Gabriel's Angel

by Roberts, Nora

  The tulips were beginning to bloom, and the azaleas were already ripe with blossoms. Someone else had planted them, but Laura had no trouble taking them to heart as her own. They flowered afresh every year. Nor did she feel awkward adding her own touches with moss roses and snapdragons.

  Already she was planning to plant new bulbs in the fall, daylilies, windflowers, poppies. Then, over the winter, she would root her own spring flowers from seed, starting them in little peat pots that she would set in the sun room on the east side of the house.

  “I’ll teach you how to plant them next year,” she told Michael. She could already imagine him toddling around the garden on short, sturdy legs, patting at the dirt, trying to snatch butterflies off blossoms.

  He would laugh. There would be so much for him to laugh about. She would be able to catch him up in her arms and swing him around so that his eyes, which were still as stubbornly blue as hers, glowed and his laughter bounced on the air. Then Gabe would stick his head out of his studio window and demand to know what all the ruckus was about.

  But he wouldn’t really be annoyed. He’d come down, saying that if there was going to be so much noise he might as well forget about working for the morning. He’d sit on the ground with Michael in his lap and they’d laugh together about nothing anyone else would understand.

  Sitting back on her heels, Laura wiped her brow with the back of a gloved hand. Dreaming had always been her escape, her defense, her survival. Now it didn’t seem like any of those things, because she was beginning to believe dreams could come true.

  “I love your daddy,” she told Michael, as she told him at least once every day. “I love him so much that it makes me believe in happy endings.”

  When the shadow fell over her, Laura glanced up and saw the first dark clouds roll over the sun. She was tempted to ignore them, and she might have if she hadn’t known it took more than a quick minute to gather up all her gardening tools, Michael’s supplies and the baby himself.

  “Well, the rain’s good for the flowers, isn’t it, sweetie?” She stored the tools and bags of peat moss and fertilizers in the small shed near the back door, then drew Michael out of the swing. With the acquired coordination of motherhood, she carried the baby, his little cache of toys and the folded swing indoors.

  She’d barely started upstairs when the first crack of thunder had both her and Michael jumping. As he began to wail, she fought back her own longstanding fear of storms and soothed him.

  He calmed down much more quickly than she as she walked and rocked and murmured reassurances. Though the rain held off, she could watch the fury raging in the sky through Michael’s windows. Lightning slashed, turning the light from gray to mauve, then back to gray, in the blink of an eye.

  Eventually he began to doze, but she continued to hold him, as much for her own comfort as his.

  “Silly, isn’t it?” she murmured. “A grown woman more afraid of thunder than a tiny baby.” As the rain began to lash at the house, she made herself set the sleeping child in his crib so that she could close the windows.

  At least that would keep her busy, Laura told herself as she moved from room to room to shut the windows against the pelting rain. Still, each time thunder boomed she jerked back. It wasn’t until she started back into the nursery, telling herself she’d curl up on the daybed and read until the storm passed, that she remembered Gabe’s studio. Thinking only of his work, she rushed down the hall.

  She was grateful that the storm hadn’t knocked out the power. The lights flared on at a touch. It seemed that her luck had held. The floor was wet by the ribbon of windows, but none of his paintings were stored there. Laura hurried down the line, shutting each one until the rain was muffled by the glass.

  She started to do the practical thing and go for a mop, but then it struck her that this was the first time she had been in Gabe’s studio alone. He’d never asked her not to go in, but the lack of privacy she’d lived with most of her life had made her fastidious about respecting that of others. Now, though, with the lights bright overhead and the thunder rolling in the distance, she felt comfortable there, as she did in the nursery. As she had in the cabin in the mountains.

  The room smelled of him, she realized. It held that mixture of paint and turpentine, with the powdery addition of chalk, that often clung to his clothes and his hands. It was a scent that invariably put her at ease, even though it was also a scent that invariably aroused her. Like the man, she thought, the scent drew her emotions. She could love him and be comforted by him, just as she could be excited and confused by him.

  What did he want from her? she wondered. And why? She thought she understood part of it. He wanted the solidity of family, an end to his own loneliness and passion in bed. He’d chosen her for those things because she’d been as anxious to give them as he was to take them.

  It could be enough, or nearly enough. Her problem was, and continued to be, a quiet longing for more.

  Shaking off the mood, she tried to picture him there in that room, alone, working, envisioning.

  So much had been done here, she thought, so many hours creating, perfecting, experimenting. What made one man different from another in the way he saw and expressed what he saw? Crossing to his easel, she studied his work in progress.

  A painting of Michael. The deep and simple pleasure of it had her hugging herself. There was a rough sketch tacked to the easel, and the portrait on canvas was just beginning to take shape. She could see that even since the sketch, which he’d drawn perhaps a week before, Michael had changed and grown. But because of this she would always be able to look back and see him exactly as he’d been in that one precious moment of time.

  With her arms still crossed over her breasts, she turned to study the room. It was different without Gabe in it. Less … dramatic, she thought. Then she laughed a little, knowing he would hate that description.

  Without him it was a wide, airy room, largely empty. On the floor were dried drops and smears of paint that could have been there for a week or a year. A small pedestal sink was built into one corner. She saw a towel tossed carelessly over its lip. There were shelves and a worktable with equipment scattered on them. Paints and bottles, jars crammed with brushes, pallet knives, hunks of charcoal and balled-up rags. Unframed canvases were stacked against the walls, much as they had been in Colorado. He hadn’t hung anything here.

  She wondered why she hadn’t thought before to ask Gabe if he had anything she might hang in Michael’s room. The posters she’d chosen were colorful, but one of Gabe’s paintings would mean more. With that in mind, she knelt down and began to go through canvases.

  How easily he drew out emotion. One of his pastel landscapes would make you dreamy. Next an edgy, too-realistic view of a slum would make you shudder. There were portraits, too—an impossibly old man leaning on a cane at a bus stop, three young girls giggling outside a boutique. There was a spectacular nude study of a brunette sprawled on white satin. Instead of jealousy, it raised a feeling of awe in Laura.

  She went through more than a dozen, wondering why he’d stacked them so carelessly. Many were unframed, and all were facing the wall. Each one she held left her more astonished that she could be married to a man who could do so much with color and brush. More, each painting gave her a closer look at who he was. She could sense the mood that had held him as he’d worked. Rage for this, humor for that. Sorrow, impatience, desire, delight. Whatever he could feel, he could paint.

  These didn’t belong here, she thought, frustrated that he would close them up in a room where no one could see them or appreciate them or be touched by them. His signature was dashed in each corner, with the year just below. Everything she found had been painted no more than two years before, and no less than one year.

  She turned the last canvas over and was caught immediately. It was another portrait, and this one had been painted with love.

  The subject, a young man of no more than thirty, was grinning, a bit recklessly, as though he had
all the time in the world to accomplish what he wanted to do. His hair was blond, a few shades lighter than Gabe’s, and brushed back from a lean, good-looking face. It was a casual study, full-length, with the subject sprawled in a chair, legs spread out and crossed at the ankle. But, despite the relaxing pose, there was a sense of movement and energy.

  She recognized the chair. It sat in the parlor of the Bradley mansion on Nob Hill. And she recognized the subject by the shape of the face, which was so much like her husband’s. This was Gabe’s brother. This was Michael.

  For a long time she sat there, holding the painting in her lap, no longer hearing the storm. The lights flickered once, but she didn’t notice.

  It was possible, she discovered, to grieve for someone you hadn’t even known, to feel the loss and the regret. That Gabe had loved his brother deeply was obvious in each brush stroke. Not only loved, she thought, but respected. Now more than ever she wished he trusted her enough to speak of this Michael, his life and his death. In the sketch of the baby Gabe had tacked on the easel she had seen this same kind of unconditional love.

  If he was using the baby to help him get over the loss of his brother, should she begrudge him that? It didn’t mean he loved their Michael any less. Still, it made her sad to think of it. Until he talked to her, opened up his emotions to her as he did in his work, she would never really be his wife and Michael would never really be his son.

  Gently she turned the canvas back to the wall and replaced the others.

  When the rain stopped, Laura decided to call Amanda and follow through with her decision to visit the gallery. If she wanted Gabe to take another step toward her, she would have to take another toward him. She’d avoided going to the gallery, not for all the reasons she had given, but because she hadn’t felt comfortable in her role as wife to the public person, the well-known artist. Insecurity, she knew, could only be overcome by taking a confident step forward, even if that step took all the courage you could muster.

  She’d grown, Laura told herself. In the past year she’d learned not just to be strong but to be as strong as she needed to be. She might not have reached the peak, but she was no longer scrambling for a foothold at the bottom of the hill.

  It was as easy as asking. After her thanks were brushed aside Laura hung up the phone and glanced at her watch. If Michael stuck to his usual schedule, he would wake within the hour and demand to be fed. She could take him to Amanda—the first big step—then drive to the gallery. She glanced down at the dirt-stained knees of her jeans. First she had to change.

  The doorbell caught her halfway up the stairs. Feeling too optimistic to be annoyed by the interruption, she went to answer it.

  And the world crashed silently at her feet.

  “Laura.” Lorraine Eagleton gave a brisk nod, then strode into the hall. She stood and glanced idly around as she drew off her gloves. “My, my, you’ve certainly landed on your feet, haven’t you?” She tucked her gloves tidily in a buff-colored alligator bag. “Where is the child?”

  She couldn’t speak. Both words and air were trapped in her lungs, crowding there so that her chest ached. Her hand, still gripping the doorknob, was ice-cold, though the panicked rhythm of her heart vibrated in each fingertip. She had a sudden, horrible flash of the last time she had seen this woman face-to-face. As if they had just been spoken, she remembered the threats, the demand and the humiliation. She found her voice.

  “Michael’s asleep.”

  “Just as well. We have business to discuss.”

  The rain had cooled the air and left its taste in it. Watery sunlight crept through the door, which Laura still hadn’t closed. Birds were beginning to chirp optimistically again. Normal things. Such normal things. Life, she reminded herself, didn’t bother to stop for personal crises.

  Though she couldn’t make her fingers relax on the doorknob, she did keep her eyes and her voice level. “You’re in my home now, Mrs. Eagleton.”

  “Women like you always manage to find rich, gullible husbands.” She arched a brow, pleased that Laura was still standing by the door, tense and pale. “That doesn’t change who you are, what you are. Nor will your being clever enough to get Gabriel Bradley to marry you stop me from taking what’s mine.”

  “I have nothing that belongs to you. I’d like you to leave.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Lorraine said, smiling. She was a tall, striking woman with dark, sculpted hair and an unlined face. “Believe me, I have neither the desire nor the intention to stay long. I intend to have the child.”

  Laura had a vision of herself standing in the mist, holding an empty blanket. “No.”

  Lorraine brushed the refusal aside as she might have brushed a speck of lint from her lapel. “I’ll simply get a court order.”

  The cold fear was replaced by heat, and she managed to move then, though it was only to stiffen. “Then do it. Until you do, leave us alone.”

  Still the same, Lorraine thought as she watched Laura’s face. She spit a bit now when she was backed into a corner, but she was still easily maneuvered. It infuriated her now, as it always had, that her son had settled for so little when he could have had so much. Even in fury she never raised her voice. Lorraine had always considered derision a better weapon than volume.

  “You should have taken the offer my husband and I made to you. It was generous, and it won’t be made again.”

  “You can’t buy my baby, any more than you can buy back Tony.”

  Pain flashed across Lorraine’s face, pain that was real enough, sharp enough, to make Laura form words of sympathy. They could talk, had to be able to talk now, as one mother to another. “Mrs. Eagleton—”

  “I won’t speak of my son with you,” Lorraine said, and the pain vanished into bitterness. “If you had been what he needed, he’d still be alive. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

  There had been a time when she would have crumbled at those words, ready to take the blame. But Lorraine had been wrong. Laura was no longer the same. “Do you want to take my baby to punish me or to bind your wounds? Either reason is wrong. You have to know that.”

  “I know I can and will prove that you’re unfit to care for the child. I’ll produce documentation that you made yourself available to other men before and after your marriage to my son.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  Lorraine continued as if Laura hadn’t spoken. “Added to that will be the record of your unstable family background. If the child proves to be Tony’s, there’ll be a custody hearing, and the outcome is without question.”

  “You won’t take Michael, not with money, not with lies.” Her voice rose, and she fought to bring it back down. Losing her temper would get her nowhere. Laura knew all too well how easily Lorraine could bat aside emotion with one cold, withering look. She believed, she had to believe, there was still a way of reasoning with her. “If you ever loved Tony, then you’ll know just how far I’ll go to keep my son.”

  “And you should know just how far I’ll go to see to it that you have no part in raising an Eagleton.”

  “That’s all he is to you, a name, just a symbol of immortality.” Despite her efforts, her voice was growing desperate and her knees were beginning to shake. “He’s just a baby. You don’t love him.”

  “Feelings have nothing to do with it. I’m staying at the Fairmont. You have two days to decide whether or not you want a public scandal.” Lorraine drew out her gloves again. The terror on Laura’s face assured her that there was no risk of that. “I’m sure the Bradleys would be displeased, at the least, to learn of your past indiscretions. Therefore, I have no doubt you’ll be sensible, Laura, and not risk what you’ve so conveniently acquired.” She walked out the door and down the steps to where a gray limo waited.

  Without waiting for it to drive away, Laura slammed the door and bolted it. She was panting as though she’d been running. And it was running that occurred to her first. Dashing up the stairs, she raced into the nursery and began to tos
s Michael’s things into his carryall.

  They’d travel light. She’d only pack what was absolutely necessary. Before sundown they could be miles away. Headed north, she thought quickly. Maybe into Canada. There was still enough money left to help them get away, to buy them enough time to disappear. A rattle slipped out of her hand and landed with a clatter. Giving in to despair, she sunk onto the daybed and buried her face in her hands.

  They couldn’t run. Even if they had enough funds to keep them for a lifetime, they couldn’t run. It was wrong, wrong for Michael, for Gabe, even for herself. They had a life here, the kind she’d always wanted, the kind she needed to give her son.

  But what could she do to protect it?

  Take a stand. Ride out the attack. Not cave in. But caving in was what she’d always done best. Lifting her head, she waited until her breathing had calmed. That was the old Laura’s thinking, and that was exactly what Lorraine was counting on. The Eagletons knew how easily manipulated she had been. They expected her to run, and they would use that impulsive, erratic behavior to take her baby. They thought that if she was too tired to run she would sacrifice her child to protect her position with the Bradleys.

  But they didn’t know her. They had never taken the time or effort to really know her. She wouldn’t cave in. She wouldn’t run with her son. She was damn well going to fight for him.

  The anger came then, and it felt wonderful. Anger was a hot, animate emotion, so unlike the icy numbness of fear. She’d stay angry, as Amanda had advised, because angry she would not only fight but fight rough and dirty. The Eagletons were in for a surprise.

  By the time she reached the gallery she was in control again. Michael was safe with Amanda, and Laura was taking the first step of the route she’d already mapped out to see that he stayed safe.