Angel Baby (Heaven Can Wait)

by Laura Marie Altom

  “What are you saying?” She drew back to search his inky dark eyes.

  “Want me to spell it out?”

  She licked her lips. Nodded.

  If she couldn’t have Jonah and Katie, at the very least, she didn’t want to be alone. Right? This uncharacteristically kind side of her former lover had her all confused.

  “I was thinking we could do like you’ve always wanted. You know, have a big wedding. Invite our friends.”

  “And then what? Would you still want to spend all our time partying and touring and making more albums? Or are you ready to settle down?”

  He nodded and shrugged. “Oh, hell, yeah. Grant says I should let you pop out that baby you’ve been wanting, then we can get back out on the road.”

  Her blood chilled. “Grant says?”

  “Well, yeah. He told me I should come talk to you. Said some nonsense about you firing him.” He pulled her close, pressing openmouthed kisses to her neck and throat.

  His actions, his words, his acrid smell all repulsed her, and she shoved him away. “Get out.”

  “What do you mean, get out? I just got here. Don’t we need to call a wedding planner?”

  Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. Being alone sounded infinitely better than the brand of false comfort he was trying to sell. “There isn’t going to be a wedding, Logan. There could’ve been, but you messed that up the night you told me to abort your daughter.”

  “You should’ve. Would have saved us all a lot of grief.”

  Though her palm itched from wanting to slap him, she held her hands tightly clasped in her lap. “Get out.”

  He stood. Graced her with a simple bow, then walked out the door.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Jonah, holding his sniffling, cranky mess of a daughter in his arms, paced the living room, trying his best to jiggle Katie and sing as he walked. Overall, she’d been better than he’d expected since Angel left. And since Angel had introduced her to solid foods, she was at least eating a little, though she still refused to drink from a bottle.

  He hadn’t opened the diner Sunday.

  Monday, Pauline had moved Katie’s playpen into the dining room so folks could visit with the baby while they ate. This worked out fine during the day, but here he was Wednesday night and his best girl wasn’t at all happy.

  “I know you miss her,” he said on his way past the piano, shooting the instrument a dirty look. “I miss her, too. But you have to trust me, squirt. Her leaving is for the best.”

  Katie launched into a whole new fit of wails.

  “I’m sensing you don’t agree with Daddy’s decision?”

  Her answer was a particularly cutting, waaaaah.

  He jiggled her faster, but when that didn’t help, he tried jiggling her slow, then rocking and humming. Nothing helped.

  He headed into the kitchen to get her a teething biscuit when he spotted the edge of the flashdrive Melvine had given him poking out from beneath a considerable stack of unopened mail. Guess that showed where viewing the video landed on his list of priorities. Still, what if watching Angel on his laptop helped calm Katie?

  Yeah, but what would it do to him?

  The very thought of seeing her again, hearing her ethereal voice—it was too much. Just thinking about it made his heart race and palms sweat.

  Then Katie launched into a fresh round of wailing and his throbbing head demanded he at least give it a try.

  Holding his squirming baby with one hand, he grabbed his dusty laptop from his office, set it up on the coffee table and plugged it in. After it booted up, he slipped in the drive. A minute later, a picture of himself scowling filled the screen.

  Precious, her voice tinny, said, “Like, we know, Jonah. It’s not too tough, you know, just yelling surprise.”

  He made a face for the camera phone. “Cut me some slack. Is there a law against wanting this night to be special?”

  From an end stool at the counter, Esther asked, “What’s the occasion again?”

  Precious panned the phone back to him as he pointed at the banner he’d had made at the copy shop. “Happy Birthday, Angel,” he said. “Everybody got that?”

  Jonah sighed.

  That night felt like a million years away. Hard to believe it’d only been what? Four days?

  The commotion with Earl broke out, and then the bell over the diner’s door jingled. In walked Angel, Katie in her arms, still flushed from her walk from the car.

  “Surprise!”

  The crowd burst into, “Happy Birthday,” but instead of following, Precious kept the phone tight on Angel. On her amazing smile and blazing aquamarine eyes. She looked across the room, and Precious followed her gaze, settling on him. Jonah blinked, caught off guard at the sight of himself, eyes welled with tears, heart in plain sight for the world to see.

  “I loved her,” he said, hand to his mouth. “I really, truly loved her.”

  “What? You thought this whole exercise was just a game?” Geneva slanted him a dirty look. “Of course, you loved her. You still would, if you weren’t such a hard-nosed Goody Two-shoes about women being purer than driven snow.”

  Jonah looked to Katie. He’d been so wrapped up in watching the video, he’d forgotten all about having turned it on in hopes of calming her. But it had. She seemed fascinated by the action unfolding onscreen. Precious had turned off the camera function for a while, and now he was presenting Angel with her surprise.

  Ha. The surprise was on him. What a nightmare that talent scout turned out to be.

  Angel sang Patsy Cline’s Crazy, and while he fell for his pretend wife all over again, Katie was all smiles, bouncing up and down and giggling and pointing at the screen.

  “Mmm-ah,” she said over and over. “Mmm-ah.”

  “What the—” He turned his baby girl to face him. Damned if it didn’t sound like she was trying to say momma. But how? She wasn’t yet five months old.

  She wriggled back around and pointed at the screen. Angel was singing some pop tune requested by Precious that he didn’t recognize. “Mmm-ah! Mmm-ah!”

  He shook his head and groaned. No way. No way in hell this was happening.

  Eyes welling, Geneva said, “Oh, but it is, Jonah. Listen to what our baby’s trying to tell you.”

  Watching that video, Jonah wished more than anything that things could’ve turned out differently with him and Angel. At first, when the reality of her true identity sank in, he’d been relieved. At least Angel wasn’t married, though he was deeply saddened by the news that her baby had died.

  Still, sorry as he felt for her, that didn’t mean she was any better mother material than Geneva.

  If she weren’t in Heaven, Geneva could’ve cheerfully punched the man! “My God, Jonah, would you listen to yourself? When did you become such an expert on great mothers? Look at our daughter. She’s trying to hug your computer. Think back to what a terrific job of parenting Angel did. She was running on pure instinct. Skills like that can’t be taught. She loved our baby the way she wanted to be loved.”

  Jonah scratched his forehead. He’d become a swirl of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he wanted desperately to give Angel a second chance—to beg her to give him a second chance. But on the other, he was scared. Geneva was his proof that no matter how hard he wished it, people didn’t change. True, aside from her few questions about drinking, Angel had never shown him signs that she was anything other than the amazing wholesome image she’d presented, but then again, how did he know that was the real her?

  “Ever heard of a little thing called faith?” Never had Geneva more desperately yearned to pound some sense into a man. “Please, Jonah. Just this once, let loose of that almighty control. You don’t have to master every situation. All you have to do is have faith. Please. For all our sakes.”

  Sam’s boots made no sound as he walked across the cushy Oriental rugs lining the hardwood floors of the Boy Mayor’s outer office.

  Gretta Sturgis, the pinched-nose secret
ary guarding his door, said, “He’s taking a call, Sam. You’ll have to wait.”

  Sam waved in dismissal. “Got good news, Gretta.”

  She bustled out from behind her desk, trying to cut him off at the pass, but Sam’s legs were longer and faster. “He’s not going to like being interrupted.”

  “Oh, I promise,” he said with a dashing wink, “he’s gonna love hearing this.” Gently shoving her out of his way, Sam opened the mayor’s mahogany door, stepped inside the posh antique-furnished digs, then shut the door behind him.

  This would be fun.

  Hot damn if Angel—he still had trouble thinking of her as Rose—hadn’t been right about this snake. Sam had no way of proving beyond her statement that the mayor was ever in Little Rock, but he did have a couple of hair samples he’d found in the arsonist’s car. He’d sent them off for DNA testing and had just gotten word back on a positive match with one in particular.

  Gretta had been right. The Boy Mayor didn’t look pleased to see Sam barging into his pleasure palace. He mouthed something unintelligible into the phone, then hung up. Adjusting his tie, he said, “This might be a small town, Chief Lawson, but that doesn’t mean we don’t adhere to protocol.”

  Sam removed his hat, parked it on one burgundy leather guest chair and himself on the other. “Protocol, huh? Interesting you should mention that as I’m here on just such a matter.”

  “Oh?” The mayor raised his neatly trimmed eyebrows.

  “Seems not too far back—round about Christmas to be exact—you took a trip to Little Rock.”

  “Christmas shopping.” He tidied an already straight pile of manila folders. “Mother and I go every year. It’s a tradition.”

  “Sure,” Sam said with an understanding nod. “The trip I want to know about, though, is the one you took after Christmas. To a concert?”

  The mayor fisted a pink receipt lying on top of the folders.

  “I’ll take that as a yes? You did attend a concert?”

  The Boy Mayor pushed a button on his phone. “Ms. Sturgis?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hold all my calls.”

  Early Friday night, the sky behind her ablaze with deep oranges and reds, Rose climbed out of her black Mercedes sedan—license plate REBEL—and onto the scenic lookout of an endless Texas highway she’d forgotten the name of. The arid air she thought she needed to smell dried her nose and made the back of her throat itch. The view she thought would cure her of life’s woes struck her as beautiful in a sparse, tragic way, but nothing so spectacular as to have felt her very life was in peril if she didn’t get a second look.

  A lone cricket chirped. A far-off coyote yipped.

  For as far as she could see, rolling hills barely supported scraggly cactus and weeds and scrub oaks washed in the setting sun. Yes, the scene was peaceful. Gorgeous, if you were a fan of Clint Eastwood westerns, but this was what she’d driven so far for? This was supposed to answer the dozens of questions roaming free range through her head?

  She eased her lips into a ghostly smile.

  The town of Sulphur was still a good twenty miles down the road, but she could already see the few twinkling lights. From a distance, nothing much had changed.

  Still one main business strip, with side streets feeding off that. On a Friday night all the proper citizens would be seated around their dinner tables, sharing their days—or at the very least sharing bowls of popcorn over their first of the night’s Pay-Per-View movies. As for the rest of them, they’d be making out down by the abandoned feed mill or nursing beers and playing pool in one of the town’s two bars.

  A long time ago, back before her parents died, Rose had belonged to Group A. What some folks called the Churchies. She’d lived a normal life. Been bored, afflicted with what she now supposed were normal growing pains, but essentially, she’d been happy—until her rug had got jerked out from under her.

  Closing her eyes, she took an extra deep breath, remembering. Helping her daddy round up their few cattle for feeding, helping her momma in the kitchen and garden. Learning to sew, play the piano and her daddy’s guitar. Going to church. Always going to church.

  She recalled when her parents had died in a car wreck she was ten. She’d been hovering on the verge of becoming a woman, utterly thrown into a tailspin by the changes in her body and life. Then had come a succession of foster families where she’d felt like the proverbial square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

  Her church family had taken turns doling her out. She never stayed more than six months in any one house. Meaning, since the death of her parents, she’d never felt like she belonged again—at least not until ending up in Blue Moon. It was there that her most basic small town roots and a loving, hardworking man had proved to be her salvation. It was there she’d realized her singing career meant nothing without loved ones to share her songs with.

  Wednesday she’d spent at the cemetery, tending Lizzy’s grave. She’d planted pink roses and had a good, long talk with the daughter she’d always wanted but, sadly, would never have the pleasure of knowing. She’d dreamt of mornings spent playing Barbies and brushing hair. And, later, of giggling about boys and trying on different shades of lipstick and eye shadow.

  Throughout that day, as Rose thought of all she’d wanted to experience in the future with Lizzy, she found her mind wandering to Katie. Wondering how she was doing and if she missed Rose half as much as she missed her.

  After Rose’s meeting with Talon, one thing had become abundantly dear—the fact that she wanted nothing to do with LA, its lifestyle or its people. Did that mean she never wanted to sing professionally again? She couldn’t say. All she knew was that she needed roots, and singing her heart out in a different city every night was no way to ground herself.

  Thursday morning, when she’d embarked on this journey, she thought those roots might be found in Texas, but now she realized she’d been wrong. Yes, she felt affection for a few of her foster families, and especially for her parents, but she didn’t love those ghosts enough to want them revisited, beyond sending Christmas cards to the living and leaving flowers and prayers at the graves of the dead.

  Now the roots she’d set in Blue Moon—those were an entirely different story. Even if they were shallow, the life she’d briefly led in Blue Moon had, for those few shining weeks, lifted her higher than a sold-out arena’s applause. She hadn’t been Rebel Blue, stage presence, but Angel McBride, beloved wife and mother.

  How do you know Angel wasn’t just another character you were playing? How was she any more real than Rebel?

  Sliding her fingers into her hair and pressing her scalp, Rose wished she could blame her present confusion on the nagging voice that’d lived inside her when her memory had been gone. Unfortunately, now that she knew the voice was all hers, she’d just have to add it to her ever-growing list of issues to deal with. Her continuous urge to find solace in a bottle. Her love for Katie. What she thought was her love for Jonah.

  Staring out at the arid rolling hills she’d driven over a thousand miles to see, it was then Rose realized it wasn’t this landscape that was important, or seeking out any of her few former friends. What was important wasn’t the past but the here and now.

  Yes, she’d lost one child, but there was another child very much alive who didn’t give a damn what her name was, only that she held her tight.

  As for Jonah, Rose didn’t have a clue what she’d say to him were she to see him again. All she knew was that she had to give what she felt for him—with him—one more try.

  “Yes!” Geneva did an impromptu happy dance right there on the side of the road. It was about time Blondie came to her senses. Lord knew, with that Texas road trip, Geneva had been trying to steer her in the right direction, but an angel in training could only do so much. Now, when she got her real wings—watch out!

  The way Geneva’s mission was suddenly looking up, surely getting Jonah and Angel permanently hitched by Saturday night would be no big deal. After all, if
Rose drove through the night, she could be in Blue Moon by morning, which meant Geneva could have her wings by Saturday afternoon.

  “Mmm-ah! Mmm-ah!”

  Bright and early Saturday morning, Jonah turned his attention from a pan of scrambled eggs to Katie. He needed to check whether all that wriggling she was doing might’ve loosened the belt on her high chair but, from the looks of it, she was still snug as a bug.

  It’d come as a huge relief to discover she adored scrambled eggs—especially when made with loads of butter and cheese, the way Angel had always made them.

  Angel—now there was a topic he’d rather avoid. But then, how could he, when his own daughter was constantly bringing her up? Sure, he wanted to view Katie’s first word as a fluke, but it’d grown too consistent to have been anything other than the real deal.

  Kind of like the hole in his heart was feeling more like the real deal.

  Fifty times a day he wondered if he should swallow his pride, fasten Katie into her car seat, and head for LA. Fifty times more, he called himself a fool for even considering such a thing. Angel had been Geneva times ten. Geneva had never changed. Odds were, once Angel got a fresh taste of her former rock star lifestyle, she’d never give him and Katie a second thought.

  “Mmm-ah!” Katie clanged on the high-chair tray with her teething biscuit.

  “Hold your horses, squirt.” He added a dash of salt to her eggs. “Geez, and I thought old Earl down at the diner was a pain in my—”