 8

C
yrus closed the front door with a soft click. “Looks like an interesting book,” he said, turning the study guide over in his hands. It was one I’d never seen before.

I made a vague, noncommittal noise and tried to calm my racing heart. Being with Cyrus when I couldn’t read his mood made me feel like I was surrounded by land mines, and I was so unsettled by my encounter with Sarah that I didn’t feel up to the intricate dance required to evade the many pitfalls and traps that marked life with my husband.
His face was a mask of nonchalance, but I didn’t know if his deliberate calm was a ruse, or if he truly didn’t suspect anything devious in Sarah’s appearance on our front step. I hoped more than anything that he wouldn’t quiz me about the content of the book. I had no idea what it was or why Sarah had brought it for me.

“Supper will be ready in a minute,” I said, trying to direct a smile his way. It came out brittle and uneven. But Cyrus wasn’t looking at me anyway; he was flipping through the pages of the book.

“‘There is no fear in love,’” Cyrus read, quoting from the back cover copy. “‘But perfect love casts out fear.’” He snorted. “What are you afraid of, Rachel?”

The question caught me so off-guard I almost answered him. You. But that wasn’t entirely true. I was afraid of many things, but nothing so much as the sickening thought that I was the person he said I was. Good-for-nothing. Un-loved. I could only imagine the things he would say if he knew that I had been lying to him for the span of an entire week. I stifled a shiver and Cyrus mistook it as evidence of my cowardice.

“Your book is wrong,” he said with a smirk. “Love doesn’t cast out fear. Power does.” Cyrus took a quick step toward me and I flinched. But my apprehension was un-warranted, because all he did was reach around me, his chest pressing against mine in a cheap imitation of the intimacy
we knew for such a brief time so many years ago. I held my breath as he yanked open the top drawer of the narrow desk in the hallway. Closed my eyes and willed my hands to stop shaking when I realized what he was doing.

Even though we lived in a small town where crime was virtually nonexistent, Cyrus insisted on keeping a gun in the hall drawer. Just in case, he said, but I had a hard time envisioning any scenario where that gun would be a welcome addition to our home. When Lily was little, he kept the drawer locked with a small silver key that he hid on top of the wide, wooden frame of the hall mirror. But when she turned ten, he showed her the drawer and the gun, and warned her to never, ever touch it unless there was grave danger. Lily was young, but the vein of iron in her daddy’s voice ensured that she gave the hall desk a wide berth whenever she had to walk through the entryway. It was a small consolation to me that my daughter seemed more afraid of Cyrus’s choice of protection than whatever it was he intended to protect her from.

Now, as my husband lifted the weapon out of the drawer, he did something he had never done before. He took me roughly by the wrist and slapped the gun in my palm. “This should cast out your fear,” he said.

The metal was icy cold and much heavier than I had
imagined it would be. Though the gun had collected dust in our entry for over a decade, I had never touched it or even opened the drawer where it lay in wait. “I don’t want this!” I gasped, trying to give it back to him.

But Cyrus took a step back, and if I hadn’t curled my fingers around the notched grip it would have fallen to the floor.

“What are you doing?” I met my husband’s eyes, trying to discern his motives, his strange reasoning for forcing his gun into my hands after all these years. I half expected this to be some sort of test, for Cyrus to be watching my reaction with cool calculation. Surely he knew that I had missed Bible study, and this elaborate masquerade was just a ruse to throw me off-guard. But Cyrus’s face wasn’t hard. I knew the set of his jaw when he was angry, the way his dark brows knit together in the moment before he exploded. This was different. The half-smile on his face bespoke amusement, not anger.

“I’m going away,” he said. “I thought you should know how to use that thing.”

“Away?” I parroted lamely.

“Used cars are hot right now,” Cyrus said with an easy shrug. “I bought a pair of quality trucks from some guy in California. Jason and I are going to fly into LA and hang out for a while, then drive home when we feel like it.”

“You usually hire men to drive for you,” I said. Then I shook my head, startled that I dared to question him. I decided I was in a sort of shock. I had expected my husband’s fury—not this.

Fortunately, my comment didn’t stoke Cyrus’s anger. “I feel like doing it myself this time,” he said. “I need a vacation.”

I gave a meek nod and tried to carefully hand back the gun. But instead of taking it from me, Cyrus merely turned it in my hand.

“The safety is here,” he said, flicking a tiny square catch with his fingernail. Then he put his thumb on the hammer and pretended to cock it. “Pull this back, and then all you have to do is point and shoot. An idiot could do it.”

Our eyes locked for a second, and I understood that the idiot was me. It was always me. “I don’t think I could use it,” I said, ducking my head so I didn’t have to watch his gaze harden and frost over.

“What if you need to? What if something happens while I’m gone?”

“You’ve been gone before,” I reminded him, studying my feet and saying each word with precise caution. Sometimes I believed that if I moved slowly and spoke softly, I would be able to avoid the tripwires that were scattered all over our seemingly harmless conversations. “I’ve never needed this.”

Cyrus took the gun from me with a derisive grunt. “You’ve never brought home a book about fear before.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but stopped myself before I ruined the tenuous calm. We hadn’t fought, not really, and I knew better than to push my luck. Instead, I watched out of the corner of my eye as Cyrus clicked the safety catch a second time and put the gun back in the table drawer. Then he tossed the book beside it and shut the two incongruous items away together. “Worthless waste of paper,” he mumbled as he walked away.

I watched his retreat from beneath lowered lashes, and when he disappeared up the stairs to change out of his suit, I whispered the words that I had almost let slip. “You wouldn’t understand.”

I hadn’t even seen the title of the book, but from the passage he had read I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Bible study Sarah had brought me wasn’t at all about fear.

It was a book about love.