Almost An Angel (9 page)

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.
 

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.”
 

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.
 

But all those thoughts evaporated into a heated mist in his mind when he spotted Eliza waiting for him in the department store’s entry, just beyond the glass doors. She had a thick scarf wrapped around her neck and tied in an intriguing knot, and her knee-high leather boots sparked all sorts of unwelcome erotic images in his mind. He sucked in a lungful of wintery air, dug his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and entered the store.
 

“You can’t give Amy pajamas for Christmas,” Eliza said.
 

For some reason, that greeting touched him more than any personal sentiment she might have expressed. “Why not?”
 

“It’s too practical. Pajamas are what you give your child when she needs them. Not what you give her for Christmas.”
 

“It makes for more packages under the tree. What’s wrong with that?”
 

Eliza relented with a sigh. “All right. But pajamas better not be the only gift you give her.”
 

Talk to me. Tell me what I did wrong Saturday night
. “I don’t even know where the pajama department is in this store.”
 

“You need children’s apparel,” Eliza said. “Let’s find a directory.”
 

He should have turned to one of Amy’s friends’ mothers for help with this errand. Dennis Murphy’s wife. His housekeeper, Vera. Someone with children. Someone who would know where to find girl pajamas in the sprawling, multi-story department store.
 

Still, meeting Eliza here was safer than meeting her anywhere else. They were decidedly not alone. The aisles swarmed with shoppers, the display cases were decorated with gold and silver balls and glittering garlands, and cloying Christmas music oozed through the air. Sales personnel wore red and white Santa caps and sprigs of holly pinned to their sweaters.
 

At that moment, he hated Christmas. Hated the store. Hated that he was such an inept father he would consider giving his daughter jammies for Christmas. Hated that he was such a failure as a man that the radiant, soft-spoken woman at his side wanted nothing personal to do with him.
 

“So what’s your brilliant brainstorm about making Christmas good for my daughter?” he asked.
 

“Let’s get the pajamas first,” she said. “We’ll talk afterward.”
 

Scowling, he followed her to the escalator and up.
 

Fifteen minutes later, they’d picked out a pair of green plaid pajamas and a flowery flannel nightgown for Amy. The clerk packed them, a gift box and several sheets of tissue paper into a handled shopping bag for Conor, and he and Eliza rode back down the escalator to the first floor. Once they were standing in the vestibule where they’d met up, the automatic glass doors letting in a blast of icy air each time a pedestrian stepped close enough to activate them, Eliza halted and turned to face Conor. “A scrapbook,” she said.
 

*
 

THE IDEA had come to her while she’d been telling Amy about her own mother. She’d recalled the weeks she’d spent in Florida with her brother after their mother’s death. They’d divvied up their mother’s more valuable belongings, had an estate liquidator take the rest, and put the house up for sale, listing it with one of her mother’s associates at the real estate firm where she’d worked.
 

Sorting her mother’s belongings had been easy enough. Eliza had claimed the few pieces of jewelry she’d always admired and let her brother take the rest for his wife. Neither of them had wanted their mother’s Cadillac, a big, heavy sedan suited for chauffeuring clients from one available property to another but not particularly sporty or fuel-efficient. Eliza had taken her mother’s box of recipes and her brother had taken her crystal wine glasses. They’d donated her piano to a local school and let the estate liquidator haul off the rest.
 

Except for the photos. One evening, armed with a bottle of wine, they’d gone through the box of photographs together, laughing, crying, reminiscing. Pictures of their mother, barely out of her teens, hugging their long-absent father. Pictures of Eliza and her brother as babies, perched on their mother’s knee. Pictures of her with a few boyfriends they’d remembered, and some they’d never met. Pictures of her holding a pastel-hued drink and wearing a massive straw hat and chi-chi sunglasses on a Caribbean cruise. Pictures of her when she’d joined the Gold Medallion Club at her real estate office, after she’d sold a million dollars worth of real estate. Pictures of her on the beach. Pictures of her in the kitchen, baking cookies. Pictures of her beside her Christmas tree—a young version of her with her arms around her children, an older version of her hugging the grandchild Eliza’s brother had given her.
 

There were enough photos to split equitably. Eliza didn’t know what her brother did with his half. She’d filled a scrapbook with her own share. In the first few months after her mother’s death, when Eliza had returned to Albany and discovered Matt’s betrayal, Eliza had clung to that album, leafed through its pages, closed her eyes and heard her mother’s comforting words. “I never liked Matt,” her mother said. “He’s an ass. You just dodged a bullet, baby. You’re better off alone than with a son of a bitch like him.”
 

Somehow, seeing the pictures of her mother, imagining her saying all the things Eliza knew she would eventually come to believe, had comforted her the way nothing else could. She’d found another job, left Matt and her shattered engagement behind and started a new life in Arlington, Connecticut.
 

Or at least tried to. She wasn’t sure how successful she’d been, but whenever she struggled, whenever she entertained doubts, she pulled out the scrapbook and pretended her feisty, independent mother was sitting with her, urging her to count her blessings.
 

The previous Sunday, after she’d fled from Conor’s house, she’d opened the scrapbook and asked her mother what to do. “Trust your instincts,” she’d heard her mother’s voice emerge from the pages of artfully arranged photos. Eliza’s instincts had told her that Conor was rebounding, that he had to work out his own issues before he could open his heart, that if she let herself love him, she could wind up hurt. So she hadn’t accepted his calls when she’d seen his name on her cell phone screen.