The Angel's Daughter

by Jody Sharpe

  The tires seem to glide like ice skates to a stop. We get out of the car and listen again. I brush the loose hair out of my face and feel the scar. For some reason I smile wanting it to turn into the dimple Sam didn’t like. The animal cries again and we head toward the sound. At the edge of the dense woods, my flashlight finds a small path soggy and wet with leaves and pine needles. I stop and listen but it’s as silent as the flashlight beams. The path curves and I follow it with Duke leading the way as if he’s walked it a thousand times. A loud whimper calls out from a cluster of twigs and logs.

  We move on a few feet and Duke stops abruptly. I turn the flashlight down and it lands on magnificent brown eyes. These are not the eyes of a dog or coyote but rather of a tiny fawn lying under a bush. I take off my sweatshirt. My heart is beating hard. I kneel down. “Sh….Shush.”

  Where’s the mother? I look around trying to see any movement in the dark. There’s nothing else in sight, no sounds, just the flashlight beam, stars and moon peeking through the trees. I pick the tiny fawn up and cradle it to my chest. The whimpering stops but the fawn appears weak and stunned. Overwhelmed, I cry and white tears fall glowing on the fur. Slowly standing up, we head back. Duke leads the way again back down the earthen path. It feels like walking in a dream.

  What will I do? I’ll find a preserve, isn’t there one…somewhere? I know we can’t let it to go back to the wild. We arrive at the car and I lay the precious cargo on the passenger seat. Duke jumps in the back poking his head between the seats; his very presence seems to comfort the fawn. He licks its face.

  As I turn the car around heading for home, as if on cue the icy orange and pink sherbet rainbow colors of dawn find their way up the horizon. Wiping tears away, feeling insurmountable joy, the drive home seems faster down Lonely Hill Road; past Miller’s Run, past the wintry brown meadows onto Sea Breeze Drive to our town by the ocean. I look over at the fawn. Her eyes are closed now, curled snug in my sweatshirt. Somehow, I know she is female. We travel on past the flower and Christmas tree farms that fill the outskirts of Mystic Bay. With morning’s new light and the gentle wind the flowers seem to bob their heads hello as we pass. The orange ball of the sun will be coming up fast in the sky now and I’m feeling blessed, my dimple reappears with a smile. In the distance above the sea, I see seagulls flying with us traveling where I wonder? How I wish I could fly home like my father would with graceful wings and a fawn in my arms.

  “We’ll name her Dawn in honor of the sunrise.” Duke starts panting and I see in the rear view mirror he winks at me. Yes, he winks. I swear that dog understands what I’m saying. “Dawn, the fawn. Dad and Aunt Helen will absolutely love it.”

  The twinkling street lights have dimmed as we turn down Main Street. We pass the red brick Next Door Cafe restaurant where early riser and owner, Laurjean Whitefeather, our police chief Donnie’s wife, waves to me while opening her door. Donnie is the best police chief ever since we haven’t had a crime since he took the job. Everyone says his father was a famous medicine man. He’s kind with dark Native American good looks and piercing eyes and a smile like a movie hero. They’re quite the combo like the Sunshine pancakes Laurjean is famous for. We pass the town’s stucco Band Stand, surrounded by a green lawn as plush as carpet.

  At dusk tonight many from town will gather there to sing the favorite carols from old. It sounds funny but this somewhat psychic town absolutely loves Christmas! We pass the old red brick Post Office with the bell tower that has chimed for over sixty years. We pass the prettiest stone church ever, the Garden Methodist Church, where Reverend Carlos Manuel is probably working on his Christmas sermon.

  The town’s wreaths on the lampposts shine in the morning light and sun streams in my car’s windows. We pass Town Hall with the statue of our long time mayor and hardware store owner, psychic Willie Walin. Down Main we come upon Walin’s Wizard Wrench, his hardware store. Willie is a palmist too, so I guess you could say he’s good with his hands. My high school friend, Andy Walin, Willie and Alma’s son, saunters towards the Next Door Cafe for his morning cup of Joe. He sees my car and smiles, his sandy hair tousled by the wind. He’s such a sweet guy. He gives his classic two-thumbs up sign to me.

  “I’m gonna marry you someday, Hannah O’Ryan,” he would say as he held thumbs up. Yep, we probably should marry. We go out once and a while and I know he’s going to get snatched someday by someone else. He has a great personality, a little on the psychic side himself but, there is just one tiny little problem. I shouldn’t marry anyone. I’m afraid I might let the secret out if I do fall in love again. And even if I wanted to get married, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Andy eats his sandwiches like Bubbles, the squirrel eats a nut? It’s hard not to laugh every time I see him turning his tuna on rye round and round. I wish I could tell him but I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I turn onto Seashell Lane and into the alley.

  I park remembering it’s my birthday and think of Sam’s mean exit from my life again. The memory of me trying to explain my extraordinary family history makes me shudder. It was over that night with the slamming of the door and I’m determined Sam will be the very last man I tell.

  Pushing Sam out of my head, I open the passenger door and pick Dawn up bundling her in my sweatshirt. I carry her past the beds of roses and up the stairs to our back porch. Holding the little creature, I open the door and let Duke bound ahead. Yes, I refuse to let Sam in my head again to spoil the miracle of this glorious morning. My heart will carry our secret. My father is really an angel and I have a Christmas fawn in my arms.

  To: Hannah’s email@…..

  From: Sblakley’s email@…..

  Miss O’Ryan, A+ Quite creative! Please write an angel story for your next assignment as well.

  Sam Blakley

  ANGEL

  HE WATCHED HER AS SHE STEPPED INTO THE STREET…

  HE FLEW GATHERING HER IN STEADY ARMS SAVING HER LIFE

  HER THANKFUL EYES MET HIS ……WAS SHE DREAMING?

  WAS HE AN ANGEL?

  HIS INVISIBLE WINGS SOFTLY SHIMMERED IN THE SUN Hannah A. O’Ryan /Creative Writing 101

  Gabe O’Ryan, my father, is standing in the pinkest kitchen on earth. He wears his clashing red Christmas bathrobe, and holds a mug of hot chocolate, while Bubbles, the tame squirrel, sits squarely on his shoulder. Her bulging eyes look down, hoping for her morning taste. She almost looks like she’s smiling. They are both addicted to hot chocolate. When he sees me walk in with a bundle in my arms, a very tiny fawn’s head sticking out, his mug freezes in midair. The look on his face is totally priceless and yet he says nothing for a moment. His sparkling blue eyes say it all, twinkling like lighted stars on a Christmas tree.

  “Oh Red, now what have we here….A little fawn!!!” He puts his mug down and takes Dawn ever so gingerly from my arms. Bubbles leans forward intrigued but still she holds firm to his shoulder. Dad cradles the sleeping baby deer. A proud Duke prances over to deaf old Louie, as if to say, “Look what I found!” Louie looks up from his dog bed with tired eyes, sees the fawn and a glint of light seems to appear in his expression.

  “Her name is Dawn, our little Christmas gift.” I whisper so my aunt won’t hear this part. “I heard her with my angel’s ear. Uriel was here again.” Dad keeps smiling. His eyes crinkle up like a picture of Santa from long ago.

  “Dawn, I love it,” he winks his special wink. “Where’d you find her?”

  Aunt Helen breezes in looking sunny with her silvery streaked hair in a twist, her cheeks as rosy as her pink flowered bathrobe. Aunt Helen is crazy about the color pink. Dad remodeled the kitchen in retro pink for her sixtieth birthday last year. We have pink appliances, a pink and chrome table, the works! She puts the kitten wearing a Christmas dress on the floor near the dogs and gushes, “Oh my, Hannah!”

  “Isn’t it great?”

  She’s delighted but walks carefully over to Dad and touches the fawn slightly because she’s still leery of Bubbles.

  “Where did you find her,
dear?” But before I can reply she keeps on. “She is ever so darling; a fawn for Christmas!”

  As if she understands Aunt Helen’s sweet praising, Dawn’s eyes open; her long eye lashes flutter. Her caramel golden coat is dingy as if she were a child’s stuffed animal left in the rain. She looks somewhat better than in the woods.

  “Past Miller’s Run, miles from where I found Duke. It was weird; I heard her whimpering like that night I found him. And I named her Dawn because of the gorgeous sunrise.”

  Aunt Helen almost sings, “Dawn the fawn!” Dawn yawns.

  My father says, “It’s a beautiful gift isn’t it though.”

  My aunt laughs, “That animal ESP you got from Gabe’s side of the family is amazing, really. Lord knows it’s hard not being a psychic too. Why Gabe, that day you found Bubbles, why that was incredible to me….witnessed it with my own two eyes!”

  My father’s smiling eyes lock mine. My dear aunt perhaps doesn’t remember her hysterical reaction to Bubbles that day. We were camping and she was still asleep in the tent when my Dad heard injured Bubbles and flew right to her. It was like a scene from an old I Love Lucy rerun when Aunt Helen came out of the tent and saw a squirrel on his shoulder. Shrieking, she ran to the car and locked the door.

  We start to laugh, “Helen you were so scared of Bubbles and now look at her glued on my shoulder will you, always wanting a taste of your mighty fine cooking.”

  “Why that squirrel stares at me like a hawk. It’s unnerving I tell you.” Aunt Helen smiles though she must be getting used to her. Tricky Bubbles startles her on purpose every day. She definitely knows what she’s doing when jumping from Dad’s shoulder to the top of the fridge then down to the cookie jar. Aunt Helen jumps a little herself every time. All these years she’s believed Dad’s made-up story. He tells people he was orphaned in Ireland then moved to LA with his adoptive parents, the O’Ryan’s, an elderly couple. With their passing he traveled a bit settling in town on a whim. She thinks it’s romantic, his meeting my mother by saving her life then marrying her a month later. We concede it’s totally necessary. She’d faint if she knew he was an angel.

  “Dawn looked really weak before but looks better now. Do you think she’ll be all right?”

  “I think so. Helen, do you still have the baby bottles we used for Pink?”

  “Of course, I’ll get them.” Aunt Helen moves to the cabinets and produces two pink (of course) baby bottles. She rinses them out.

  “Can you please mix half milk half water and heat it up a bit? She’s thirsty.” He holds the fawn like Santa would a baby. “Well, a Merry Christmas it is,” he says looking at me with pride in his eyes.

  Aunt Helen smiles and shakes her head. The coffee smells good so I pour myself a mug.

  “You two amaze me,” Aunt Helen says bringing the bottle over. Of course, she can’t see Dad wink at me.

  “It really is amazing.” I sip the coffee stifling a laugh. “Are we psychics or psychos, huh Dad?”

  “Now, Hannah, not psychos. It’s really so wonderful dear,” Aunt Helen says while checking the cinnamon rolls in the oven.

  “I’m starving. All that psychic work I guess.”

  Aunt Helen remarks to Dad, “Speaking of psychic work, remember that day you saved Madam Norma with the Heimlich maneuver at the Burger Spot? Why she almost choked to death and people say you practically flew to her, Gabe. She’s one hundred now and still the oldest lady and psychic in town thanks to you! It’s like you knew it was going to happen.” Aunt Helen shakes her head.

  My father winks at me then looks down to examine Dawn’s foot. “Helen my dear, I see a wound on the foot. Can you get a warm soapy towel please? I can’t call Doc Lindley; he and Shari are visiting their daughter. He just hired a young vet to help him. We need to see a vet today if possible. Red, can you get my cell phone, it’s in my room, has Doc’s emergency office number in it? “

  Walking through the antiqued warmth of the living room, it somehow looks fitting to have a bevy of pink lights on the real Christmas tree in the corner with shiny pink wrapped presents underneath. Aunt Helen moves pink in as much as she can.

  His room upstairs is filled with the morning breeze from the billowing lace curtains. Finding his cell on the night stand next to his four poster bed, I pick up the silver framed photo of Dad and Mom on their wedding day. I notice how he’s changed in these twenty-five years. He’s much stouter now with his snowy white hair. I stare at my beautiful mother and sit down on the bed.

  “Our Kate,” Dad calls her. “Our Gift from God, Our Joy,” the saying reads on her memorial bench at San Francisco State where she studied creative writing like I did.

  I look at her face. I do look like her a bit especially in the eyes. But hers were a light chestnut brown almost like Dawn’s. Her brown wavy hair shimmers in the sunlight and falls softly around her heart-shaped smiling face. Sunbeams light their love as their faces smile back at me. No one could ever be as beautiful as she was on that day. Their love is evident, everlasting. Now her spirit visits him sometimes he says. Why can’t I see her? Why’d she have to leave us? Deep in my heart I worry it was my fault. If only I had warned her, she might be here. Then Dad’s words echo once more in my head, “a nano second in time and you’ll be with her.” I hesitate leaving the room feeling close to her again. I remember the way she tilted her head when she was about to laugh. Her lilting laugh was like a song to me. It could brighten any day. I look at her wedding dress, the dotted Swiss long white gown that Aunt Helen made that hangs in his closet to this day. I look at her bouquet of purple flowers chosen from a local garden.

  I put the frame back reluctantly. I notice a valentine on Dad’s bedside table. Sadly, it’s an old one from my mother. “To My Husband on Valentine’s Day,” it reads in flowering pink cursive. I can’t help reaching for it, opening it slowly.

  Inside in pink it reads “You Are My Best Friend, My Special Love.” My mother, an aspiring poet, had written below it.

  Dear Gabe,

  Someday our time on earth together will be but a memory

  By then we will freefall like the stars searching the heavens

  Our hearts will be one then my treasured angel

  For we will fly, forever free, far into eternity.

  All My Love, Kate

  Putting the card back down where it lay I feel her near yet I can’t see her. I get up returning to the kitchen to hand him his phone. I feel the familiar ache as tears rim and splash down my cheeks. I wipe them away when spying the brown luminous eyes of precious Dawn on the kitchen table. I hand Dad his phone and feel hope rising in my heart. Her foot is wrapped in a towel and her eyes meet mine. Do I see gratefulness in them? I pick Dawn up and Dad calls Doc Lindley’s answering service and leaves a message. I cradle her to me and watch the fawn suck thirstily on the bottle.

  My Dad sings, “Eureka, she likes it!”

  “The rolls will be ready soon, you two. Do you mind if I call Laurjean?”

  Dad remarks with a grin, “Within thirty seconds the whole town of Mystic Bay will be in our house, guaranteed.”

  We watch as Dawn finishes the bottle and Aunt Helen prepares another. I hand Dawn to Dad because she appears fast asleep.

  “I gotta get ready for work and get dressed in the costume. Come on, Duke, let’s go.” But Duke has other ideas. His attention is concentrated on Dawn. He stays right next to my father without moving. That’s a first. His eyes have a pleading look I’ve never seen before and then that darn dog winks at me again.

  “Well, I’ll be. Will you look at that,” says Aunt Helen, hands on her hips. I call him again but he doesn’t seem to want to come with me.

  My father laughs, “That dog’s been yearning for a friend he can play with, I guess. Old Louie sleeps so much now.”

  “Duke, I get it, I’ll be back soon.” I dash out the door towards the alley. I see pregnant Meredith sitting on a lawn chair with her pug, Tuffy, next to her on her back porch. She’s wearing a white ba
throbe, her pretty blonde hair piled on her head, drinking her morning cup of tea.

  “Hannah, happy birthday,” she calls.

  “Thanks! Mer, you’ve got to go in the house. You won’t believe what I found this morning.” My smile is sly. Her face lights with curiosity.

  “Will do, see you in a bit.” She waves and goes into the house with Tuffy in parade mode. I run down the stone path, out the gate, across the alley to the store. Little sparrows have gathered at the birdfeeder chatting and my step lightens.

  I take the steps two at a time up to my apartment above the store. After showering I dress in the elf costume for our stores sale that Aunt Helen whipped up, green tights, red elf print jumper, and white Christmas turtleneck. I decide to put my hair in a pony tail and don the dippy pointed elf hat. After putting on the red ballets shoes I check myself out in the long mirror. Yikes, I really do look like Santa’s giant helper. I can hear a car coming down the alley and look out the back window to see a truck, a big red crew cab, park by my car. A big man in a green flannel shirt and jeans with blondish hair gets out. He has a medical bag with him so probably he’s the new vet. A black lab has his head out the passenger side window. He’s practically as big as the man. The man walks up the stone path of our back yard, goes up the stairs and knocks on our door. Aunt Helen lets him in. I see Meredith coming out of her house and taking the side gate into our back yard. She goes up the stairs but walks in without knocking like all our friends do. I call Jess and we leave to walk down the stairs. I open the back door to the store so she can run straight away to her window perch to snooze and harass the dogs. Just as I swing the door open, I find Taylor, my dear friend and our accountant is opening the front door of the store. He’s wearing the Christmas elf ensemble Aunt Helen made for him for the sale. I laugh so hard I almost fall down.

  “Merry Christmas to you too and Happy B day,” he says in his thick Batswana accent. “Oh my girl, Hannah, you look just as bad as I do.” He gives me a quick hug. I can’t stop laughing. Taylor is dressed in early elf to a tee. He is six two and lanky yet dons Aunt Helen’s designs: red corduroy pants, green shirt with Santa’s elves appliqué, red bowtie and Christmas suspenders. His shoes remind me of a cross between green cowboy and elf boots. The hysterical elf cap looks like a Peter Pan reject even more than mine does.