An angel. Of course there was an angel involved. Abby felt like she’d known the angels were involved even before she started searching. And her grandparents, if they knew about this, had for twenty-eight years very carefully said nothing to her.
Officer Mawson shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You probably think I’m delusional, but you deserve to know what happened. If it weren’t for her, I never would’ve spotted you.”
“I don’t think you’re delusional,” Abby said.
“No need to sugarcoat it. Believe me, you wouldn’t be the first person to say it. I tell lots of people this story. I know how it sounds. But I know what I saw.” She nodded, emphasizing her certainty. “An angel. Never seen one before, never seen once since, but that day, I saw an angel. She saved your life.”
“You saved my life as much as she did.” It was Officer Mawson who deserved the credit, not just the angel who materialized against her windshield, not Elle, who could have stopped that angel back then and saved herself a lot of trouble all these years later. “Thank you for stopping me from running into traffic.”
“It was lucky for you that you figured out how to get out of the apartment. I guess you were old enough to know how to open a door, but if that door had had a deadbolt or a chain you couldn’t reach, you never would have been able to get out on your own. The neighbors might’ve heard you crying eventually, if you were lucky. Or you’d have starved to death in there.”
Abby didn’t tell her that she hadn’t left on her own. That she was leaning over her mother’s body on the tile floor, begging her to wake up, pushing open one eyelid—behavior that usually got her in trouble—when the shiny lady appeared and led her away. “How long do you think I was in the apartment with…you know…with…my mother…after she died?”
“Not long at all. It was like you knew right away that you needed to get out of there. That she wasn’t taking a nap. Seems to me the angels were looking out for you.”
* * *
After Officer Mawson left, Abby propped herself up against the passenger-side door of Gwynne’s car and kicked at a crumpled hamburger wrapper on the sidewalk. She cracked her knuckles, one finger at a time, going through the sequence from pinky finger to thumb and then back again, seeing if she could get any more pops out of them, while Gwynne, saint that she was, waited patiently for her to spit out what was bothering her. Being around someone she didn’t have to pretend with, who didn’t think it was weird she saw angels, was such a relief, but she was so used to dodging the topic that it was hard to switch gears.
“You know when I said at Penelope’s wedding that an angel asked me for help?”
“Yeah?”
“She wants me to help repair the bridge that connects earth with the Angelic Realm.”
“There’s a bridge?”
“But the catch is, the only way I can help is if I kill myself.”
Gwynne leaned next to her against the car. She looked surprisingly calm, like Abby had presented her with a complicated math problem to solve instead of a shocking, real-life demand. “That makes no sense. How helpful can you be if you’re dead?”
“Um, well, the thing is, she said I’d turn into an angel.”
Gwynne shook her head like she could shake the thought out of her mind. “And you believe her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d still be dead.”
“Not if she’s right.”
Gwynne’s eyes widened. “Please tell me you’re not seriously considering this.”
“Of course not.” She couldn’t deny there was something appealing about the idea, but she’d never do it. She wasn’t crazy.
“Good.” Gwynne didn’t look completely convinced.
“Do you think I’m hallucinating?” That was the million-dollar question, and she hated to ask it, but if she was going to bring this up with anyone, it had to be Gwynne. Anyone else would tell her she was hearing imaginary voices.
Gwynne hesitated, and Abby braced herself for a suggestion to seek professional help. But that would mean Gwynne needed help too, wouldn’t it?
“Relax.” Gwynne bumped her shoulder with a reassuring playfulness. Leave it to Gwynne to be goofy even when she was serious. “I have no doubt the angel is real. But—”
“But?”
“But that doesn’t mean you should listen to her. She has no right to ask for your life.”
“I’m not planning on giving it to her. But I do want to help if there’s some other way.”
“I’m all for being helpful, but why?”
“I followed that angel out of the apartment. She saved my life. Maybe I owe them.”
“You don’t owe them your life.”
“I do if they saved me,” Abby argued, not sure which side she was on. “A life for a life.”
“That’s not how it works. If they wanted you dead they shouldn’t have saved you when you were three. I don’t understand why they bothered.”
“Thanks for caring,” Abby huffed.
“Besides, that’s what they want you to think. They want you to think you owe them, and should therefore do whatever they ask.”
Gwynne was being unreasonable. “They saved me because they believe I’m one of them.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I thought they were your friends.”
Gwynne’s face hardened. “I don’t trust them.”
“Why not?”
Gwynne kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, not looking at her. “You saw them at the hospital, didn’t you? In my mother’s room? You must have seen them.”
“Yes,” Abby said cautiously. Ever since Megan McLaren had pulled her aside one day and warned her that Gwynne was having a rough time because her sister and her mother were dead, Abby had avoided asking her about it, but she’d love to know why she’d sent those angels away.
“The angels could have done something to save my mother,” Gwynne told her, seething. “But they didn’t. They didn’t save my sister, either.”
“It’s okay to be angry,” Abby said.
She pulled Gwynne into her arms, but Gwynne pushed away and escaped into the car. Abby followed her to the driver’s side and Gwynne actually scooted to the passenger’s side to get away from her. Abby clambered in after her, expecting Gwynne to order her out of the driver’s seat, but Gwynne only looked out the window.
“It’s okay to be angry at them,” Abby repeated.
“I’m not angry at them,” Gwynne said. “I am angry at myself.”
“For not being able to save your family yourself?”
“For deluding myself into thinking any of this was real. Angels and energy and fixing things with my so-called abilities.”
“For failing.”
“For wasting my life on this stuff.”
The crazy thing was, Gwynne still talked to angels, still believed healing could happen through faith alone, still wanted to help the people who visited her at the spa. She could have left the healing profession completely, but she chose not to. She chose to take a job where she was surrounded by people who believed angelic healing was normal. Sure, she said she took the job as a favor for Megan, but if she’d really wanted to, she could have said no.
“I know you wanted to save their lives,” Abby said, “but psychic powers don’t make you God. You did your best.”
“The one time I really needed the angels’ help, they didn’t do a damn thing.”
“So you’re mad at them.”
“I am angry,” Gwynne ground out word by word, “at myself.”
“For believing in angels.”
The bitterness in Gwynne’s eyes was hard to watch. “Yes.”
Abby touched her shoulder. Gwynne stiffened, and Abby dropped her hand to her side. But she wanted so much to reassure her that without even thinking about it, she reached for her again.
It was a stupid move. Gwynne took her hand and peeled it off her shoulder and placed it on the steering wheel. She was gentle about it, but the rebuff was clear.
“I don’t want to do this right now,” Gwynne said.
“Okay.” Abby clenched the wheel and stared straight ahead, wishing she could disappear the way angels did. Such a great way to get out of uncomfortable situations, especially when they were caused by your own crummy timing.
Gwynne slapped her keys on the dashboard. Abby glanced at the keys but didn’t take them. She wanted Gwynne to want her to drive because she trusted her, not because she was too upset to trust herself.
“I still want to be friends,” Gwynne said.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Not that. “You’re breaking up with me already?”
“It’s not going to work out. And the sooner we realize that…”
Gwynne didn’t mean it. She was upset. They’d talk later and they’d kiss and make up. They’d…
“I’m sorry,” Gwynne said.
“Okay.” Abby took the keys and started the ignition, wondering if she’d be able to pull out of their parallel parking space without jerky, telltale movements.
“You okay?”
“Dandy,” Abby spat out. “You?”
Gwynne made an indecipherable noise that sounded vaguely like assent, but could easily have meant just about anything.
Abby maneuvered the car onto the road and blew through a stop sign as she peeled away. They weren’t going to kiss and make up. And it was going to be a long drive home.
Chapter Twelve
Abby followed a trail of solar lights along a well-groomed path through the trees on the grounds of Sea Salt in search of the hot tubs Gwynne had grumpily suggested. Abby had been stretching her back and massaging her shoulders after a long afternoon of playing music at the spa when Gwynne had thrust a fluffy towel into her arms and sent her in this direction. She wished Gwynne had offered to rub her shoulders instead, but apparently she was serious about them not touching. Probably serious about the breakup too.
Before she got very far, she ran into Dara Sullivan, who was holding a tree branch in front of her like it was a dowsing rod and taking stiff, awkward steps.
Dara spotted her and let the branch drop to her side. “Are you here for the energy?”
Abby had no idea what she was talking about. “I heard there were hot tubs.” She held up her towel in explanation.
“Just follow the path,” Dara said. “You’ll find them.”
“Thanks.”
“This your first time here?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m surprised Gwynne’s not with you. I thought she’d want to show you Angel Rock herself. Isn’t she off work yet?”
The last thing she wanted to talk about with Dara was Gwynne Abernathy—Dara had a crush on Gwynne, after all—and angels came in a close second. But she was curious. “What’s Angel Rock?”
“This.” Dara pointed to a large, upright boulder covered in lichen. “Gwynne thinks there’s some kind of portal here that the angels use to travel back and forth between their world and ours. Megan agrees with her. So I was thinking, if I hang out here enough, eventually I’ll see an angel, right? But no luck so far.”
“Can’t hurt to try,” Abby said, flabbergasted. Where were all these people who believed in angels when she was growing up? This was certainly a conversation she never thought she’d have.
“Gwynne says it’s one of those things where either you can see them or you can’t. She has such a negative attitude. I think she just doesn’t
want
me to try, and I have no idea why.”
Abby bit her tongue.
Dara kept going. “Megan thinks I can learn. She says this place is a hot spot for healing energy and it can help me, and I’ll take all the help I can get because my hands are in so much pain I don’t know how much longer I can work as a massage therapist. I need to learn hands-off healing skills. I already do Reiki, which is kind of like what Gwynne does, but I need to get better at it. I need to learn to heal physical problems like Gwynne can. She’s amazing. She could make millions if she opened a sunburn clinic by the beach, but she’d rather spend her time healing more serious problems. At least she used to. Which is important, I mean, of course she should be healing serious diseases if she can. But me, I’d be happy if I could get good enough to heal sunburn. It may seem minor to her, but it would be a real accomplishment for me. Or toenail fungus.”
Abby couldn’t help glancing at Dara’s flip-flopped feet. They looked healthy enough. From a distance.
“Don’t laugh. Do you have any idea how many people are embarrassed to go barefoot because they have toenail fungus that won’t go away? If I could kill toenail fungus, I’d make millions.” When Abby didn’t respond, she shrugged. “Or at least make a living, that’s all I need.”
“Or you could become a podiatrist,” Abby suggested.
“Sounds like something Gwynne would say.” Dara dismissed the idea with a flick of her dowsing rod. “But it would never work. Megan understands. She’s been coming here with me to help me practice my ability to sense subtle energies and work on a psychic level.”
Dara was certainly committed. If this was the direction she wanted to take her career in, Abby didn’t see why Gwynne wouldn’t want her to succeed. “How’s the practicing going?”
“Great!” Dara said. “Great.” Her shoulders slumped. “Not so great,” she admitted. “But it beats sitting at home in front of the TV worrying about my career and wishing I wasn’t single.”
But Gwynne had said…“I thought you were seeing someone.”
“What? Oh.” Her face fell. “That’s just something I tell Gwynne. I don’t want her to think I’m pining for her, you know? I don’t want her to think I’m a loser.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t think that.”
Dara fiddled with the giant quartz crystal she wore on a leather cord around her neck. “Yeah, because of my fake girlfriend.”
“No, because she’s not like that.”
Dara looked at her blankly. “Not that I would say no if she ever did ask me out, but I know that’s never going to happen. I know she doesn’t want me.”
If Dara only knew how much time Abby and Gwynne spent together—if she knew they’d kissed—she wouldn’t be telling her all this. Of course, after the kiss, Gwynne had rejected her. She sounded like she meant it too, but that didn’t mean…Because how could she kiss her and then turn around and say she didn’t want her to touch her?
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Dara said, reading only one facet of the expression on Abby’s face. “I’ve moved on. I’m open to dating other people.” She used her branch to scratch circles and zigzags in the dirt. “Besides, Gwynne has her eye on someone else.”
Abby felt a flash of embarrassment. Dara knew? Dara didn’t know. She didn’t want Dara to know, because she didn’t want to make her feel bad—if Abby and Gwynne had a salvageable relationship—or, if they didn’t, to bond over both being rejected by the same woman. She didn’t know what was up with Gwynne, and if she didn’t know, there was no way an outside observer could know, no matter what Dara thought she saw.