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Remy moved farther into the room. It was set up to resemble a living room; a couple of couches and chairs — both recliners and rockers — covered in vinyl made to imitate leather. Soft lamp lighting and framed Monet prints from the Museum of Fine Arts gift shop down the street completed the attempt at coziness. The TV sat on top of a large, dark, pressed-wood cabinet, a VCR on the shelf beneath, its clock perpetually blinking twelve a.m. The local news was just wrapping up the weather — cooler, with a chance of rain by the end of the week.
He knelt beside his wife's chair as she drifted deeper into sleep, and touched her arm lovingly. Madeline lifted her head to look at him, her eyes dull, momentarily void of recognition.
"How are you ever going to keep up with current events if you're dozing?" he asked her and smiled, before leaning in to kiss her cheek.
The life was suddenly there, the dullness in her gaze burned away by the familiar mischievous twinkle. She smiled, reaching up to touch his face with an aged hand.
"Caught me," she said softly. "Now you'll make me go to bed first again."
It had been their nighttime custom; whoever fell asleep first while relaxing in front of the television had to warm the bed, while the other took out the dog, turned off the lights, and locked the doors. Madeline had been the champion bed warmer.
"How're you feeling today, hon? You look better."
She gri
"You're late. Joan said you were caught in traffic. Was there an accident?" She started to stand.
Remy took her arm, helping her up. "No accident. Just the usual stuff. I was on a case longer than I anticipated." He guided her around the chair and toward the doorway.
"Anything interesting?" she asked, pausing, peering down toward the lobby, then back up the hall toward her room.
"Nothing all that unusual, until today." He was thoughtful as they slowly made their way up the hall. "The man I was watching killed himself and his lover in a motel on the Jamaica Way. No, let me correct that. I thought they were dead, but I was wrong."
Madeline stopped and stared at her husband. "You thought they were dead but you were wrong? What's the matter with you, Remy — getting senile?" She chuckled and patted his hand where he held her arm.
When they reached her room, Remy escorted his wife to the high-backed chair by her bed and helped her to sit.
"It was the oddest thing, Maddie," he said as he sat on the bed beside her. "I confronted him after he'd shot his lover. He talked about dreams of the end of the world. Claimed that was why he'd shot the woman and pla
He stared through the window at the day care next door. It was di
"But you know what the strangest part was, Mad-die?" Remy asked. "He said he could see me. That he knew what I was." He looked at his wife and saw confusion on her face.
"Well, did you want him to see you?" she asked. "Did you let him — to stop him from hurting himself?"
Remy shook his head slightly. "No. It wasn't like that at all. It was as if he could see right through me."
Madeline looked disturbed, turning the wedding ring upon her finger. It was something she had always done when something upset her. Remy reached down, took her hand in his, and squeezed it affectionately.
"Hey, don't worry about it. The guy was pretty out of it. Maybe it was just coincidence that he saw me as an angel."
Maddie squeezed back, gazing lovingly into his eyes. "You're my angel and no one else's, do you understand? I can't bear the thought of sharing you with anyone."
She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed it, and he knelt beside her chair, throwing his arms around her small frame. He felt her arms enfold him in a fragile embrace and was painfully reminded of a time when she could easily have hugged the life from him.
"You won't have to," he whispered in her ear. "I'm yours, now and forever." Remy stroked her gray hair and remembered the vitality of her youth.
When he'd first opened his agency back in 1945, he'd placed an advertisement in the paper for an office manager. Madeline had been one of the first applicants, fresh from secretarial college and overflowing with enthusiasm. And she was beautiful, inside and out. In their fifty-plus years together, Madeline Dexter had taught this earthbound entity more about being alive than he'd learned in six thousand years of wandering the planet.
He leaned in close and kissed her gently on the mouth. "I love you," he said, looking into his wife's gaze. It was his turn now to bring her hand to his mouth and gently plant a kiss upon it.
They were silent for a while, each basking in the warmth and love of the other.
"How's the baby?" Madeline asked, finally. "Does he miss me? You're not letting him have too much people food, are you?"
The baby was their four-year-old Labrador retriever, Marlowe, that they treated as if he were their child. They had had another dog, a German shepherd who went by the name Hammett, who lived to be more than fifteen. It was absolutely devastating to Madeline — and to Remy, surprisingly — when the old dog finally died. It took them years to get another, the memory of how much they loved Hammett, and how badly it hurt when he was gone, keeping them from making the next emotional investment.
It was the sad fact that they would never have children together that eventually swayed them to take another animal into their home. They had such an abundance of love that they wanted… needed to share it with another life. There was nothing he would have loved more than to give her a child, but it wasn't meant to be. Others of his kind had done such things over the ages, and the results had been less then normal. There was something seriously wrong with children produced by the mating of human and angel.
Something unstable.
Remy gri
They both chuckled, Madeline reaching into her sweatshirt pocket for a wrinkled-up Kleenex. She wiped at her nose.
"I want you to bring him next time you visit," she said. "I need to see my boy."
Time was growing short for the woman Remy loved. It was something they were both very aware of — after all, no one came to Cresthaven to get well.
"I'll do that," he said softly.
She squeezed his hand and covered a feigned yawn with the other. "I'm tired, Remy. Would you mind? I think I'd like to lie down now."
He helped her to the bed, removing her slippers and swinging her legs onto the mattress.
"Do you want me to help you get undressed?"
She gave him a sly look. "Always at the most inopportune times," she told him weakly. "Maybe if I get a good night's sleep, I'll take you up on your offer tomorrow."
Gri
"You go home. I'm sure the baby is ravenous and desperate to empty his tank. I'll see you both tomorrow."
Madeline waved him away and adjusted the pillow beneath her head.
She was getting weaker, and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it.
Remy leaned down and kissed her long on the lips.
"I love you. I'll see you tomorrow, then."
"I love you too. And don't forget Marlowe," she ordered as he turned to leave.
He was just stepping into the hallway when he heard her call his name.