by Holley Trent
“Hope so. She gave up a lot to take me in. She could have been enjoying her retirement.”
“Maybe she did.”
“You’re sweet to think so. Oh my. I should call her.” She patted the console for her phone and finally found it wedged between two empty coffee cups. Cleaning out the car was sure to be treat.
“Hey, I’m close,” Ariel said when her grandmother picked up the house phone.
“Thank the Lord! Be careful. Won’t do to get in a wreck now. Where you at?”
“On Forty outside Garner. Got you some peaches.”
“You’re lying.”
“I really did. Some angel at a roadside stand let me have a half-bushel for free.”
She saw John whip his face toward her in her peripheral vision. When she pulled another glance from the road to look at him, he shook his head and mouthed, “Sorry, thought you said something you didn’t.” He plucked his phone from his pocket and squinted at the touch-screen while working his thumbs over it.
“That’s wonderful. I’m making a big dinner for you, so I hope you haven’t eaten. I’ve got your favorite butter beans, some ham steaks, and got some biscuits ready to go into the oven. Made you some sweet tea, too.”
“I missed you.”
“That’s just your belly talking.”
“Not just my belly. Oh, listen. I hope it’s okay, but I’ve got a friend with me.”
John stopped typing.
“A friend?”
“Yeah, he was on the way out east, so he tagged along so I wouldn’t be in the car alone.” She clenched her teeth and held her breath.
“You should have told me, Ariel. All this time I been worried sick, and you got someone watching out for you. Give an old lady a break.”
She pulled the phone away from her face and blew out a relieved exhale.
“Bring him on,” Momma said. “Got plenty of food. I guess I’ll go make me a piecrust. Run to the store and get some vanilla ice cream.”
“Momma, the pie can wait until tomorrow.”
“Why, you plan on going to bed at nine?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll make the pie. See you soon.” She hung up. Momma was a woman on a mission.
Ariel sighed.
“What’d she say about your dinner guest?” John asked after she’d tossed the phone into the cup holder.
“She said there’s plenty of food. Why don’t you start thinking of some good lie as to where and when I picked you up? Make sure you let me know what it is so when she asks, I don’t blush. She can smell a lie on me at forty paces.”
“Anything for pie, sweetpea.”
She stole a glance away from the road and set her narrowed gaze on him. “Did you really come all this way just for the pie?”
He made a big show of pretending to be very distracted by something out the window all of a sudden. He even hummed.
She swatted at him and laughed. “Damn you. All this time, I thought it was my pleasant company.”
• • •
Momma stood in the storm door, so when Ariel pulled into the driveway, honking her horn, Ariel could see her face light up. Momma waved her dishtowel at them and made a come on gesture with her hand before disappearing.
“I bet she’s putting the biscuits in the oven,” Ariel said.
“Should I unload the car?”
“Not unless you want to offend Momma. Get the peaches, though.”
“Got it.”
When Ariel pulled the glass door open, the smell of her childhood tumbled out onto the yard. Good home cooking. Lemon-scented furniture polish. That same bowl of potpourri on the back of the upright piano that had been there since the first Clinton administration. Momma would dust it every now and then, but never saw the point of throwing it away. “It’s pretty. I’ll keep it,” she’d say whenever Ariel cocked an eyebrow up at her Windexing the glass bowl.
“Come on in the kitchen and get some sugar,” Momma called. “And bring your friend. I’ll give him some sugar, too.”
Ariel turned in time to catch John’s bewildered expression. She laughed and slid the door lock into place. “She means it, too. You’d better go in there and get it.”
“Come on! Bring the peaches. I want to get them peeled during supper. Crusts are all ready,” Momma shouted.
Ariel cocked her head toward the kitchen entryway. “She doesn’t bite, but she might transfer a bit of lipstick.”
Chapter Twelve
John scratched his palm as the beatific Ms. Morton assessed him from across the table. In between flicks of her knife over the peaches she peeled while they ate, she smiled at him.
Ariel must have noticed. “Momma. Quit giving him the look.”
“What look?” She stood up with her bowl of peach skins and carted them to the trashcan beneath the sink.
“The interrogation look. Be nice.”
She propped her fists on her hips and grunted. “I am being nice. I just want to know about him.”
“Know what?” John asked.
Ariel closed her eyes and groaned.
“What? What’d I do?” he mouthed when Ms. Morton turned her back.
Ariel shook her head and whistled low.
Whatever it was couldn’t be that bad.
“You’re mighty tall, John. What are you, six-five? Six?”
“I … don’t know exactly.”
Ariel cringed.
“How do you not know? Isn’t it on your driver’s license? I get measured every time I go to the doctor. I lose about a quarter inch every year.” She giggled so hard her shoulders shook.
He was starting to understand what Ariel’s wariness was. Even the most benign questions could lead to him providing back-story he probably shouldn’t provide. He hedged. “My father is a very large … uh, man.”
“Bigger than you, even?”
“Oh, heaps.”
“I see why you work construction, then. I bet you’re real good with your hands.”
“Momma,” Ariel warned.
Ms. Morton returned to her seat with the emptied bowl. “What, Ariel?”
“You’re so brazen.”
“That’s how I always got what we needed, right?”
Ariel rolled her eyes and John stifled a laugh, knowing the exact wrong thing to do at that moment would be to pick sides. It was fun for him to see the interaction between the two women. He’d never witnessed that kind of camaraderie in his own family. Most of the time, the girls just kept their heads down and —
His insides seemed to turn to ice at the realization. The girls. Two more blue-eyed blonds. Tall like John, and nearly women. And then there was the baby. He hadn’t made the connection until then.
No …
“Hey John, you don’t have to answer that,” Ariel said. She patted the corners of her mouth with her napkin.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. I zoned out for a minute. Please don’t be offended. I do that a lot,” he said, smiling at Ms. Morton.
Like hell if he’s going to do this to them. They won’t have the fortitude to fight the urges. They’ll get consumed by it. It’ll be worse for them than being someone’s least treasured wife.
“Oh, it was nothing. I just wondered if you could take a look at my roof tomorrow and maybe tack my gutters back up. They got shook up real bad during the last hurricane that blew through.”
Ariel nudged his shin with her foot. “You don’t have to. I’ll pay someone to fix it. Don’t let her put you to work. She’ll have you shackled to a toolbox and tinkering with every rusty thing in the house if you let her.” She stabbed her finger in her grandmother’s direction, accusingly. “Momma, you should have told me about the roof. I would have found you a contractor.”
“Sounds like fun,” John said, choking down a laugh again. “I don’t mind, Ariel.”
“And maybe when you’re done with the roof … ”
“Momma.”
Ms. Morton zipped her lips.
After dinner, John ambled into the small, tidy living room and sank into the plush sofa, waking his phone from his slumber.
Claude had finally checked his text messages.
“Angels? Interesting you should ask, actually. Yes, they’re around. They’re actually a bit more visible than their counterparts at times. Sometimes they just blend into the background and seem to lead normal lives. They tend to intercede whenever one of us tries to stake a claim on someone they’ve been guiding closely.”
“John, do you want a cup of coffee?” Ariel called from the kitchen where she was scrubbing dishes. “Pie’ll be out soon.”
“I’ll wait on the pie. Thanks, sweetpea.”
“I managed to crack into a couple of my old books. I couldn’t find symbology similar to what’s on your palm in all my usual sources, so I decided to look up the opposite team. Perhaps your mother has an angel, or Papa thinks you do.”
John scoffed and brought up a reply screen. “Wouldn’t I have known if I had an angel? I’m not exactly living a charmed life, here.”
He didn’t expect an immediate response, so he deleted the message history — just in case — and looked up right as Ms. Morton padded into the room bearing a tray. It was piled high with coffee mugs, pie slices, and a half-gallon of ice cream with scoop.
“You folks always eat this well?” he asked.
Ms. Morton sank into the recliner at the end of the coffee table with a huff and immediately put her swollen feet up. “Got a touch of the gout,” she explained.
“Ah.”
“And thank you for the compliment. I remember back in the day when Ariel was a little thing, she used to hate it. All the beans. Little to no meat. I was lucky to get a ham hock back then. Grew on her, though. I guess by the time she was in high school, she didn’t mind it so much. When her little friends came over, though, I tried to do a little better.”
Ariel’s face was so red John worried her proximity would melt the ice cream she was attempting to serve. He thought it was charming for her to be embarrassed, because he got it. He really did.
“Here, let me.” He wrapped his fingers around hers on the scoop and gently pried it away.
“After she went off to work,” Ms. Morton continued, now squinting at the remote control buttons. “She’d send me a few dollars here and there. Used to hurt my pride. Sent them back.”
“Momma … ”
“What?”
“It was the least I could do. I’m not expecting a trophy for it.”
Momma flicked her dishrag at her. “You didn’t have to do anything. Didn’t expect you to.”
Ariel’s cheeks flooded. It was obvious the attention made her uncomfortable. Would she have preferred it not being mentioned? Or perhaps he’d just discovered a personality quirk of hers now that they’d added a third person to the mix. What bad could come of a little praise? He tuned back in.
“She paid off my house, John. When I wouldn’t take the money, she used to send the checks to the mortgage company. Of course they weren’t going to send them back.”
Ariel’s head was down. She poked her dessert with her fork as if she expected it to bite back.
“I’d get to the bank to pay it for the month, and they’d tell me she’d beat me to it. I don’t how much a junior art director makes, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t enough to pay my mortgage and her Los Angeles rent.”
“Ma.” Now Ariel’s voice was soft. Resigned. “I lived in a studio in the valley. It was a good deal. I think my landlady felt sorry for me. She was so sweet. She used to bring me little angel figurines and set them in my windows.”
John’s grin waned and he had that feeling in his gut again — the same one when Ariel bought those peaches on the roadside. Angel figurines? Why not cats or palm trees?
“She’s good people, John. People tell me I raised her good, but she was always good. Got a good heart.”
Well, that he knew. It was obvious, and he didn’t have to have magic to see it. All he had to do was be near her and he could feel it in her energy. It was apparent in every nervous smile she gave him.
His phone buzzed, and he plucked it out of his pocket while Ariel distributed coffee cups. It was a text message.
Claude said, “I don’t know, little brother. Maybe he got spooked. Angels and demons feud regularly. I’m not privy to everything that happens to Papa on a daily basis. For him to try to ward you from that side may mean he was worried someone had an eye on you. They may try to rescue you. You want rescue?”
He put the phone away and smiled when Ariel handed him a fork.
Did he want rescue? Only if it meant he’d have a normal life — to spend every Saturday like this one with Ariel and Ms. Morton. If it meant he’d be working for the other team, still traveling the roads like a vagrant in search of a new case, he thought he’d let it pass.
His eyes tracked upward to the decorative cross hanging over the front door, then around the small room and through the kitchen entryway. There was another cross, a wicker one, hanging in the kitchen.
The more he searched, the more holy icons he found. Some were stealthily incorporated into the décor. One of the sofa’s throw pillows, for instance, had a crèche scene. When he looked up at Ms. Morton, he was fondling a cross pendant that hung between her breasts. He squinted and verified that just behind that one, there was a Star of David, and something else John was too ignorant to identify.
She’d watched him scope the room, and now assessed him with narrowed eyes. What must she be thinking? Does she think I’m judging her?
He ended the staring competition and doctored his coffee with sugar.
Maybe all the crosses would keep Gulielmus out, at least for the night, because he sure didn’t want to leave.
• • •
Ariel leaned against the living room archway, watching John tuck sheets into the sofa crease. When he looked up, she tossed a pillow across the room at him.
He caught it handily. “Want to explain to me why your grandmother keeps men’s pajamas handy?” He pointed to his exposed ankles. Naturally, the pants were short.
A scoff passed her lips before she could stifle it. She eased into the room, paused to push the coffee table back a couple of feet so John wouldn’t bump it with his shins in the middle of the night, and had a seat on the sofa arm. “She bought those for my ex. We flew out here last fall for her sixty-fifth birthday and Momma got sick of seeing him strut around in his briefs.”
John didn’t look amused by that story. Just as well, because Ariel wasn’t so amused by telling it. It’d been an awkward trip.
“He was kind of rude when he was here. I was embarrassed, but I knew that was the way he treated his own parents. I don’t know why I expected he would have been nicer just because she was my family. I regret bringing him.”
“Is that why … ” He sat in the middle of the sofa and turned so his left arm was over the chair back. “ … you broke up then? Did you break up, I mean?”
“I’m embarrassed to say that, no, unfortunately that didn’t bring me to my senses. We didn’t break up until I got headhunted last month.”
He looked down at his knees. “You’re pretty much on the rebound, then.”
�
��No, I wouldn’t say that. I was gullible and stupid when I started dating him. The relationship was really … tenuous, I guess. Always was. I was his girlfriend when it was convenient. When he needed a date or a screw. When it wasn’t, he could hardly be bothered to remember my name. It made company-wide meetings somewhat embarrassing for me. People would give me these knowing looks. I think everyone there thought I’d slept my way to my job.” She scoffed again. “It wasn’t even that great of a job, as far as art director gigs go. I hope I’ll be happier here. No. I know I’ll be happier. I’m back in my own culture.”
There. Now he probably pitied her. Just as well. Every time she came home, she felt like this pitiful little girl who didn’t have her shit together and damned should have by the age of twenty-six.
It was unreasonable and she knew it. In the scheme of things, she was pretty successful. She had a good job. Steady income. Paid her bills and then some. Truth was, she didn’t really have any expenses. Didn’t spend her money on clothes or vacations. What was left at the end of the month just sat in the bank. Maybe she’d take a vacation and do some sightseeing one day like John had suggested.
“I hope you’re not angry about Momma strong-arming you into fix-it work.”
“It’s okay.” He reached up and pushed back a swath of hair that’d fallen into her eyes. He let his hand linger there by her face, grazing her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I like being helpful. Besides, you drove me a couple thousand miles. I feel like it’s the least I can do.”
“Nah.” She slipped down onto the sofa cushion to give his roaming hand easier access.
He took immediate advantage of it, adding his other hand to the mix and rubbing it up her naked thigh.
“I liked having you with me in the car. It was a wonderful trip. I don’t regret a thing.”
“Neither do I.” His fingers laced through the back of her hair and drew her head closer to his.