In the background, under the canopy of trees, were three adult shadows. Two were clearly a man and a woman holding hands. The third, though, a tall man, was more distant. Blue-gray eyes reflected the moonlight as he stood back, watching them all.
“That’s you, Geoffrey.” Elizabeth looked around, noticing the twins had left already, and watched Sarah point to a blond man in the twelve o’clock position over the house, appearing to straddle the apex of the roof.
Geoffrey stared silently at the painting, his eyes darkening to liquid mercury. “You did a great job, Sarah.”
Sarah beamed at him, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Geoffrey.”
Geoffrey painted her hands red, helped her mark her picture, then she held her hands in front of her as she headed toward the bathroom where Alex still helped the other two. Elizabeth smiled at Geoffrey, who still stood staring at the picture.
“Looks like you’ve been adopted,” she teased.
For a long moment, he didn’t move or say anything. Then he nodded and stood. Reaching up, he began taking down the wallpaper above the picture before the paint could dry and rip as the paper came off. Grinning, Elizabeth walked past Kevin’s spiders. Black furry ones, red bodied ones, green fanged ones, and some even had stripes. She had no idea what kind they were or how poisonous they might be, but that was okay. They were scary enough to make her shiver just with their detail. No wonder the toddlers screamed when they passed it.
But it didn’t matter how scary they were. This was all about creating memories and making the home theirs. She had friends who’d have a heart attack at the mere thought of kids painting their walls, but she didn’t regret her decision. The pictures were beautiful, each in varying stages of skill, saying so much about the artists who’d drawn them. She wouldn’t trade it for any professionally decorated hallway in the world.
Last, but definitely not least, Teddy knelt before his, carefully painting a frame in a dark brown color that did a really good job of matching the wood floor. “I love that frame, Teddy. Lots better than the simple rectangles I was planning.”
“Thank you, Aunt Lizzie,” he said quietly, concentrating on each interlocking stroke.
Elizabeth eyed the other murals and the plain straight line revealed as Geoffrey peeled off the wallpaper. “Would you be interested in making that border around all of them? Then it would show how they all belong together. After we paint the cream on top, you could even do the border there. Would you like that?”
Teddy leaned back and eyed the pictures around the hall, then looked straight at Elizabeth, his eyes shining with excitement. “Really? You’d let me frame them all?”
“Yeah. I love the job you’re doing.”
He grinned. “Okay.”
He’d been about to do the frame at the top of his picture, but chose to move to the next mural and start the bottom and sides of the frame, saving the top for later. Elizabeth briefly touched his head, running her fingers over his silky hair. He stilled for a moment, then continued what he was doing. His acceptance of her affection warmed her heart, especially after Shelly’s rejection.
Elizabeth stared at his mural, taking in the almost medieval simplicity of it. The background was a cream slightly darker than what she’d chosen for the top, and a yellowed scroll with black calligraphy took center stage. The first letter was elaborately drawn, like in old manuscripts, but the rest was simple black calligraphy. She lowered to her haunches, trying not to weep as she read the verse Teddy had chosen.
“And that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city …”
—Esther 9:28
He wanted to remember. Knowing that at least one of them wanted to remember it that way melted her heart. She had only hoped that someday they would look back and say, for that time, my whole family was together.
It was a big moment for them all and she’d made it possible. By staying when her mother was sick and dying and their parents were gone, she’d held them together so they could have this feeling of family. Despite the accomplishments she’d been praised and rewarded for in the past, this was the best thing Elizabeth had ever done.
Alex’s hand settled on her shoulder. “I bought a clear sealant to protect these from fading. Might help some with scratches, too.”
Her throat so full she could barely swallow, Elizabeth touched his hand. “Thank you.”
Geoffrey had strips of the old wallpaper down, though parts still clung to the wall and would need to be scraped off later. Alex and Elizabeth each took an end of the wall and started peeling, trying not to drop the scraps all over Teddy.
“I’ll finish this when you guys are done.” Taking his paint and brushes, Teddy went to clean up, then headed downstairs with the others.
Elizabeth nodded. With the older kids downstairs with them, the younger ones would be okay for a while.
“How was your mom?” Geoffrey asked.
Elizabeth shook her head slowly and focused on what she was doing. “Not well at all. I’ve called half her list of people and they should be visiting over the next few days. It’s going to wear her out more, but this will be their last chance.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he offered.
“Thanks.” Elizabeth nodded. “There’s so much left to do, though. Not just with her but with my sisters and the kids.” Elizabeth looked at Alex and raised her eyebrow while talking to Geoffrey. “I assume Alex filled you in about last night?”
“He did.” Geoffrey nodded. “There’s a lot for you two to work out personally, I understand that. But I hope you realize the biggest worry is Maeve.”
Alex looked at Elizabeth’s scowl and shook his head. “There’s too much you don’t know.”
“Like what?”
“Remember I told you about Kalyss’s gift with memories?”
Elizabeth nodded.
Alex began to speak, to tell her a story that should have been pure fantasy, yet, strangely, wasn’t. Kalyss had lived ten lifetimes, died in nine of them during efforts to free Dreux, the husband Elizabeth had met just that morning. He’d been trapped as a statue due to the hatred of his half-brother and his stepmother—Maeve.
Elizabeth peeled more of the paper as Geoffrey left. He already knew the story. It was Alex’s turn to tell it. So she plucked at the paper, trying to understand and process each thing Alex told her. “So, they were cursed? By Maeve?”
“Yes.”
“So, Dreux and Kai, who are half-brothers,” she recapped slowly, “were cursed by a fallen angel. Kalyss and Geoffrey got stuck in the middle of their battle, with Kalyss trying to save Dreux and getting killed by Kai. Nine times. And Geoffrey lived for a thousand years trying to reunite them. But when he did almost die, he was saved by an angel and the grim reaper?”
“Pretty much.” Alex smiled innocently. “And you are the daughter of a fallen angel. When your father, who sees the future, tried to leave his family, you trapped him in your mind. Where you sometimes see him in the dreams you weave. The same dreams you’ve pulled one man into for vengeance and another for …”
Alex let the sentence trail off and she watched him, trying to think of the word to fill in the blank. Love sprang most immediately to mind, but did she love him? She shied away from that explanation. But it hadn’t been just about sex. That sounded so crude and wrong on a bone-deep level.
Elizabeth bit her lip and stared at him helplessly. Alex raised a brow and stared back, his gaze firm. He wasn’t going to let her off the hook. He wanted an answer, one he deserved to have. She’d shown him truths about her, about them, and he’d listened, watched, forgiven. But now he wanted not just a statement of her intentions all these years, but a statement about their future. This was the point they would branch from, for good or ill. Where did she want their relationship to go?
“For possibility. For dreams. For comfort and closeness and …” She took a deep breath. Alex smiled gen
tly and moved closer, brushing hair from her face. Licking her lips, she finished, “For hope.”
Lightly, Alex traced a finger from her temple to her jaw. He backed her to an unpainted section of wall between two doors, his eyes soft. His lips curved, darkly flushed and full and lickable. Slowly, Alex lowered his head. “Hope is good. I like hope.”
When they touched hers, his lips were warm and tender. Coaxing her to open and fulfilling every promise with a nudge of his tongue against hers. Hot tingles flashed from the tips of her breasts, up to her shoulders and down to the hands she slid over his shoulders. Arching her back and standing on her toes she pressed into him, tight, aching.
Alex caressed one hand up the back of her neck to clench in her hair and small explosions cascaded through her system, rocking every nerve. Elizabeth widened her stance, hooking one ankle behind his calf, and stroked his tongue, swallowed his heat, wordlessly begged for more.
This was better than dreams. Better than fantasy. She could hardly breathe with the tingling in her stomach, the sensitivity of her nerves, but she wanted more. Elizabeth wanted Alex. Just thinking the words was a sort of freedom. An admission of so much she tried to deny. But also terrifying, because the words weren’t enough.
This kiss wasn’t enough. She wanted—needed—more. So much more.
Tightening her hold, Elizabeth pulled herself up, nearly crawling up his lean form. Alex raised her, pressed her back against the wall and the kiss became devouring. Deep and needy and desperate. Rough. Their abstinence was a painful starvation and her body wasn’t willing to be good anymore. She hungered.
Alex pulled back far enough to gaze into her eyes. Elizabeth gasped for air and met his serious look. “We can’t do this here.”
She frowned, scowled, wanted to argue, but as she looked around the hallway of her mother’s home, the door to the only room where she could find privacy—her mother’s bedroom—she wanted to cry. Sometimes dreams were better. Returning her gaze to Alex’s, she imagined … and the walls became black stone against her back. A bed formed behind Alex. Their bed with the sheet pulled back and the pillows plumped invitingly.
Alex looked around briefly. Elizabeth melted the clothes between them, thrilling to the slide of her thighs around his hips. Alex grinned, then pinched her bottom. “Wake up.”
Elizabeth blinked and they were in the hallway, fully clothed, her legs regrettably not clutching him close. She pouted. “Why?”
Alex kissed her and smiled gently. “Because I want the real thing, not more dreams.”
Elizabeth sighed. “But what if we never get the real thing?”
“Shh.” He brushed her lips with his thumb. “That’s what hope is for.”
“That and stopping Maeve,” she reminded him.
“Yeah. Did your dad have any ideas for how we should do that?”
“Not really. He just said that until she brings the battle to me, the rest is damage control.”
He hugged her close. “You’d think a fallen angel would have more ideas.”
“No. He won’t tell me anything. He says teaching humans things they were supposed to learn on their own was part of the reason he fell. That giving us facts ruins the purpose of faith.” She grimaced. Time to calm the hormones. “Ready for dinner? I should go start it.”
Alex shook his head. “Geoffrey’s cooking. He wanted to make his special chili.”
She gave him a worried look. “It won’t be too spicy, will it?”
Alex grinned. “Trust us.”
Elizabeth shook her head, smiling. “Mama always said, don’t trust a boy who asks you to trust him.”
Alex winked at her. “I’m not a boy, though.”
Turning from her, he bent and scooped a bunch of the stripped wallpaper. Elizabeth eyed his butt again. Nope. Definitely not a boy.
An hour later, Geoffrey’s chili was making her stomach growl like it had been a year since lunch. Scraping the last of the wallpaper into the garbage bag, she looked up at Alex. “We’re pretty much finished. After dinner, you and I can get ready to go find Felicia. You sure Geoffrey won’t mind babysitting?”
“Not at all. We’ve already discussed it. Besides, the kids will be safer with him here.”
She nodded. “I know they will. Otherwise I’d be too afraid to leave them.”
“Don’t worry. We can only do what we can do. In the meantime …” Alex raised a brow in challenge. “Race you to the kitchen.”
She gave him a considering look and when he turned to set the bag to the side, Elizabeth laughed and ran past him.
“Cheater.” Alex growled playfully from behind her.
Elizabeth headed down the stairs and to the kitchen, a bounce to her step. It was fun playing with him like this. No angst. No self-doubt. Just the freedom to laugh without feeling like it was a betrayal to someone.
Reaching the doorway, she froze and stared blankly at Shelly’s door. Alex stopped abruptly behind her, his hands on her waist to keep from knocking her over. Shelly stepped back from her door and looked at them.
“What?” she demanded sullenly.
“It’s black.” Very black. Every rough chip, dent, and crack showed perfectly. Elizabeth stared from the door to her niece in confusion.
“So?” Shelly crossed her arms, her stance mutinous.
“Why didn’t you paint a picture?” Or use a different color or anything except a flat black that sucks the life out of a person when they stare at it?
“I didn’t want to. Alex said paint it. You said have fun. So I did.” Her eyes said she’d known the door would upset Elizabeth, which had made doing it even more “fun”.
“An all-black door is very depressing.” Elizabeth tried to say it tactfully, not wanting to explode the balance the family had accomplished. Lord knew, Shelly had enough attitude without fighting over a door, though this defiance was worse than usual.
“You didn’t tell Kevin his spiders were too scary,” Shelly reminded her.
Elizabeth raised a brow. Shelly had a point. The kids had been allowed to draw anything. If this was what Shelly wanted, why should the rules be different? But black? “Kevin’s spiders were a picture. Art. With color.”
“You want art? Fine.” Shelly skimmed a finger over a white pan of paint and pressed it to the center of the door. “There you go.”
Before Elizabeth could blink, Shelly threw open the door and stomped down the stairs.
“Dinner’s almost ready, Shelly,” Elizabeth called after her.
“I’m not hungry.”
The door swung closed and Elizabeth sighed. Now the door was all black with a grayish white fingerprint in the center of it. “How is that art?”
Alex squeezed her shoulders sympathetically. “It’s not too bad.”
Geoffrey left the stove, grabbed something from the top of Shelly’s backpack, and handed it to Elizabeth. “It’s probably inspired by this.”
Elizabeth flipped over the old paperback and read the back. The fingerprint represented the light at the end of the tunnel. Apparently, Shelly was stuck pretty deep for her light to be as small as a fingerprint on a tall, black door. A chill rose over Elizabeth’s flesh, making every goose pimple stand up. She shivered. “Why is she reading about teen suicide?”
“She said her teacher assigned it to give kids an idea of how dark days are misguiding. That there are more people who love you and will grieve for you than you think.” Geoffrey went back to the stove and stirred the chili.
Elizabeth looked from the book’s title to the door.
It was a good thing the teacher was trying to teach. Still… to have a teenager dwell on suicide was scary. Elizabeth frowned and tapped the book against her hand. “Is that chili ready, Geoffrey? I should take her a bowl.”
“Shelly?” Elizabeth found the bottom step in the pitch dark and gingerly lowered her foot to the basement floor. She held one hand out to guide her way, feeling around the boxes and piles. There really was too much stuff down here. It needed to be
weeded out, because the last thing she wanted Shelly to feel was like just another piece of worthless junk. “Shelly?”
Something rustled a few feet ahead of her, then a small lamp snapped on. Shelly leaned back in her bed and scowled at Elizabeth. “I said I wasn’t hungry.”
“I know.” Elizabeth eased through the narrow walkway to the bed, thankful for the small glow of light, and handed Shelly the bowl. “But after smelling it all this time, I thought you’d be curious how it tasted. Besides, you wouldn’t want to hurt Geoffrey’s feelings.”
Shelly snorted. “I’ve seen enough to doubt he has any.”
“Everyone has feelings. Even if they’re locked up tight.” The living space in this room was miniscule. Between Shelly’s bed, Veronica’s crib, and the small computer desk, complete with ancient computer, there really wasn’t much room down here.
Shelly dipped a spoonful into her mouth and eyed Elizabeth speculatively. “He showed you the book, huh?”
“Yeah.” Elizabeth eased back on one hand, leaning toward the foot of the bed so she could watch Shelly better. “Have you thought about committing suicide?”
“What self-respecting teenager hasn’t?” Elizabeth gave her a look and she grinned. “You know it’s true.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “But you’re angry. And not in the typical teenager way.”
“Well, yeah.” Shelly’s voice had a “duh” tone. “Look at how much you’re changing everything. You’re rearranging everyone.”
“I’m cleaning up the house to make it better for all of you to grow up in.” Where was the harm in that? Or did Shelly fear change?
“But we’re not going to grow up here. And the more you change everything to make us feel at home, the more it’s going to hurt when we leave here.” Shelly spoke in a practical, matter-of-fact tone.
Elizabeth frowned. “Why won’t you grow up here?”
“Because even though you haven’t faced the truth, I have. We’re all about to be split up. The baby and toddlers will be adopted out first. Kevin next. The twins will be separated.” Shelly shrugged like it was a foregone conclusion.
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