“Albuquerque is ahead,” she said, studying the map. “Three hours.”
They stopped for the night near Old Town, settling into a bed-and-breakfast, an enclosed group of rustic casitas facing a patio garden, fading to winter. Along the paths rows of luminarias glowed, and a string of red pepper Christmas lights had been woven through the slats of the central gazebo. Against the chilly night, they huddled together on a bench, staring at the small fires surrounding them.
“This is how I imagined it,” she said. “Somewhere romantic and new and different, with you.”
“An old-fashioned girl.”
“You make it sound so uncool, but I just want to be with you. Get married, like we said.”
“Is that why you joined the revolution?”
“I ran away with you, because you believe. But you've changed, somehow. The gun has become more than a gun. I'm a little scared, but I still believe in you—”
“And the Angels?”
She nodded against his shoulder and gripped his hand.
Wiley squeezed back. “No place for a baby.” His face a mask of confusion, he rose to pace the courtyard, and then disappeared behind an adobe wall, leaving her alone for nearly an hour.
The lights flickered, their hypnotic dance carrying her back to the fires at the Gavins’ cabin, then to childhood winters in Pennsylvania and the feeling of warmth and solace she felt so long ago. A breeze whipped through the courtyard, contorting a mad windchime and rattling the stalk of chiles drying on the lintel. He returned and sat next to her, a question on his lips.
“First let's see if there actually is a baby,” she finally said.
As they readied for bed, she sensed a change come over him, the heavy fall of his boots on the floor, the callused hand against her face as he kissed her softly goodnight. Into the blue china teacup on the night table, she poured her prayers. Forgiveness, salvation. Late in her dreams, she thought of Una Gavin's plight of faith and doubt, in believing her grandmother's desire while knowing it could not be so. Her parents would not be coming back. Skeptical of her own fragile hope. Wiley tossed and grumbled, and once, before she fell asleep, Erica felt his open eyes watching her, waiting, a barely audible sigh when he realized that she stared at the timbered ceiling. She did not stir when he crept out of bed, and did not cry out when he bumped the table and crushed the doll's cup under his booted foot. Later, only later, did she realize that she had ever fallen asleep. In the dead hour before dawn, she was awakened by a woman crossing the courtyard singing, “… porque no puedo llorar. “By morning, winter had arrived, a frosty draft sifting through the adobe walls and pressing against the windowpanes. Erica burrowed beneath the blankets, aware at sunrise that Wiley had abandoned her hours before, yet she was unwilling to leave the bed and find pinned to the door the envelope stuffed with stolen cash and the note that explained goodbye.
BOOK III
February 1985
1
Margaret sat up in bed and switched on the lamp, knocking the shade askew. Beyond the circle of light, a figure stirred, opaque in the darkness, struggling to become manifest. A rush of weight filled her as though she had swallowed a wave, and the dread settled in her bones. Ever since Erica had run away, the vision had often appeared to Margaret—on her long solitary walks, she would see the figure pass like a fog over the next hill or its flash of movement buried deep in the forest, quiet as a doe. She sometimes thought him visible in the interval between the flick of a light switch and the rush to darkness. At first, the presence frightened her, but the commodious mind tolerates inexplicable phantoms as readily as the real people who wander in imaginary houses, the necessary angels and requisite demons, the memories and ghosts summoned to explain again just what had gone wrong. Margaret thought she had rid herself of such questions and could barely face her old conjecture, just as she had always pictured him, a man of her age, elegant and handsome, under a brown fedora. She sighed. “You are supposed to be gone.”
“I never leave,” the shadow said. “I am with you always. You choose when to acknowledge my ever-present presence, and quite frankly, I am hurt by your attitude. I'm here about Norah. Your angel?”
“Are you asking me if I believe in angels? You might as well ask if I believe in you. Every child exaggerates,” Margaret argued. “Who hasn't stretched the truth to be seen as more interesting? It's just a phase.”
“Let me ask you a philosophical question: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
An image blossomed in her imagination: angels jitterbugging, pulling up their long robes to make way for flying feet clad in bobby socks and Mary Janes.
“Do you find me amusing this morning?”
“Not you, but the dancing angels. Just wondering if they knew the Lindy—”
“Notwithstanding the kind of dance, the number of angels remains the same. If God wills it, they may be infinite.”