Straight to Heaven (22 page)

When I left Ari’s room, I found Jed standing in the living room. “You don’t have to thank me, but I wish you’d stop glowering every time you see me,” he said.

“Whatever,” I told him. I started to leave the apartment, but then I stopped. “You know what else? Forget what I told you before. Leave my niece alone. She doesn’t need you.”

“I would disagree.” Jed appeared to be in his early thirties, but his eyes were much older. Decades older, in fact. “If I hadn’t stepped in today, she would have gone through that windshield.” He rubbed his injured arm. “I took a hit for her.”

“What about the grocery store?” I countered. “You nearly got her arrested for shoplifting!”

He was getting angry as well. “I was doing her a favor! Your niece shoplifts so often that she doesn’t even realize when she does it! Every time she gets stressed, she steals things. I wanted you to see firsthand how bad her habit had gotten.”

“Well, why didn’t you stop her from climbing onto that chair? Or keep her from breaking her nose last winter?”

“I can’t protect her from everything,” he argued. “The kid has to make some mistakes, or she’d never learn.”

I supposed that he was right, but I wasn’t about to concede. Instead, I said, “What about Tanya? Where were you when she started drinking again? Why didn’t you do anything to stop her?”

Jed’s shoulders slumped. “I wanted to, believe me, but I can’t make her decisions for her.”

It was exactly the same thing I’d said to Ariel earlier, but hearing it now only made me angrier. “That’s no excuse! You’re a terrible guardian angel, you know that? That little girl has been through hell.”

“I know. I was there.” His blue eyes sharpened. “But where were you? You knew your niece was in trouble long before Tanya dropped her off on your doorstep.”

“No, I didn’t!”

The angel’s penetrating stare didn’t soften. “Are you sure about that?”

I fidgeted with Tommy’s gauge. “Okay, I kind of knew,” I admitted.

“You just didn’t want to get involved, did you?”

“It was a messy situation,” I argued.

“Most human situations are.”

Jed’s barbs struck my heart like ninja throwing stars. William was right; guilt was a weapon the other team used to their advantage. “If you were doing your job, I wouldn’t have had to worry about her,” I said.

“You’ve got it backwards,” he said. “If
you
would have gotten involved,
I
wouldn’t have had to worry about her.”

“Well,” I said, trying to think of a way to defend myself. I looked at the spacer in my hands. “Well.”

“Exactly,” the angel said.

Then, as if we were declaring a temporary truce, each of us left the apartment. But through different doors.

“How did you get the spacer?” Ari asked sleepily when I returned.

I hung the shoelace on her bedpost. “Magic.”

She ran her fingers over the spacer. “Aunt Lil, when I was living at my mom’s, I swore I heard you talking to me.”

I kissed her forehead. “You were dreaming, honey. That’s all.”

She yawned widely and, before the conversation could go further, she was asleep.

I left Ari’s bedroom and checked on Grace. She looked sound asleep, but when I kissed her cheek, she sat up. “Don’t go yet. I want to say my prayers.”

I loved my dad, but I cursed him for putting the idea of nightly prayers into my daughter’s head. A few months before, he’d babysat for me, and had started her on this awkward routine. Try as I might, I couldn’t break her of the habit.

“Oh, Grace. It’s so late. How about tomorrow?”

Tiredness made my daughter petulant. “We need to do it now! I have to thank God for taking care of Ariel. She could have been killed today.”

“Fine. So thank him.” I crossed my arms over my chest. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed. It was like my daughter had just chosen to spend the weekend with Ted instead of me.

“Dear God, thank you for not letting Ariel get dead in a car accident. Also, make Aunt Tanya stop drinking alcohol and keep her boyfriend in jail forever. Please and thank you. Amen.”

As I kissed my daughter’s cheek again, I thought I caught a glimmer of white from the corner of the room. Another angel, this one for my daughter.

“Beat it,” I muttered as I left the room. “We don’t need you.” To my relief, the angel disappeared.

Chapter Fifteen

After making sure that the girls were asleep, I decided to risk one final otherworld venture. I wanted to get that gun back to my dad’s house.

Unfortunately, my father’s house only had one otherworld doorway, which was situated right next to his recliner in the living room. Not wanting a repeat of the Jasmine/frying pan incident, I called first to see if anyone was home.

My dad answered on the second ring. “Hello,” he said. “This is Simon Yoshida.”

Even though I was disappointed that I couldn’t return the gun right away, I smiled into the phone. “Hey, Dad, it’s me.”

“Lilith!” He sounded thrilled.

“So you and Evelyn are back from vacation? How was Lake Michigan?”

“Lovely, as always. I still have sand in my shoes. How are you?”

“Okay.” It’s amazing how much blighted ground that one little word could cover up.

My dad’s voice grew cautious. “Did you hear your sister’s news?”

“About the engagement? Yes.”

“This is not good, Lilith. Not good at all.” I could picture him drawing his worried, little, concentric circles on the notepad next to the phone. “I had really hoped that Jasmine and Tommy would make it work.” Like everyone else, my dad had taken a shine to Tommy. The two of them had enjoyed long talks about the history of the Protestant church.

“I know. Me too.” The guilt I’d been trying to ignore for the past few months suddenly sank onto my shoulders. I sat down on a bar stool.

My dad lowered his voice. “Evelyn is devastated.”

“I am, too.” I thought about Tommy crossing three continents for my stepsister, and how Karl wouldn’t have walked a block to buy her a ginger ale if she had the flu. I wondered if I could drag Karl to the otherworld and turn him over to Miss Spry. The thought certainly had possibilities. “Maybe there’s still hope,” I said.

“Maybe.” My dad sounded even less certain of it than I had.

Since returning the gun was not an option until my dad and Evelyn went to sleep, I lay down in bed to read. Although it was only nine-thirty, I fell asleep almost immediately.

My ringing cell phone woke me up. I squinted at the alarm clock. It was just after ten.

“Hello?”

“Lil? It’s me.”

“Tommy! Where are you?”

“Calgary.”

“Calgary? As in Canada?”

“Yeah, at a bar in the terminal, actually. I had to find a public phone since my cell died a while ago.” There was a lot of background noise. Someone cheered loudly. “I’ve been living in airports for four days now. Do you know how hard it is to find vegan food in an airport?” He sounded slightly fuzzy around the edges like he’d been drinking. A lot.

I got out of bed and went downstairs. “When are you coming home?”

“I finally got a flight to Detroit. I’m leaving in a few hours, and I’ll be back early tomorrow morning.”

I was thrilled. “That’s great. I can’t wait to see you. You’re staying here with us, right? You can even have your own room, so you don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“All I need is a place to shower. Once I’ve cleaned up, I’m heading to your dad’s house to see Jasmine. Did you tell her I was coming home?”

I’d been dreading this conversation. It had been bad enough to discuss it with my dad. Still, Tommy had to know sooner or later. “I did talk to her,” I said carefully.

“And?”

I’d reached the kitchen and sat at the table in the dark, trying not to imagine Tommy’s stricken expression. “She was wearing an engagement ring.”

“Say that again?”

I swallowed back tears. “She and Karl are getting married at the end of August.”

What followed were several loud bangs which made me think that Tommy was smashing the telephone receiver against the wall. When he came back on the line, his voice was ragged. “She’s
marrying
that bastard?”

“I don’t like it, either.”

His laugh was unhinged. “Well, guess what, Lilith, I
hate
it!”

My heart constricted. “Tommy, I’m so sorry.”

“
I
was planning on asking her to marry me. When I was stranded in Mumbai, I promised myself that I would do whatever it took to win her back.” He gave a laugh that was precariously close to a sob. “But I guess I’m too late.”

A long silence fell between us. In the background, there was more cheering and some clinking of glasses. Then Tommy said, “I will never forgive myself for how I hurt her.”

“Don’t say that! It was my fault.”

“Don’t worry, Lilith. I blame you, too.”

“Do you hate me?”

He didn’t reply.

“Can you ever forgive me?”

He laughed bitterly. “You’ll have to get in line. I’ll forgive you after I’ve forgiven myself.”

There was no way that I could let him go on thinking it was his fault. Even if he didn’t believe me, I needed to tell him the truth about who and what I was. “Tommy…”

“Sorry, Lil. I’m out of minutes.” The phone went dead.

“So now you’re reaping what you’ve been sowing?” Mr. Clerk stood in the middle of the kitchen. I could smell the booze on him from where I sat. He weaved, nearly fell over, and had to clutch the counter to keep himself steady. “Was that the man you slept with to win back your daughter?”

“Yes,” I admitted. I wondered how long he had been listening in. “But I never meant to hurt him.”

“You tempters never do.” Mr. Clerk made his unsteady way to the nearest bar stool and sat down. “All of you underestimate the pain you inflict on your victims.”

“You’re the angel, aren’t you?” I asked. “The one William seduced from Heaven into Hell.”

Mr. Clerk sighed. “Yes. William led me away from Heaven, just like he told you.”

I got up from my seat and took the bar stool next to his. “How did it happen? This thing between you and William?”

“This isn’t Housewives, Lilith,” Mr. Clerk said icily. “My drama is not there for your amusement.”

I touched his shoulder. “I just thought talking about it might make you feel better.”

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“Haven’t you had enough?”

“Not by half.” He disappeared through the otherworld doorway and returned a minute later with a bottle of brandy. I fetched a pair of glasses, and he poured us each a few fingers of the amber liquid. He immediately swallowed his drink and refilled the glass.

“Back when I was still an angel,” Mr. Clerk said, “I was given a particularly distasteful assignment. I was told to protect someone whom I found odious.” He drank more brandy. “This man I protected hated men like me. Men of my persuasion, you understand.”

Gay. I nodded.

Enough street light came in through the window that I could see Mr. Clerk’s face tighten. “I don’t know why I, of all angels, was asked to protect him, but I was.” He looked at me. “In Heaven, everything’s a lesson, you understand. You’re constantly urged to grow – in compassion, in understanding, in love. It can be tiresome. So I expect that I was supposed to learn something from this man. But the more I watched him, and the more I listened to his rhetoric and was forced to deal with his pettiness and shortcomings, the more I hated him. He was such a hypocrite, Lilith! He would denounce men like me while at the same time lusting over them. Eventually, I couldn’t deal with it any more.”

He poured himself a third drink. I had the feeling that he had forgotten I was in the room. “When William approached me, he was in full glamour mode. He was so irresistibly charming. So funny and flirtatious.” Mr. Clerk sighed. “So breathtakingly beautiful.”

I understood completely.

Mr. Clerk continued. “So I allowed William to slip past me and tempt the man. Somehow, that man’s petty act of evil rotted away what little morals he had. He stopped saying hateful things and started practicing them. Many young men suffered at his hands.” He finished his drink. “All because I looked the other way.”

“And when God found out…he sent you to Hell?”

Mr. Clerk laughed, startled. “No, of course not. He’s all about forgiveness, you see. He would have pardoned me in an instant if I’d asked him to. There’s no one He won’t let into Heaven.” His voice grew hard. “Even that wretch whom William tempted. After all the horror that man created, he repented on his deathbed, and was allowed inside. I couldn’t bear it. I also couldn’t bear myself for allowing it to happen. So I offered my services to Miss Spry, and she gladly accepted. At least she understands that the guilty must be made to pay.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I put my hand on his arm.

He shook it off. “Don’t be. I made my choices, Lilith, and I intend to stick by them.” He got up from the bar stool, nearly falling over when he stood.

“Are you all right?” I asked, worried. “You can sleep here tonight if you want.” I couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone in his sad little room.

“You have a big heart,” he said. “Like your mother.” He touched my cheek. “No wonder Helen hates you so much. No, I’ll be fine. After all, I have to get back to work.”

“I wish there was something I could do for you,” I said.

His eyes glittered. “There is. Tempt your client. I want Miss Spry winning this bet.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s riding on this that is so important?”

“Me,” he said. “
I’m
the bet. If the other team wins, I’ll be forced to return to Heaven, and I do not want to go back there.”

“Whose idea was that?” I asked, startled.

“It doesn’t matter. Like I said, whenever the two of them make these kinds of wagers, they never put anything valuable on the table.”

“I promise to do my best,” I said. “Although, I’m sure that William will probably beat me to the win.”

“William,” he said bitterly. “William who?” He tried to smile, missing the true expression by a mile. Then he disappeared.

After Mr. Clerk left, I couldn’t sleep, so I lay down on the couch in front of the TV. I flipped through channel after channel, trying to distract myself from my thoughts, but that was impossible.