Chapter Twenty-three

He knows the night is growing colder. He can see evidence of the chill, even though he can’t feel it. The sky has turned a dense black, the way it often does in the waning days of November. Trees huddle together alongside the roadway, and if he listens very carefully, he can hear them whispering among themselves, shivering at the cold. He wonders why he’s never heard them talking before.

But now he hears so many different things—the percussive patter of raindrops when they hit the spiked top of the picket fence, the gentle thud of a fallen leaf. Even the starlight makes a sound, a low buzzing drone that reminds him of the bees that gather in her rose garden in the first full days of summer. Everything makes a sound, it seems, but the porch swing, which hangs heavy and still beneath him. And him. He is the quietest thing of all.

The neighborhood animals know he is here. On nights like this, when it is cold and dark, they creep past the house, their golden eyes trained on him, their hackles up. When he sees them, he thinks he feels something, a tingling in his fingertips that feels like memory, as if he could recall how soft they’d been, how comforting it had once been to pet a household cat. But the tingling is imaginary. He knows he has no real sense of touch anymore. He just remembers because it feels good to remember, and he has nothing else to do.

In the distance, a car turns toward the house, its headlights scouting ahead in shafts of yellow-bright light. When the light touches them, the trees go still. The car whips around and parks along the curb. The lights cut off.

He hears the sound of a door opening, then the easy rhythm of footsteps as Angel walks around to the other door, opening it. In the weak interior light, he sees Madelaine sitting in the passenger seat.

She climbs out of the car. The streetlamp casts a net of golden light around her, and the image reminds him of icons he has seen. She is smiling for the first time in days. He knows instinctively it is Angel who has given her back her smile.

It should hurt, seeing her look at another man with love in her eyes, and so he waits for the pain to hit, but it never comes, and the absence surprises him.

He knows he can still feel pain. He’d felt it earlier today when Madelaine had come out of the house. Her eyes had been puffy and red from crying, and he knew she’d been crying about him. The image of her standing there on the porch, wearing his old shirt, had made him hurt. Deep, deep inside him, in the place where his heart used to be.

But now she is smiling, and so radiantly beautiful that he finds it difficult to draw an even breath. She seems to float up the walkway toward him, her head cocked toward Angel, her beautiful face cast in golden light.

He realizes all at once that they look young and happy, both of them. It is the way they used to look at each other all the time, the way she never looked at him.

Strangely, the knowledge warms him, makes him feel light enough to float off the porch swing. A prickling sensation moves through him—this time he almost believes that it is real. It starts in his toes and works upward. It feels as if pure white-hot sunlight is slipping through his veins, illuminating him from the inside. He gets an almost giddy sense of weightlessness.

He expects to float away, and when he doesn’t, he looks down, and finds that more of him is gone. From the waist down, he is nothing but shadow steeped on shadow.

It surprises and confuses him, the slow disappearing of his body, but it doesn’t scare him. It feels … right.

When he looks back up, he sees that Madelaine is on the porch beside him. He can hear the hushed sound of her voice as she talks to his brother, though he can’t make out her words. Angel’s answer comes in a droning sound not unlike the whispering of the trees.

He wants to be near them, to wave his hand and say I’m here, see me.

She opens the door and flicks on the porch light, and there, in the golden glow, he sees a shadow standing alongside them.

He knows somehow that it is the shadow of the man he once was. Mesmerized, he watches himself slip into his brother’s shadow and stand there, close enough to touch them.

It feels so right to be there in his brother’s shadow, a part of Angel and yet separate. He can feel himself relaxing, easing back into the porch swing. A relieved sigh slips from his lips, and at the sound, a bird flaps its wings and soars from the apple tree in the front yard.

He knows at last what he has been waiting for, and the wait is almost over.

Lina looked up at the sky, and felt as if a whole new world had opened up for her. She didn’t know why exactly. It was the same old night sky she’d been seeing since she was a kid, the same old stars. But tonight she noticed them in a way she never had before. The Milky Way was a smeary wash of gray-white light, dappled with twinkling stars. As she lay there, staring upward, a star shot across the heavens, leaving a glittering trail of light before it disappeared.

“Make a wish,” Zach said.

Lina smiled. Jett wouldn’t have been caught dead saying anything as corny as that. Yet even as she noticed the geekiness of the statement, something about it warmed her. The more she thought about it, the more whimsical and fun it became, almost a game.

She rolled onto her side and studied him. He lay stretched out beside her, his arms crossed behind his head. Sandy blond hair fell away from his face. She could see the starlight reflected in his eyes, and she thought dreamily that it was fitting—for it was he who’d shown her the magic in a night sky.

He turned to look at her and gave her a slow, sleepy smile. “Did you make a wish?”

She almost touched him then, but he’d never given her any indication that he wanted that. They’d spent the last two weeks together—eating lunch, hanging out at study hall, waiting for the bus. They talked about everything, about how it was lonely to be sixteen sometimes and about how parents had a hard time understanding. It was Zach who first made Lina question her feelings for her mother. He’d said it easily, on a night just like this one, when they’d sat on the bleachers at the twenty-yard line. She didn’t think he meant to change her views, he was just talking, and she listened.…

“I remember when the hospital called,” he’d said, leaning back into the bench seats behind them. “One minute my folks were there, flipping me shit about my hair and my clothes and my grades, and the next minute they were gone. Just poof! you’re alone.”

She’d leaned closer to him, not knowing what to say.

“I’d give up everything, Lina—everything—just to hear my mom bitch at me one more time.”

Lina remembered the last hurtful things she’d said to Francis, and how she’d never gotten a chance to apologize, to tell him that he was the father she’d been searching for. She knew now that sometimes life didn’t give you a second chance to apologize. Sometimes a terrible, tragic phone call ruined everything.

She loved her mother. It came to her in that instant, sweeping through her with a sudden, painful ferocity. If anything happened to her mother, Lina would want to curl up and die. And yet, she’d hurt her mother time and again, thrown stinging, hateful words at her as if she had forever to say she was sorry.

“You’re so lucky,” Zach had whispered into the darkness, his voice quiet.

She’d wanted to tell him that she felt lucky, but she felt bruised by her new maturity, ashamed by the awareness of her own selfishness. But she felt something else, too. Hope. She’d spent the last year reacting to life—being a rebellious brat to rile her mother or a foul-mouthed smoker to please Jett. Now she just wanted to be herself—whoever that was. Suddenly the world felt as if it were opening up to her, glittering and full of possibilities.

And Zach had given that to her, with nothing more than a few honest words. She’d thought about taking his hand and holding it, squeezing it to let him know she understood, but she hadn’t dared.

Now she moved just a little bit toward him, until she was close enough to see the tiny freckles on the bridge of his nose. She waited for him to look at her, but he didn’t. He just kept staring up at that sky. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought kiss me as hard as she could.

He didn’t move.

Finally she released an exasperated sigh. No wonder she was still a virgin. She couldn’t even get a guy to kiss her. She’d spent two years trying to get Jett to look twice at her, and he never had. And now Zach treated her as if she were his kid sister’s best friend.

“There’s something wrong with me,” she muttered, horrified to hear her words slip into the quiet between them.

He rolled toward her. Cocking one elbow up, he rested his cheek in his hand and smiled down at her.

She noticed how his blue eyes looked almost black at night, and how his nostrils flared just a little when he breathed. He had a face like her uncle Francis’s—the kind that invited you in and made you feel like a friend. She wanted to ask him if he thought she was pretty or fat or what, but she didn’t have the nerve, so she said nothing.

He smiled, and she got the uncomfortable feeling that he knew exactly what she was thinking. It humiliated her, the thought that her lack of self-esteem was so apparent. Nervously she tucked her hair behind her ear. “What is it?”

“You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he said.

The words made her want to cry, and she wondered if that’s what it felt like to fall in love. She wanted to know what to say—the right grown-up words—but she couldn’t find them.

“You know, the winter prom is coming up.…” he said finally. “What … what do you say we go together?”

She felt a flash of fear; maybe he was making fun of her. “We’d look like Courtney Love and Mr. Rogers.”

He laughed, and it was such a wonderful sound that she laughed right along with him. “So?”

She stared at him in awe. Her emotions were a confusing jumble, and her heart was clattering a crazy beat in her chest. “Okay.”

He gave her one of those smiles of his, slow and steady, the kind that made her throat go dry. Then he kissed her.

Lina was still walking on air an hour later when Zach drove her home. In the driveway he stopped the minivan and cut the engine. Then he came around to her side and opened the door.

She took his hand and stumbled out of the car. She wished she had the nerve to ask for another kiss, but she didn’t dare. She was afraid she’d melt into a little puddle right there alongside her mother’s rose garden.

He moved closer, gazed down at her with an intensity that made it hard to breathe. “For the dance … wear something blue—like your eyes.”

She couldn’t even answer, just nodded.

Smiling, he led her up the path to her house. Halfway to the door, she realized that her dad was sitting on the porch steps. Just sitting there in the darkness, all by himself.

Lina and Zach stopped in front of him.

Angel got slowly to his feet, dusting off his jeans and extending a hand toward Zach. “I’m Angel,” he said unnecessarily—as if he weren’t a Hollywood superstar. “Angelina’s father.”

Zach shook his hand. “I’m Zachary Owen, Mr. DeMarco. I’ll be taking Lina to the winter prom, if that’s okay with you.”

Angel laughed. “I’m not that kind of father. Any dating will have to be cleared through her mom.”

The way he shook off the responsibility stung. Lina frowned.

Zach turned to her. “Night, Lina. See you tomorrow.”

She nodded almost distractedly and watched him go, then she turned to Angel. “What are you doing out here?”

“Waiting for you.”

A warm feeling spread through her. She grinned at him. “Cool.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Come here.” He led her to the top step and they sat down side by side. The darkened front yard stretched out in front of them.

“I have something to tell you,” he said in a quiet, tentative voice that caused a flutter of apprehension in her stomach. “It might upset you.”

She turned to him. “What is it?”

He looked away from her, as if he couldn’t meet her gaze, and her anxiety arced into fear. He’s leaving, just like Mom said he would. He’s going to tell me he doesn’t want to be a dad anymore.

“It’s about my surgery,” he said.

She felt a split second of relief, then another rush of anxiety. “Are you okay?”

He smiled gently. “I’m fine. Pretty good anyway, for …” His voice fell to a whisper, and he stared at her with an intensity that was unnerving. “Pretty good for a guy who had a heart transplant.”

He looked so serious and scared that she almost laughed. “Is that your big ‘I have something to tell you’ thing? God, I thought you were dying.”

“It doesn’t gross you out?”

“Jeez, Dad, I’m a cardiologist’s kid. I grew up in the ICU. I’ll bet I know more heart recipients than you do.”

He gave her a sudden smile, then slowly it disappeared. “That’s not all of it.”

She grinned. “I know, the tabloids were right. You have an alien’s heart.”

He laughed. “Is that the newest?”

They fell silent. Lina leaned back on her elbows and stared out at the spiky black rosebushes along the picket fence.

Angel stretched out beside her. “The thing is this, Lina. I have … I mean, I got …” He drew in a shaking breath and said nothing more.

Lina turned to him. Weak porchlight bathed his face, gave his pale skin a healthy golden glow. Dark brown hair, the color of coffee, spilled away from his face, curled on the light blue denim of his collar. He stared up at the starry November sky and sighed heavily.

Lina could tell that he was having trouble. It was funny, but even a week ago, she wouldn’t have noticed something like that—an adult having trouble knowing what to say. She would have huffed impatiently and told him to spit it out, she didn’t have all day.

But everything in the last few weeks had changed her perspective. And if there was one thing she understood, it was having trouble speaking your mind. So she waited patiently, saying nothing at all.

Finally he tried again. “I’m afraid to tell you this, Lina. I don’t want to hurt you …”

She didn’t look at him. There was no need; she had his face burned into her memory. She wore it like a locket inside her heart. “Uncle Francis used to say, ‘Love hurts, Angelina-ballerina, but it also heals.’ ” She sighed wistfully, remembering all the nights she’d sat in just this spot with Uncle Francis, talking about whatever was bothering her. She used to think he’d sit there forever if she asked him to.

“You loved Franco, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I loved him.”

“What if he were sort of … still around?”

“He is,” she said quietly, “he’s in my heart. And Mom’s.”

“And mine.”

He said the words in a different tone of voice than she’d expected—almost flippant. It surprised her, the way he said it, made her wonder suddenly how Angel felt about his brother. They hadn’t seen each other in years, and Francis had never once mentioned that his brother was the notorious Angel DeMarco. “You’re making fun of me,” she said accusingly.

“No. I’m just trying to find a way to tell you some thing, and I’m not having any luck.”

“Just say it. I’m not a baby that has to be protected.”

He turned to face her. Reaching out, he took hold of her hand and placed it against his chest. She could feel the thudding rhythm beneath the soft flannel of his shirt. “Feel my heartbeat,” he said.

She nodded.

“That’s from …” He swallowed hard, looked a little sick. “That’s Francis’s heartbeat.”

It took the words a second to sink in. When they did, she yanked her hand back and blinked up at him. “A-Are you saying—”

“I have your uncle Francis’s heart inside me.”

She didn’t know how to respond.

“Lina?”

She heard the fear in his voice, and it confused her. She turned to him. For a second she stared into his concerned eyes and felt as if she were falling through an endless darkness. She thought crazily, I don’t know this man at all. He’s my father, and I don’t know him at all …

Then she realized he was scared because he cared about her. He was afraid she’d think he’d done something bad. He was afraid of her. Another tiny piece of the puzzle fell into place—love meant always being a little afraid.

She smiled at him, feeling something in that moment that was so big, so breathtakingly cool, she wanted to scream out for the sheer joy of it. “You have Francis’s heart,” she said softly.

He went so still, he seemed not to breathe. “Yes.”

She knew she held it all in the palm of her hand right then. Whatever she said next would define their relationship forever. Tears blurred her vision and she wiped them away. “I knew he wouldn’t leave me,” she whispered.

Relief flashed across his face. “You’re really something, Lina.”

Very slowly he opened his arms, and she moved into his embrace. It was the first time he’d ever hugged her, and she knew she’d never forget it, not ever. It felt like Francis … and it felt like Angel, as if they were both holding her, both of the men she loved so much.

She had no idea how long they sat there, twined together on the top step, talking about anything and everything that came to mind. But sometime around ten o’clock, about the time old Mrs. Hendicott opened her back door for the last time and tossed her tabby tomcat outside, it started to rain. Slow, plunking drops that came on a breath of unseasonably warm wind. Strangely, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Behind them, the porch swing squeaked and shot sideways, as if an unseen hand had given it a good shove. It made a whining, creaking noise. The wind picked up and whistled through the eaves, and it sounded—crazily—like Uncle Francis’s laugh.