I Married the Third Horseman (Paranormal Romance and Divorce) (16 page)

“Like the dead,” I said, and bit my tongue.
“I mean…like a baby. A new-born baby.”

Gabriel smiled to himself, and beckoned me to
join him. He went to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains,
followed by a set of Venetian blinds (both black, of course). Once
the light level increased, I saw why he’d stopped at the far side
of the room.

A black marble café table gleamed softly in
the sunshine. One by one, Gabriel set out the platters, a stack of
plates, cups, and sets of silverware. He pulled a seat out for me,
which I took. Tantalizing aromas of waffles, maple syrup,
blueberries, and coffee rose from the table.

My mouth watered. And, lo-and-behold, Her
Majesty of My Tummy reappeared, alongside her consort, the Duke of
Appetite.

“I’m afraid that I don’t have any servants at
this estate, at least at present,” he said. “It’s self-serve
today.”

“Oh, I think I can manage,” I said, fighting
the urge to drool.

I spread out my black cloth napkin, poured
myself a steaming cup of coffee, and then began unveiling the
delights hidden under each silver lid. In no time, I had heaped and
then emptied my plate not once, but twice. Luckily today was one of
those days that calories…

Oh, who was I kidding? Calories counted
today. But I did need them.

And were they ever so good. Freshly made
waffles, slathered with butter, maple syrup, and powdered sugar.
Followed by a warm cinnamon-pecan muffin. Then a couple of heavenly
blintzes, stuffed with mascarpone cheese and topped with
blueberries and cream.

It took me a while to figure out what was
bothering me about this breakfast. I polished off my second
serving, and right as I was about to tip over into a calorie coma,
my brain finally started working again. Figured out what was…well,
‘wrong’ wasn’t it, exactly. But it was unnerving.

“I’m glad you like the food,” Gabriel said,
as he took a seat himself.

“It’s marvelous,” I pronounced, between
slurps of just-the-right-temperature coffee. “But that leads me to
a pair of questions that I have to ask you.”

“Ask away, then.”

I nearly led with the question that had come
up during the stuffing of my face like a little blonde piggy.
Nearly. But I had a much more urgent question that needed
answering.

“Gabriel, I guess that I owe you. For getting
me out of a real pickle last night,” I began. I set down my coffee
and looked him in the eye. “But…why? Why save me, when Mitchel had
me just where he wanted?”

Gabriel looked away for a moment. His voice
took on a melancholy tone as he spoke. “Because I couldn’t let him
take you back. Not when you didn’t want to be with him anymore. You
see, all that has happened to you, everything that is happening
right now? It’s all
my
fault.”

My mind played that one over again.

“All that has happened to you, everything
that is happening right now?” Gabriel said, in his ever-so-polite
manner, “It’s all my fault.”

Freeze Frame.

Okay.

Ladies and gentlemen, please return your
seats to the upright position for the remainder of this flight.

Looks like the screenwriter just dropped the
other shoe of this story’s plot.

Now, back to the action…

I put my fork down on the table with an angry
clack
.

“Explain,” My voice took on an edge.
“Now.”

“Cassie, you now know what my brothers and I
do. What tasks we perform, in the greater pantheon of the
universe.”

“Yes. You provide varied and colorful ways
for us to slaughter each other.”

That made him pause for a moment. He didn’t
seem angry about my interruption, not exactly. My guess was that he
never really got confronted about things all that directly. I mean,
if you’re rather newly deceased, are
you
going to mouth off
to the guy who could put in a good word for you with Saint Peter or
whomever’s at the gates?

“All right. I probably deserved that comment,
in part. But here’s what I’m getting at: War, Famine, and
Pestilence inevitably lead to one inescapable ending.”

“Death,” I agreed, finished his sentence for
him.

“Exactly. That’s what I meant when I said
that I had to clean up after everyone else is done with their
work.” He leaned forward in his chair, an intense look on his face.
“And because of my work…I see humans a lot more than my brothers
do. I see them at one particular point: at the very end. When, in
some cases, it’s the only time they’re true to themselves. Showing
whether they are cowards or heroes, beings to hold in contempt or
admire like the sun.”

This was news to me. I kept quiet as he went
on, in the voice of a man who absolutely, positively, loves his
job.

“I collect their souls, and then convey each
and every one to judgment. Yes, there is a weighing of good and
evil, and no, I don’t think it’s done by a saintly old man with a
halo and a copy of the Good Book in hand.” He stopped to pour
himself a cup of coffee. Of course, he took it black. “Even though
I’d come to appreciate humanity, I still remained rather sanguine
about my function. It’s what I was born to do, after all. Until I
met one particular person...and fell in love with her.”

“Well, congratulations. Let me know where to
send the flowers and the wedding gifts. But what the frig does this
have to do with what happened to
me?
”

Gabriel put his cup down and steepled his
fingers in thought, looking very much like an extremely serious
graduate student of philosophy. Or something more magical. All I
needed was to put him in a black robe and drape a scarf over his
neck, and I could have cast him for one of Hogwart’s Quidditch
teams.

“I guess I’m not approaching this quite
right,” he said. “I’m worried that things might be a little
sensitive. Let me think on how to handle it for a moment.”

“Take all the time you need, Gabriel.” I
nodded towards the remaining scrumptious platters of food. “I’m
going to go for thirds today. With that bombshell you’re trying to
drop on me, today’s calories don’t count.”

He laughed at that. “That’s what
she
says, all the time.”

That one stopped me in my tracks. “Who is
this ‘she’ you keep talking about, if it’s not Dora?”

“She’s the answer to that other, smaller
question I was expecting you to lead with. Which, unless I am
mistaken, is ‘How did you know exactly what I like for breakfast’.”
I nodded mutely. Gabriel snapped his fingers. “Of course. I should
have listened to her advice to begin with. I’ll let her explain
these things to you.”

He stood, stepped around the table, and
called for someone out in the hall. I didn’t quite make out what he
said, but it was something along the lines of ‘Honey Bun.’ Ugh. It
just seemed a tad too cute, especially for someone holding the job
title of ‘Mortician of the Universe.’

The
tic-tac
of high heels echoed from
out in the hall. A platinum blonde hourglass of a woman wearing an
elegant black evening dress swept into the room. Her high-wattage
blue eyes and her effervescent smile beamed at me, and her
expression was at once a strange mixture of nervousness and
pride.

What she said was even more curious.

“Hi there, Pumpkin,” she said, using my
nickname, one that I hadn’t heard since I was eleven. And she said
it in a voice so very familiar that it nagged at me where I’d heard
it before. “Welcome home at last.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “Have we met
before?”

Her bright, happy look turned to one of
dismay. “I thought that you would know who I was, Cassie.”

“Wait…” I said, rummaging through the debris
of the prop room I called a memory, “I think I
have
seen you
before. At the party Mitchel threw at the Thantos’ ranch, just
before I got married. I saw you there, in the back of the crowd,
with Gabriel. You had sunglasses on, and you were crying.”

“Yes, that was me. Oh, you better believe
that I was crying. Tears of happiness, at the time.” She smiled at
me, bathing me in warmth. “All I’ve ever wished…was for my daughter
to be happy. I thought that a loving marriage would have given you
that happiness...”

All I ever wished was for my daughter to be
happy.

The realization rocked me. Sent a
twang
through me, stole the air from my lungs. It was too
much, too much to believe. The next word I spoke came out in a
teary croak of a voice.

“
Mom?
”

My mother? That’s who this blonde bombshell
claimed to be? God, I so wanted that to be true. And really,
therapy buddy – who wouldn’t want that same thing? If you were in
my position?

But after all I’d seen, all I’d been
through…it was too good to be true.

Wasn’t it?

When the woman took a step towards me, I got
out of my chair. But I didn’t move to embrace her. Instead, I
slowly put my hands up, defensively. A genuine look of hurt crossed
the woman’s face.

“Look,” I said, with a helpless gesture, “I
don’t know who you are, but there’s no friggin’ way that you could
be Fiona Van Deene.”

“Oh?” Dammit, the blonde crossed her arms,
lip curled in just the way my Mom used to. “There’s no need to use
that kind of language, Cassandra. I raised you better than that. So
why not?”

“Because…” I hesitated, and then decided to
go ahead and say it. “My mom’s wears her hair – her beautiful,
silver hair, I might add – up in a bun. She also never had a figure
that a Playboy Bunny would kill for, or a C-cup rack.”

A sigh. “Whatever am I going to do with you?
I know I was always too critical of you, but really, you’ve got to
learn to look beyond the surface of things.”

“You have to admit, Cassie, it’s sort of what
led you into trouble with Mitchel,” Gabriel pointed out. “You
accepted him simply as he presented himself – as a
too-good-to-be-true man. On a white stallion and everything.”

Dammit, they
did
have a point or two
in favor of those arguments.

“That said, I
am
your mother, Cassie,”
the blonde woman declared. “You see, at death, we all revert to
how, deep down, we saw ourselves in life. I had you pretty late, in
my thirties…and after some really hard downs on that roller-coaster
we call ‘living.’ But I guess I never really stopped seeing myself
like this. Young, free, beautiful. As the twenty-year old woman who
first drove out to California to get as much sun, fun, and sand as
I could.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I said, lowering
my hands.

“Yes, but apparently it’s not enough for you.
So here goes: around the time you turned twelve, after your father
left us, I had to take three jobs to make ends meet. And the
waitressing gig on the graveyard shift just about did me in. For a
solid week, I was so dead tired that I let you eat anything you
wanted for breakfast. Chocolate chip cookies. Scoops of Rocky Road
ice cream. That awful canned pasta with the radioactive-colored
cheese sauce.”

My mouth snapped shut. My throat went dry.
Oh. My.
God.

“At the end of that week, I felt so guilty
for being such an awful mother that I broke down and cried. And you
know what? When you saw that, you came over and just held me, told
me how much you loved your Mom.” The blonde woman looked in my eyes
again, and all my suspicions fell away. “And that was when I
stopped calling you Pumpkin. Because on that day, you’d grown past
that name. Took the first step in becoming the daughter I’ve been
so proud of.”

My knees shook. I half-stepped, half-stumbled
into my mother’s open arms, crying and wailing and bawling as I
told her that I loved her. That I was so, so sorry for messing up
my life, for being such a bad daughter. And she held me too,
crooning to me that it was all right.