Almost An Angel Read online

  Whoa. That was a line he hadn’t anticipated.

  “I can’t let Amy find me here.”

  “She’s dead to the world,” he assured her. “She could sleep through a category-five hurricane.”

  “But eventually she’ll wake up,” Eliza pointed out. “I can’t be here when she does.”

  Amy never woke in the middle of the night. Surely Eliza could stay a few more hours. They could spend at least part of the night together. They could lie in each other’s arms, kiss, touch. He could arouse her slowly. He could make her come with his fingers, his mouth. They could talk. They could retire to his bed, which was a lot more comfortable than the sofa.

  The bed he’d shared with Sheila for twelve years.

  One of those lines he’d crossed rose high enough to clothes-line him. Had he betrayed Sheila? Betrayed her memory?

  “I wish I could drive you home,” he said. He couldn’t, not with Amy asleep upstairs and Eliza’s car parked in his driveway.

  “Really, Conor, I’m okay.” He sensed that she was talking about more than birth control now. She was talking about independence and the fact that she was okay with what they’d just done, that she hadn’t expected him to drive her home, let alone invite her into his bed.

  Then again, after so many years of monogamy, he was pathetically ignorant about what women expected.

  Surely Eliza expected something. A few words about how much she meant to him, how much this meant, how much he wished he could offer her but couldn’t. Words implying a commitment he wasn’t in any position to make.

  Instead, he said, “Amy wants you to help decorate the tree tomorrow.”

  “I’ll see,” she murmured, and he felt as if she was slipping through his fingers. She literally did, easing out of his embrace, pushing her hair from her face, searching the floor for her clothing.

  He’d only just had her, and now he was losing her. And he realized that, angel or no, Eliza Powell was still a complete mystery to him.

  Chapter Eight

  I’M OKAY, she told herself as she pulled into the garage of her condo. Snow was falling more heavily, starting to stick, but she’d felt compelled to drive home through it. She couldn’t stay at the Malone house. Not just because of Amy but because of Conor.

  He was in mourning. He was in need. As a shrink, she knew what was going on: two lonely people, drawn to each other, going way too far.

  Her body ached in unexpected places—her insteps, her spine, the backs of her knees, the hinges of her hips. The hollow of her heart. She entered the condo, and it took all her willpower not to race back to her snow-dusted car and retrace the route through town to Conor’s house, where a fire glowed in the fireplace and a beautiful evergreen filled a corner of the living room. Where an unbearably sexy man had briefly made her feel reborn.

  Where a little girl slept at the top of the stairs.

  After the debacle with Matt, she’d resolved not to fall in love again, at least not for a while. Her heart still required healing. She wasn’t ready to trust.

  Yet she was falling in love with Conor Malone. Whether or not she trusted him, she loved him.

  Big mistake. Bad move. The curse of being a psychologist was that she knew too well how the human mind worked. She was Conor’s first woman after the death of his wife. She was the bridge back to normal for him, the path he’d take to the land of physical and emotional wholeness. The first person you had sex with after losing a partner of long-standing was the rebound, the event that assured you you could return to the land of healthy adulthood.

  That first person proved that you could be complete again. But she wasn’t the person you wound up being complete with. She was just the therapy that got you where you ultimately wanted to be.

  How many times had she told Conor she was all right? Had she only been trying to convince herself?

  If so, she’d failed. She wasn’t all right. She was alone in her cold, sterile townhouse, thinking about Christmases past with her family, about all she’d hoped Christmas would be this year with Matt and their friends in Albany. About a little girl who wanted her mother back for Christmas, and a man who wanted his daughter to be happy and well.

  Who wanted Eliza? She couldn’t think of anyone.

  *

  THE PHONE in her office issued a bird-like twitter shortly after lunch on Monday. Why phones couldn’t ring the way they used to, she couldn’t say, but the airy, fluty sound her phone emitted somehow didn’t sound legitimate.

  Then again, everything aggravated her Monday morning: the IEP’s she’d evaluated, the two boys with ADHD she’d had sessions with, the second-grade genius who was already doing basic trigonometry and probably should be bumped up to middle school, but was nowhere near mature enough to handle such a leap. Eliza had spent a half-hour on the phone with the girl’s mother, discussing private-school options and consoling the woman, who lamented that being too smart was almost as much of a handicap as being too slow.

  Throughout the morning, memories of the weekend thrummed in Eliza’s skull like a low-grade migraine. She’d wanted to return to the Malone house Sunday to decorate the tree. She’d wanted to spend more time with Amy, and especially with Conor. She’d wanted things she shouldn’t want, and when she’d seen his name pop up on her caller-ID several times Sunday morning and afternoon, she’d refused to answer her phone, aware of how easy it would be to say yes to anything Conor suggested.

  Instead, she’d driven to the nursery and purchased a wreath. Not as satisfying as a tree, but at least it held the promise of Christmas in its curving holly branches. She could survive this holiday, she assured herself. She didn’t need Matt or her mother or her brother—or, especially, the Malones—to celebrate Christmas.

  She lifted her phone. “Eliza Powell,” she said.

  “Hi, this is Linda Rodriguez,” the fourth-grade teacher’s voice came through the phone. “I’m sending Amy Malone to your office. We’ve had another incident.”

  No! Eliza wanted to shout. She didn’t want to see Amy. She couldn’t see her. Amy was Rosalyn Hoffman’s patient, not Eliza’s.

  But every student at the Adams School was Eliza’s patient to some extent. She squared her shoulders and suppressed a sigh. “Did she hit someone again?”

  “No. If she had, I would have sent her to the principal’s office this time. But she got into an argument with some classmates about the existence of Santa during lunch, and she’s been sobbing uncontrollably for at least ten minutes. I can’t calm her down. Erin Murphy is accompanying her to your office. They’re good friends.”

  “Okay,” Eliza said. “Thanks for the heads-up.” She said goodbye to the teacher and pulled up Amy’s file on her computer.

  Minutes later, her door opened and Amy was led in by a worried-looking blond girl. Amy’s face was red, her eyes swollen. She was sobbing so hard she’d developed hiccups. “She’s very sad,” the blond girl said.

  “I can see that.” Eliza reached for the box of tissues she kept on her desk, placed it in front of Amy and plucked a tissue from the slot for her.

  “My mom didn’t die, but she doesn’t live with us anymore,” the blond girl said. “We’ve got a step-mother now. She’s great. I think Amy needs a step-mother, too.”

  Thank you for that diagnosis, Eliza almost retorted. Amy’s friend might well be right, but Eliza didn’t want to think of Amy in the context of a step-mother.

  Amy mopped her face with the tissue, reducing it to a soggy wad that she placed on the corner of Eliza’s desk. Eliza nodded to Erin Murphy, who backed toward the door, her gaze lingering on her weeping buddy. At least Amy had a close, caring friend. Not the same thing as a loving mother, or even a step-mother, but it would help.

  Once she and Amy were alone, Eliza resumed her seat, swiveling her chair to face Amy and wheeling it close. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Can you tell me?”

  “I didn’t hit anyone,” Amy swore between sobs and hiccups. “I’m being ve-very g-good.”
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br />   Eliza wanted to tell her to stop worrying about being so flipping good, but first she had to find out what had happened to precipitate this meltdown. “Did someone hit you?”

  “N-no.” Amy released a stuttering breath. “But they told me there’s no Santa Claus. They said the pr-presents come from p-people like your parents, or your grandma.” Another shaky heave of breath. “My daddy can’t give me my mom. That’s the only thing I want for Chr-Christmas, and if there’s no Santa, I can’t have it.” She punctuated her statement with a heartbreaking whimper.

  What Amy had said was true. Eliza couldn’t tell her otherwise. Yet she had to convince Amy that although her mother wouldn’t come back to her, she could still find joy in life, and in the holiday.

  “I really want to believe in Santa,” Amy said, then sniffled.

  Eliza handed her another tissue. “Do you know what a myth is?” she asked.

  Amy peered at her through watery eyes. “Something Greek?”

  Eliza smiled. “The Greeks had many myths. So did the Vikings. So did the Romans. So do we.”

  Amy blew her nose. She had stopped crying, thank goodness.

  “A myth is a story we believe because we want to. Logically, we know it can’t be true. But believing it makes us happy. So we accept that it’s not true, but we believe it anyway because it fulfills an emotional need inside us. Maybe it answers a question we can’t answer any other way. The Greeks believed Apollo carried the sun across the sky in a chariot because they could see that the sun appeared in different places in the sky, but they didn’t know how or why that happened. They created a myth. And we create myths to help us figure things out, too. Or simply because they make us happy. Santa Claus is a happy myth. We believe in him because it’s fun. But logically, we know he doesn’t exist.” She eyed Amy carefully, trying to gauge how well this explanation was working.

  Amy mulled it over. “If—if—if Santa doesn’t exist, how can my mom be his angel?”

  That question struck Eliza as a bit more theological than she felt comfortable with. She wished she could bring in a priest or minister to assist her. “As I understand it,” she said, “angels aren’t attached to any one person. Or God. They exist in heaven and watch over the people they love.” Another myth, she thought, but she couldn’t take everything away from Amy.

  “I don’t want my mom in heaven. I want her here.”

  “We all have things we want that we can’t have, Amy. It’s very sad, and very hard to accept. But you’re a smart girl and you know how true this is.”

  “What do you want that you don’t have?”

  A lover I can depend on, Eliza thought. A lover I can trust. Someone I can count on to stick with me through all the rough spots in life.

  She couldn’t tell Amy that. “I lost my mother, too,” she said. “She died about six months ago.”

  “Did she die in an accident? Mine did.”

  “No,” Eliza said. “My mother had a stroke. It’s a problem with the circulation in her brain. Sometimes strokes are fatal. In her case, it was.

  “That’s sad,” Amy said. “Why aren’t you crying?”

  “Oh, I cried a lot when she died,” Eliza said. “I still miss her.”

  “I guess grown-ups don’t cry as much as children do.” Amy took another tissue and wiped her eyes again. “Is your mother an angel?”

  “I’d like to think so.” Eliza gathered Amy’s damp tissues and tossed them in her trash pail. “I know she can’t come back to earth and visit me, but she visits me in my memory. Whenever I miss her, I think about her. I remember her sense of humor—she had this big, booming laugh that made everyone who heard it laugh with her. She loved doing crossword puzzles. She loved her job. She was a real estate broker. She sold houses to people. She loved finding the perfect house for a family and helping them to buy it.”

  “My house is perfect,” Amy said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And she taught you how to make those cookies.”

  “And other things, too. Home-made apple sauce. Chocolate cupcakes.”

  “I love chocolate cupcakes,” Amy said, a hint of spirit infusing her voice. “Does your daddy miss her?”

  Eliza sighed. “No. My parents divorced when my brother and I were pretty young. He wasn’t really a part of our lives. But my mother—she was the center of my life. When she died, my brother and I were very sad.”

  “I wish I had a brother,” Amy said. “Then we could be sad together.”

  “It helps,” Eliza agreed.

  “I think I’m okay now,” Amy said.

  Her eyes, no longer leaking tears, were still a little puffy. Her cheeks were flushed. “Would you like to wash your face before you go back to your class?” Eliza asked. “You can use the sink in the nurse’s office across the hall if you don’t want to go to the rest room.”

  “Okay.” Amy stood slowly. “I missed most of recess.”

  “That’s better than missing important classwork.”

  “I don’t think so,” Amy said, then cracked a tiny, heart-wrenching smile.

  It took all Eliza’s willpower not to give the girl a hug. But not only couldn’t she hug Amy, she couldn’t bake with her anymore. Not if Amy was going to be her patient.

  If the past few minutes were any indication, she was.

  Chapter Nine

  THIS TIME, when Conor was informed that his daughter had undergone a session with the school psychologist, he wasn’t Skyping with a potential customer on the West Coast. He was brainstorming with two of his software engineers, trying to come up with an effective way to outsmart a botnet they hadn’t encountered before. He heard his phone ringing through his open office door, and when he glanced at Marion’s desk, she gestured with her hand that he should go back to his office and take the call.

  That wasn’t good news. But Conor was in the right frame of mind for bad news. He’d already snapped at one of his marketing people over a delay in an ad campaign he wanted to have up and running with the start of the new year. He’d been grumpy all day yesterday with Amy, too; his attempt to fake good cheer as they’d decorated their tree had taken a lot out of him.

  Once again, he was forced to admit what a lousy father he was. He should have been focused on his daughter, but all he could think about yesterday—and today—was that Eliza had made love with him and then run away, uninterested in pursuing anything further. She wasn’t even answering his calls.

  He could take a hint, but this was one hint he resented with a deep passion. It looked as if he would be as disappointed as Amy this holiday season.

  So he wasn’t sure what to think when he grabbed the cordless handset of his phone, barked, “Conor Malone,” and heard Eliza’s voice on the other end.

  “Amy was in my office today.”

  His first, totally irrational reaction was, how come my daughter can spend time with you and I can’t? Fortunately, he kept that thought to himself. He knew the answer: his daughter was a student. He was just some guy who’d gone bonkers over the pretty school shrink.

  “No fists were involved,” Eliza assured him. “She just fell apart emotionally.”

  “Was there a reason?”

  “I think she was finally coming to terms with the truth about Santa,” Eliza said. “It hit her hard. She didn’t want to accept it, but she knew she had to.”

  Damn. His poor baby. Accepting the truth could hurt worse than a punch in the gut—or a thousand stiletto stabs to the heart. No one knew that better than Conor did.

  “I’m sorry you got dragged into it,” he said coolly. “I was going to take her to Dr. Hoffman’s this afternoon.”

  “Rosalyn Hoffman is an excellent therapist,” Eliza said. “She might offer some insights different from mine. But I did get Amy stabilized. By the time she left my office, she was smiling.”

  The last time Amy had smiled was when Eliza had been at their house. Even decorating the tree yesterday, Amy had been solemn, picking up her father’s gloomy vibes.
It seemed as if only Eliza could brighten his daughter’s mood.

  “So she doesn’t believe in Santa anymore?” he asked.

  “Not the way she did before.”

  Great. His daughter could now be as bitter and cynical as he was.

  “I had this idea, though,” Eliza said. “A way to give her something close to what she wants for Christmas.”

  “Short of reincarnation, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about it, but I can’t right now. I’ve got an afternoon full of appointments.”

  “What time would be good for you?” he asked, adopting her aloof, all-business tone.

  “My days are pretty packed this week,” she told him. “But we could talk after work.”

  “Meet me at Adler’s at four-thirty tomorrow,” he said.

  “The department store?” She sounded perplexed.

  “I’ve got to buy Amy some new pajamas. I figured I’d get her something before I pick her up from her after-school program at the Y.” Two birds with one stone, he thought. Eliza could explain little-girl sleepwear to him, and he could meet with her in an environment conducive to nothing remotely romantic.

  She still sounded bemused when she said, “All right. Four-thirty tomorrow.”

  Chapter Ten

  CONOR FOUND HER waiting for him at the Hauser Boulevard entrance to Adler’s. The two inches of snow that had fallen Sunday had been shoveled off the sidewalks surrounding the department store, leaving a clear, wide path for shoppers and browsers eager to admire the festively decorated store windows. Across the street in front of the bank, a guy in a Santa suit was clanging his bell and accepting donations. A big sign by the police station requested that people drop off toys for needy children. Conor would get Amy on board with that. Given that Christmas wasn’t going to be what she wanted, he might as well take advantage of the opportunity to teach her what Christmas was actually all about: making other children’s wishes come true.