Everafter (Kissed by an Angel) (21 page)

Lightning flashed. In the strobe-lit rain, she saw a pure white angel at the top of the monument, her arm raised and hand pointing toward heaven. No Tristan. No rope. Just an angel.

“Ivy!”

Tristan’s voice came from another direction. Ivy dropped the gun and spun around. She saw a purple shimmer hovering at the door of a mausoleum. The padlock securing the door’s latch fell to the ground. “Lacey!”

The shimmer moved away quickly as the door burst open. Ivy and Tristan ran to each other.

Tristan gathered her in his arms, sheltering her. “Oh my God! You’re safe. I was watching you, calling you. I couldn’t break through to you.”

“I thought you were dying.” Ivy cried. “I didn’t know how to save you, Tristan.”

“I love you, Ivy. I love you with my whole heart and soul. I will never let you go!”

She pressed her face against his chest. He was alive, his heart beating strongly. They had defeated Gregory at his own game. The storm was passing. They were going to make it through this.

Then Lacey shouted to them: “Get out of here. Now!”

Ivy turned and saw Lacey’s purple mist hovering at the base of the monument. Gregory had emerged from beneath the dark tree and was running toward them.

“The gun!” Tristan raced toward the statue.

Gregory got there first and snatched up the weapon, pointing it at Tristan. “Don’t move.”

Ignoring Gregory’s command, Ivy rushed forward.

“Get back, Ivy!” Tristan barked.

Gregory lowered the barrel of the gun. “No. No, let her come,” he said, his voice turning soft, insinuating. His eyes burned with a peculiar gray-green light. “Come join us, Ivy. Isn’t this nice? We’re all together again. Just like old times.”

Ivy took Tristan’s hand.

Holding the gun at chest level, Gregory began to circle them. “I have to confess, I’m disappointed,” he said. “I had planned it so well. It would have soothed my soul, Ivy, to watch you kill a dream, then despair and turn the gun on
yourself. Your devoted Tristan here—after watching you die like that, he, too, would have killed himself. And the three of us could have been together eternally. What a shame!”

Gregory stopped circling and moved toward them, backing them toward his grave. The thunder was just a low rumble now. The rain had stopped, though the branches of the massive tree still drizzled on them.

Continually stepping backward, Tristan tried to keep Ivy behind him. Suddenly, he turned his head to the side.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“The voices,” he answered just as softly.

“Telling secrets?” Gregory asked, sounding amused. “The voices know all the secrets that matter. Do you hear them, Tristan? The voices are murmuring her name,
Ivy, Ivy
.”

Goose bumps rose along Ivy’s arms.

“Who are they talking to?” Gregory baited Tristan. “You or me? Listen:
The power is within you.
”

“You have no power,” Ivy said. “You are your own parasite, Gregory. You are both hookworm and host, your self-love devouring your own soul.”

Gregory straightened like a serpent raising its head, ready to strike. Fury darkened a web of veins in his neck. His eyes burned like gray embers.

Tristan pushed Ivy away from him. “Run!” he shouted. “Run!”

Charging Gregory, he knocked the gun from his hands. He and Gregory dove for it, then Tristan grabbed the weapon and took aim.

“No!” Ivy cried.

Tristan squeezed the trigger.

“Tristan, no!”

The gun did not discharge. For a moment all three stood still.

Ivy gasped with relief. “Lacey,” she said, remembering the purple shimmer at the base of the monument—Lacey had removed the bullets.

Filled with rage, Gregory attacked Tristan. Pounding each other with fists, they tumbled onto Gregory’s grave. Gregory kneeled on Tristan and held him by the neck. His hands were strong—the same hands that had beaten and strangled others. Tristan struggled for breath and pushed back, using his own powerful arms. He shifted the balance, rolling Gregory to the side, fighting to get on top.

“Run, Ivy!” he cried out.

But Ivy didn’t move. If Tristan died a fallen angel, or if Tristan killed—
Angels, show me how to save him.

A wind rose up, blowing away the remnants of the storm. Stars shone through tattered clouds.

Ivy remembered the starlit night she had risen to Tristan. She could still feel on her lips his life-giving kiss. Tristan, forgetting his angelic nature, had loved too much
in a human way. He still did. He’d save her at the peril of his soul.

Angels, help us.

Suddenly, Ivy saw things she had never seen before. The sun waiting below the horizon. The police cars arriving at the cemetery gates. The tearing roots of the huge beech.

And Ivy knew: For Tristan to be redeemed, they had to return to what was meant to be the day that Tristan died, the breaking of their earthly bond. Somehow, Ivy had to find the courage to let go
for
him.

She heard a voice she hadn’t heard since she was a small child.
God’s love is within you.

With those words came unworldly strength. Ivy rushed forward and pushed Tristan away from Gregory. The ground quaked, rising beneath Tristan, throwing him to his knees, forcing him beyond the shadow of the tree. Then Ivy rested a hand on Gregory and pointed upward.

The tree tilted. Gregory stared at it, his mouth gaping with terror as the massive trunk and limbs pitched toward him and Ivy.

Ivy called out, “I love you Tristan, now and everafter,” then she saw through the tree to the brilliant stars.

TRISTAN CLAWED THE EARTH, TRYING TO CRAWL
across the heaving ground, but couldn’t reach Ivy. He heard her words. He watched with horror as the tree fell.

Someone sobbed.

“Everafter. Everafter,” he repeated, his heart refusing to make sense of what his eyes saw. The trunk of the beech had crushed Gregory. Ivy lay motionless, dead, her gold hair caught under a heavy limb. Bending over Ivy, Lacey cried as if her heart had broken in a million pieces.

THE TREES WERE BARE NOW, THE EXQUISITE ARCHITECTURE
of their branches etched against the town houses and high-rises lining Washington Square. Beth leaned against Will, the two of them sitting on a bench, Will drawing the NYU students and busy New Yorkers cutting through the park.

It had been the hardest three months of Beth’s life. If given the choice, she would have chosen to have both Gregory and Ivy in her world, rather than lose her friend. But the spirit of Gregory was gone—the body of
Bryan buried—and Ivy far beyond them now.

Tristan’s father, Reverend Carruthers, had been a huge help to them. He knew something about coming through bewildering grief and opening himself up to unexpected possibilities, even happiness. He and Dr. Carruthers had opened their hearts and home, taking in the falsely accused “Luke McKenna”—the evidence Ivy had pursued had exonerated him. They believed they were giving him the kind of family life he had never known before.

Maggie and Andrew were selling the big house on the hill—too many memories. They lived in town now. Philip could easily ride his bicycle to Tristan’s house, as well as to Beth’s and Will’s when they were home from college. Beth’s heart had ached for Philip and Tristan, and none of them would have made it through the loss without Lacey. Lacey had witnessed Ivy’s prayer; she had seen what Ivy saw, and had helped them make peace with Ivy’s choice.

It had been much harder for Suzanne to find peace in the loss. She had come home to a very different world than the one she’d left. She argued passionately against Ivy’s sacrifice. Little by little, Beth had been telling her the story of their summer, hoping that eventually Suzanne would understand how Ivy had followed her heart to the end and seen past Now to Everafter.

Kelsey, too, had been badly shaken by Ivy’s death, as well as the revelation of Bryan’s crimes. Like Max, Kelsey
was in the nearly impossible situation of both grieving for and being horrified by a person who had become deeply entwined in her life. She had shocked her parents by giving up her ticket to a Florida university and attending a college close to home, a school she could commute to for the first semester.

Dhanya had also surprised her parents, but, Beth thought, she probably wouldn’t have surprised Ivy with her new strength and independence. She continued with her plan to attend Wellesley, which was not so far from Boston College, where Max was going. She and Max had become close while trying to cope with Ivy’s and Bryan’s deaths. She now described herself and Max as “best friends.” Beth smiled to herself: Surprising and wonderful things could happen when you were the best of friends with a guy.

And Chase—Beth smiled again—was Chase, back at school and searching for answers to all he’d been through, or rather, becoming “an expert” in Eastern mysticism.

“I love it when you smile like that,” Will said to Beth, lifting his pencil from his sketchpad, bending his head to look at her. “I’ve got my own Mona Lisa!” He kissed her gently.

“Will, I’ve been wondering. . . . Lacey was with us day and night the week after Ivy died. But we haven’t seen her since. Neither has Tristan or Philip—I texted Philip this
morning and asked him. Do you think that
we
could have been Lacey’s mission? Do you think she’s moved on to the Light?”

Will considered it. “She sure acted like an angel that week.” He started to sketch again, adding to his city scene a girl in a tank top, leggings, and booties. Then he closed the spiral pad.

“I miss Lacey,” Beth said.

“Me too. A lot.”

They got up to walk, Will’s arm around Beth, her arm around him, and were nearly run over by someone weaving down the sidewalk on a unicycle. The girl spun around, winked at them, then took off again, looking like just another offbeat New Yorker, her purple hair whipping in the breeze.

“THIS IS MY FAVORITE PLACE ON CAPE COD,” PHILIP
said.

“Is it?” Tristan sat next to him on the landing halfway down the fifty-five steps to the beach. The heavy green that had covered the bluff was dry and woody now; the grasses on the dunes, thin. Tristan gazed out at the deep blue sky of early November, then his eyes followed the sweep of sea around the point and through the inlet to his and Ivy’s harbor. “Why?”

“You’re kind of in the sky,” Philip explained. “It feels like
angels could stop here to rest. Do you think Ivy and Lacey stop here much?”

The question caught Tristan by surprise. After Lacey had left, Philip had waited for Ivy to come back to him as an angel he could see and hear. Tristan had done everything he could to fill up those moments of disappointment, to ease Philip’s pain. Tristan believed that Ivy had immediately gone on to the Light. He no longer heard the voices. Each day he found some way to move forward, redeeming himself, believing they would be together again when time became everafter.

“I don’t know, Philip.”

“Do you think Ivy’s looking down on us, watching just in case we need help?”

“Maybe.” He would not lie to Philip, but he would not discount a child’s or anyone else’s belief. No one had all the answers.

“I miss her.”

“I love her,” Tristan said.

They spoke at the same time; it eased Tristan’s heart.

“And you know what?” Tristan added. “I love you, too.”

“I know.”

He smiled at Philip’s unaffected certainty.

Philip started down the steps. “I think,” he said, “that Ivy and Lacey are having a really good time together.”

Tristan laughed out loud, imagining an angelic version of a buddy film, the kind with the two cops who never appeared to get along but actually had each other covered.

He followed Philip across the narrow boardwalk and through the dunes to the sea. Andrew and his father had been right: Coming back here with family helped with the healing.

Tristan and Philip walked for a long time at the edge of the ocean, Philip dancing about, dodging the foamy water, trying to pick up shells before the waves caught them. He stuffed his pockets with stones and shells, then when they reached the steps again, dumped them out. He wasn’t the little kid Tristan had met more than two years ago; he still wanted to look at everything—touch everything—but he no longer had to take everything home with him.

Philip ran up the steps, taking them two at a time, as if to show Tristan that his legs were getting longer. At the landing he stopped to catch his breath, then bent over to look at something.

“I knew it! I knew it!” Philip straightened up, his face as bright as the sun. “Tristan, come here!”

Before Tristan had reached the final step, Philip stretched out his hand. In his palm lay a gold coin engraved with an angel, the one that Philip had placed
in the hands of his sister the last time the three of them were together.

Tristan touched it. “Ivy,” he said softly. Her name on his lips would always feel like an angelic kiss.

MANY OF THE SETTINGS IN THIS TRILOGY ARE REAL,
such as the towns, parks, and beaches. Some—the inn, homes, churches, and secondary streets—are based on real places, but have been moved to new locations, built upon, and renamed, so that I could weave a good story. Still other places exist only in my mind: The real city of Providence is a wonderful place to live and to visit; the neighborhood of River Gardens sprang up from my imagination.

Thanks once again to Karen and Mac of The Village Inn, who provided excellent tips as I researched settings
and who made me so comfortable at their Cape Cod B&B. Thanks to my sister, Liz, and her husband, Nick, who live on the Cape and have given me lots of great ideas. Liz, thank you, for all that driving, leaving me free to look.

I owe thanks to another family member, Gregory. Six books ago, when I needed a name for my villain, I borrowed that of my much-loved cousin so that I would write more positively about this character and not give away too quickly how evil he was. Let me just say that my cousin does not look anything like the villainous Gregory, nor does he act like him—though as a child he was a bit devilish. I thank him not only for his name, but for being a skilled sailor who responds to questions such as
where’s a good place to dump a body,
and
how do I overturn a boat?
If there are any nautical errors in these books, they are mine, not his (writers can get so poetic!).