“And this is dangerous because . . .” I say.
“It makes you very, very attractive to the darkness. The few Triplare who have walked this earth have been greatly sought after by the enemy. They are relentlessly hunted, and if they cannot be converted to the cause, destroyed. That’s why your mother and I have taken great pains to make sure that no one knew about you. It was crucial to keep your identities hidden, even from yourselves. We only wanted to keep you safe.”
“So why tell us now?” Jeffrey asks.
He smiles faintly. “It seems you’ve already caught the enemy’s attention. That was inevitable, I think. Therefore your safety has become a relative concept. We always knew we couldn’t hide you forever. We just wanted you to have as human a life as possible, for as long as possible. Now that time is over.”
It gets quiet while Jeffrey and I try to absorb this news. Triplare. Three-quarter angel. Not Quartarius, after all. And there’s something Dad said that burns like a live coal in my mind.
More angel than human.
So Dad’s an angel. Which makes us freaks, even among angel-bloods. Suddenly it makes sense that Mom never took us to the congregation before this year. She was hiding us, even from the other angel-bloods. Even, as Dad said, from ourselves.
Mom is quieter now, sleeping a lot. It took a lot out of her to tell the story, which she’s worked so hard and for so long to keep buried inside. She’s tired, but noticeably happy during those times when she’s awake. Unburdened, is the word. Like telling us the truth has set her free.
I spend all that evening Dad-watching. I can’t help it. Sometimes he seems like a normal man, joking around with Billy, eating the dinner she whips up for us, which he digs into with gusto. This makes me wonder if angels need sustenance the way we do. And then there are other times where he seems like, quite frankly, an alien. Trying to use the remote, for instance. He gazes at it for a while like it’s some newfangled magic wand. He understands how to use it quickly, though, and then he gets all amped up about the wonder of cable.
“So many channels,” he muses. “Last time I watched television there were only four. How do you decide what to watch?”
I shrug. I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’m pretty sure Dad’s not going to be into The Bachelor. “Jeffrey always watches ESPN.” Dad gives me a blank look. “The sports channel.”
“There’s a channel entirely devoted to sports?” he says with a kind of awe.
Turns out Dad’s a huge baseball fan. Too bad that Jeffrey won’t hang around to watch it with him. I can’t stop looking at Dad, can’t help but scrutinize every move he makes, but Jeffrey can’t stand to be around him. The minute he was “excused” from our family powwow, he bolted for his room. There hasn’t been a peep out of him for hours, not even the regular music.
I try to feel him out, which isn’t too hard. I’ve been getting better at turning my empathy on and off since my lesson with Mom. Sitting here, feeling Dad’s barely contained glory pulsing out from him, it’s ridiculously easy to cast my awareness upstairs to Jeffrey’s room.
He’s mad. He doesn’t care why they did it. He wants to, but he can’t stop being mad. They betrayed us, both of them. It doesn’t matter why. They lied.
He doesn’t want to play by their rules anymore. He’s sick of it. He’s sick of feeling like a pawn on some cosmic chessboard.
I get it. Part of me feels exactly the same way. It’s just hard to be mad when Dad, with his sheer joyous presence, sweeps everything dark and hurtful out of my mind. Which in and of itself feels kind of unfair, like I’m not even allowed to feel what I feel. Maybe I’d resent him for it if I could.
“I think we could have handled it,” I tell Mom later. I am helping her walk back from the bathroom. There’s something so undignified about it, I think, this tiny shuffling walk she has now, the way she has to have help even to pee. She doesn’t like it, either. Every time we do this she gets this grim expression, like she would do anything for me not to see her this way.
“Handled what?” she asks.
“The truth. That Dad was an angel. That we’re Triplare. All that. We could have kept the secret.”
“Uh-huh,” she says. “Because you’re so good at that.”
“If it was life or death, if I knew that, I could be,” I protest. “I’m not an idiot.”
I pull back the covers and carefully steady her while she slides into the bed. Then I pull the covers up to her waist, smooth them.
“I couldn’t risk it,” she says.
“Why not?”
She gestures for me to sit down, and I do. She closes her eyes, opens them again. Frowns.
“Where’s your dad?”
“Gone. Where does he go, anyway?”
“He probably has work to do.”
“Yeah, gotta go burn a bush for Moses,” I quip.
She smiles. “Marge Whittaker, 1949.”
It takes me a second to understand what she’s referring to. “You mean the one before Margot Whitfield?”
“Yes.”
“Marge. Nice. Did you always go by some form of Margaret?” I ask.
“Almost always. Unless I was running from something very bad. Anyway, Marge Whittaker fell in love.”
I get the feeling that she’s not talking about Dad. She’s talking about the time she mentioned before, the time she almost got married. In the fifties, she said.
“Who was he?” I ask softly, not sure I want to know.
“Robert Turner. He was twenty-three.”
“And you were . . .” I quickly do the math. “Almost sixty. Mom. You cougar, you.”
“He was a Triplare,” she says. “I’d never known too many angel-bloods before, Bonnie and Walter, who I met when I was thirteen, before I even knew what an angel-blood was, and Billy, who I met during the Great War, but never anybody like Robert. He could do anything, it seemed. He was capable of anything. One day he walked into the office where I was working as a secretary, and he asked me to dinner. Naturally I was surprised; I’d never seen him before. I asked him why he thought I’d agree to go to dinner with a complete stranger. And he said we weren’t strangers. He’d been dreaming of me, he said. He knew that I liked Chinese food, and he knew exactly the restaurant he was going to take me to, he knew I’d order sweet-and-sour pork, and he knew what my fortune would say. So you see, I had to go, to find out if he was right.”
“And he was right,” I say.
“He was right.”
“What was it? Your fortune, I mean.”
“Oh.” She laughs. “‘A thrilling time is in your immediate future.’ And his said, ‘He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.’ And both of those were right, too.”
“You were a part of his purpose?”
“Yes. I think he was meant to find me.”
“And what happened to him?” I say after a minute, because I sense it’s bad.
“The Black Wings found out about him. When he would not join them, they killed him. Samjeeza was there. I asked him to help us, but . . . he wouldn’t. He stood by and watched.”
“Oh, Mom . . .”
She shakes her head. “That’s what happens,” she says. “You need to understand. That’s what happens when they know. You have to fight for your life.”
The next morning Billy drives us to school, as usual. Everybody but Jeffrey seems way more relaxed about the Samjeeza problem since Dad showed up. If Samjeeza is powerful, I figure that Dad must be twice as macho, with no sorrow to impede him, the righteousness of the Lord and all that. We don’t talk most of the way, each of us lost in our own world, until Billy suddenly says, “So, how you holding up?”
Jeffrey stares out the window and acts like he didn’t hear her. She looks over at me.
“No idea,” I tell her.
“Not the kind of news you get every day.”
“Nope.”
“It’s good news, though,” she says. “Your dad being an Intangere. You know that, right?”
/>
It seems like it should be a good thing. Except for the part where it means Jeffrey and I were pretty much born with a target on us. “Right now it just feels weird.”
She glances at Jeffrey in the rearview mirror. “You alive back there?”
Affirmative grunt. Usually Billy can charm Jeffrey, coax the occasional smile out of him, no matter what mood he’s in. Probably because she’s so pretty. But today, Jeffrey’s not cooperating.
“I bet it feels weird,” she says to me. “Everything’s been turned upside down on you.”
“Have you ever met a Triplare?” I ask after a minute.
She scratches the back of her head, considers. “Yes. Two of them, besides you and Long Face back there. Two, in all of my hundred and twelve years on this earth.”
“Could you tell they were different? From other angel-bloods, I mean?”
“Honestly, I didn’t get to know either of them. But on the outside I’d say they looked and acted like everyone else.”
“You’re a hundred and twelve?” Jeffrey suddenly pipes up from the back.
Her pleasant smile stretches into a mischievous grin. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you never to question a woman about her age?”
“You just said it.”
“Then why’d you have to ask?” she shoots back playfully.
“So you only have eight years left.” He looks down into his lap as he says this.
I feel a pang of something like loneliness then, knowing that Billy only has eight years left. I won’t get to have her in my life very long. In some ways I was taking a lot of comfort in the idea that Billy was going to hang around after Mom died. She was like a tiny piece of Mom I got to keep. She has all these memories of her, all this time they spent together. “Eight years isn’t very much,” I say.
“Eight years is plenty of time for what I have planned.”
“Which is?”
“I want to get to know you two, for one thing. That’s one part of your parents’ master plan I never agreed with. You know, when you were babies, I used to change your diapers.”
She winks at Jeffrey. He blushes.
“Don’t get me wrong. They had their reasons for keeping you isolated. Good reasons. But now, I get to spend time with you. See you graduate. Help you pack up for college. I hear it’s Stanford, right, Clara?”
“Right. Stanford.” I did accept their offer. I’m destined to go there, according to Angela.
Billy nods. “Mags always did have a thing for Stanford.”
“Did you go with her?”
She snorts. “Gracious, no. I never had any tolerance for school. My teachers were the wind, the trees, the creeks and rivers.”
We pull up to the school.
“And on that note,” Billy says cheerfully, “off you go. Try to learn something.”
I want to tell Tucker about my dad, but every time I open my mouth to say something about it, try to frame the words, it sounds so dumb. Guess what? My dad just dropped into town yesterday. And you know what else? He’s an angel. Which makes me this super-special-über angel-blood. What do you think of that?
I glance over at him. He appears to be actually paying attention to the lecture in government class. He’s cute when he’s concentrating.
Mr. A’s about to call on you.
Christian. I tune in just in time to hear Mr. Anderson say, “So, who knows the rights included in the First Amendment? Clara, why don’t you take a crack at it?”
“Okay.” I glance down at my blank notebook.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, Christian reads off in my mind.
I repeat what Christian said.
“Good.” Mr. Anderson looks impressed that I had the whole thing memorized. He moves on, and I relax. I smile at Tucker, who’s looking at me like he can’t believe he landed such a genius for a girlfriend.
Thanks, I say to Christian silently. I look over at him. He nods slightly.
My empathy blinks on like one of those fluorescent bulbs that takes a minute to charge up. Sorrow descends on me like a cloud moving over the sun. Loneliness. Separation, always this sense of separation from everything good in this life. The field where Samjeeza stands is full of sunshine, but he can’t absorb its warmth. He can’t smell the new grass at his feet, the fresh rain from this morning’s spring shower. He can’t feel the breeze. All of that is beauty, and it belongs to the light. Not to him.
I should be used to it by now, the way he pops up and plays with my head.
He’s here again, isn’t he? Christian again. Now worried.
I give him the mental equivalent of a nod.
What should we do?
Nothing. Ignore him. There’s nothing we can do.
But it suddenly occurs to me that maybe that’s not true anymore. I sit up. I raise my hand and ask Mr. Anderson for a hall pass, suggest in a vague way that I need to use the restroom, possibly for female reasons.
Where are you going? Christian asks, alarmed, as I gather up my stuff. What are you doing?
Don’t worry. I’m going to call my dad.
I call my house from the phone in the office. Billy picks up.
“Trouble?” she asks immediately.
“Can I talk to my dad?”
“Sure thing.” Silence as she sets the phone down. Muffled voices. Footsteps.
“Clara,” Dad says. “What do you need?”
“Samjeeza’s here. I thought maybe you could do something.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he says finally.
It literally takes him a minute to get here. I barely have time to sit down on one of the hall benches to wait for him before he comes striding through the front door. I stare at him.
“Did you fly here?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Wow.”
“Show me.” There’s a fierceness in his eyes that strikes me as familiar, like I’ve seen this look on his face before. But when? I lead him outside, across the parking lot, to the field. I hold my breath as he steps without hesitation over the fence and onto unprotected ground.
“Stay here,” he orders. I do.
Samjeeza is standing, in human form, on the far edge of the field. He’s afraid. It’s his fear that I’m remembering, I realize, from the day of the fire. Mom suggested that someone was going to come looking for her, and Samjeeza pictured two white-winged angels, one with red hair, the other blond, glowing and fierce, holding a flaming sword.
My dad.
Samjeeza doesn’t move or speak. He stands perfectly still, his fear radiating out of him along with the sorrow now, and humiliation, that he would be so afraid.
Dad takes a few steps toward him, then stops. “Samyaza.”
The man suit Samjeeza wears seems transparent, false, next to Dad’s solid radiance. Dad’s hair glitters in the sunlight. His skin glows. Samjeeza wilts before him but tries to sneer. “Why are you here, Prince of Light? Why do you care about this weak-blooded girl?”
He’s going to be playing the part of super-villain in today’s performance.
“I care about her mother,” Dad answers. “I warned you about that, before.”
“Yes, and what is your relationship with Margaret, I wonder?”
Dad’s joy wavers. “I promised her father I would look after her,” he says.
Her father? Good grief. So there’s more stuff I don’t know.
“Is that all?”
“You’re a fool,” Dad says, shaking his head. “Leave this place, and don’t bother the child, or her mother, again.”
“Don’t you mean the children? There’s a boy too, isn’t that right?”
“Leave them be,” Dad says.
Samjeeza hesitates, although I know he has no intention of figh
ting Dad. He’s not that crazy. Still, he lifts his chin, meets the quicksilver of Dad’s eyes for a few seconds, and smiles. “It’s hard not to fall in love with them, isn’t it? There’s a Watcher somewhere in you too, Michael.”
The glow around Dad brightens. He whispers a word that feels like wind in my ears, and suddenly I see his wings. They are enormous and white, a pure sweet white that reflects the sun so it’s hard to look directly at them. I have never seen anything so magnificent as my father—my throat closes on the word—this creature of goodness and light, standing there protecting me. He is my father. I am part of him.
“I will crush you under my heel,” he says in a low voice. “Go. And do not come back.”
“No need to get excited,” Samjeeza says, taking a step back. “I’m a lover, not a fighter, after all.”
Then he simply closes his eyes and disappears.
Dad’s wings vanish. He walks back across the grass to me.
“Thanks,” I say.
He looks sad. “Don’t thank me. I’ve just put you in more danger than you know. Now,” he says in a completely different tone of voice. “I would like it very much if I could meet your boyfriend.”
We wait around until the bell rings. People flood the halls. They part around us, giving Dad a wide berth, staring at him.
Dad looks a bit strained.
“Are you okay?” I ask. I wonder if that bit that Samjeeza said, about Dad being like a Watcher, got to him.
“Fine,” he says. “It’s just that around so many people I have to work harder to hold back the glory. Otherwise they might all fall down on their knees and worship.”
He sounds like he might be joking, but I know he’s not. He’s completely serious.
“We don’t have to stay here. We can go.”
“No, I want to meet this Tucker kid.”
“Dad. He’s not a kid.”
“Don’t you want me to meet him?” he asks with the hint of a smile. “Are you afraid I’ll scare him off?”
Yes.
“No,” I say. “But don’t try to scare him off, okay? He’s been pretty cool with all the crazy stuff so far. I don’t want to push it.”