by Anna Katmore
“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.
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.
There you go. Craziness is taking over.
Julian returned my intense glare. Then he lifted one suggestive brow. “Don’t want to come join me out here?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “I’m hallucinating. I’m hallucinating…”
Then why the hell bother to shake your head at a mirage? Why was no one around to slap me when I was so obviously going insane?
Julian drew his brows together, the corners of his mouth turning downward. “Come on, Jona. You didn’t make me wait for you this long just to call me a fantasy in the end.”
His voice sounded so real. And his body seemed solid, not ghostlike as I had seen him half an hour ago. He also appeared without his wings, dressed in his usual outfit of blue jeans and a shirt.
But, jeez, what would happen if I fell for my own delusions?
Better make it a good one!
My gulp echoed through the room as I rose from his bed. Knees wobbly, I crossed to the door, but stopped with a hand to the frame for support.
“What brought you back?” My voice had abandoned me completely. In order for him to answer, he would have to be able to read lips.
“You. Because you finally accepted what you felt all along. You’ve learned to trust. And by speaking it out loud you opened the portal for me to return.”
“Fully? Return?” My sandpaper-dry tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. It made me stammer. “I—I mean, did you come back as the man or the angel?”
His shoes thudded on the floorboards as he hopped down. The boxes planted with bright red flowers shook, releasing drops of dew. His thumbs dipped into his pockets, and he leaned against the railing.
“Fully,” he confirmed. “I’m here to stay.”
I struggled to grasp what he’d said. I’d endured so long without him, and now he’d come back. I was tempted to run into his embrace. But the small chance that he would vaporize into thin air the instant I wrapped my arms around him kept me rooted. How much craziness was one mind capable of?
“Bonjour, Jona,” my aunt shouted with her usual cheerful tone from the garden below. “Hi, Julian. Will you stay for breakfast?”
I held my breath. Leaning slightly to the side, I gazed past Julian and spotted Marie carrying a scalding pot of coffee and a tray of buns to the table under the willow tree.
“Yeah, I think I will,” Julian replied with a grin but without turning away from me.
“She just invited you to eat with us.” As though it was the most natural thing in the world to have an angel sitting at the breakfast table. “How come she remembers you?”
“You opened the gate.” He shrugged. “Everyone affected will accept me as part of their life again.”
Mind swimming, I gave him a pointed stare. “My aunt doesn’t wonder where you came from all of a sudden?”
“She knows me as her sister’s caretaker. As far as she remembers, I left shortly after the funeral on another assignment. She doesn’t doubt I’m real.” He walked toward me at a seductive pace, his chin low and fire sparkling in his eyes. “So why do you?”
I reached out, almost expecting him to draw back like he had done so many times in my dreams. But he moved closer and let me feel the smooth skin of his face. I skimmed my fingers over his cheeks, his lips, down his neck and shoulders.
“You feel so real. Totally alive. I think even though I couldn’t remember, I was waiting for this moment all these months.” Feeling his firm biceps, I ran my hands lower and finally laced them with his. “And now you’re here
, and I can’t dare to trust my eyes.”
“You’d better believe it, baby. Because it makes this feel so much better.” And the next instant his lips took mine in a slow, thrilling kiss. My palms pressed against the wall as I surrendered to him. His tongue delved into my mouth, whirling ravenously around mine. My knees gave way, but he steadied me with his body pushing against mine.
Kissing a path along my jaw, he purred into my ear. “Until the sun sets tonight I will still be an angel. It is up to you to decide before then whether you want me to stay—or leave again.”
Huh? Stop kidding me, angel! “Can I make that decision now? I want you to stay!”
One corner of his mouth lifted in my favorite lopsided smile. “I hoped you would say that. So after sundown, I’ll lose my angel powers and spend this life with you as ordinary Julian.” He nibbled my earlobe. “But before that happens, there is something I’ve wanted to do with you for a very long time.” His fingers found the first button of his shirt.
“What?” I croaked, pressing harder against the wall behind me. “Make love to me?”
His fingers went down from one button to the next, revealing his strong chest to my gaping eyes. “That, too.” A rascally grin flashed across his face. “But it will have to wait another moment.”
Over his shoulder, I spotted Marie pouring coffee into a cup, only the stream didn’t reach the cup. She seemed suddenly frozen in time. My unbelieving gaze moved back to Julian, who had dropped his shirt to the floor. Behind him the air wavered until a jet of light emerged. Two marvelous, wide wings appeared and hovered at his sides.
Their sight robbed the air from my lungs.
One arm behind my knees and the other planted firmly on my back, Julian swept me up. Mischief sparked in his deep blue eyes. His warm breath brushed my face. “Are you ready to sky dive?”
Head tilted back, I laughed out loud. “Bring it on, angel.”
PLAYLIST
OneRepublic – Secrets
(On the run through London)