Ivy didn't know how long he had been standing there, close behind her, letting her knot her fingers in his.
She turned her head sideways, looking at Will over her shoulder.
'I'm glad you didn't jump,' he said with a half smile. 'We both would have gone.'
Ivy loosened her fingers and turned to face him.
'Do you remember now?' Will asked.
She shook her head wearily. 'No.'
Will lifted his arm as if he might touch her cheek. She looked up at him, and he pulled his hand back quickly, digging it into his pocket. 'Let's get out of here,' he said.
Ivy followed him to the car, continually glancing back at the tracks.
What if Gregory and Eric had worked together? she thought. But she still couldn't believe that anybody, least of all Gregory, would want to hurt her. He cared about her-she'd thought he cared deeply.
They drove out of the parking lot silently, Will apparently as deep in thought as she. Then Ivy sat up quickly and pointed. About fifty yards past the exit, a red Harley was parked on the side of the road. 'It looks like Eric's,' she said.
'It is.'
A long drainage ditch with high grass and shrubs bordered the road. Eric was searching the ditch and was so intent on his task that he didn't notice the car pulling over on the road's shoulder.
When Will opened the door, Eric's head bobbed up. 'Lose something?' Will asked, stepping out. 'Need some help looking?'
Eric screened his eyes against the slant of the sun. 'No, thanks, Will,' he called back. 'I'm just trying to find an old bungee cord I use to tie things down.' Then he noticed Ivy in the car. He seemed startled, glancing from her to Will and back again. He waved them on. 'I'm giving up in a minute,' he said.
Will nodded and got back into the car.
'He was looking awfully hard for an old bungee cord,' Ivy remarked as they drove away.
'Ivy,' Will said, 'is there any reason why somebody would want to scare you or hurt you?'
'What do you mean?'
'Is anyone holding a grudge against you?'
'No,' she replied slowly. There isn't anyone now, she thought. The past winter had been a different story: Gregory hadn't been at all happy about his father's marriage to Maggie. But his resentment and anger had disappeared months ago, she reminded herself quickly. Gregory had been wonderful to her since Tristan died, comforting her, even rescuing her the day of the break-in. It was Gregory who had gotten there first, scaring off the intruder, pulling the bag off her head just when Will arrived.
Or had he? Maybe he had been there all along.
His excuse for returning home that day had been an odd one. Suddenly Ivy felt cold all over. What if Gregory himself had attacked her, then changed plans when Will showed up?
The thought ran through her like an icy river, and her scalp and the skin on the back of her neck crawled.
Ivy twisted her hands. Without realizing it, she bent a pen she had picked up from the car seat, cracking its plastic shell.
'Here,' Will said, taking the pen away from her and offering her his hand. 'I'll need my fingers back when we get to your house,' he said, smiling, 'but for now you won't get ink all over you.'
Ivy gripped his hand. She held on tightly to Will and turned her head to watch bright patches of green flickering past them, the end of summer spliced with sharp shadows of fall.
'I've always been there for you. I love you.' The words floated back to her. 'Will, when we were dancing and Tristan was inside you, and you said-' She hesitated.
'And I said…?'
''I've always been there for you. I love you.'' She saw Will swallow hard. 'It was Tristan speaking, right?'
Ivy said. 'It was just Tristan saying that, and I misunderstood. Right?'
Will watched a wishbone of geese flying across the sky. 'Right,' he said at last.
Neither of them spoke the rest of the way home.
Ivy stood next to Philip in his room, surveying a bookcase full of treasures: the angel statues she had given him after Tristan died, a stand-up paper doll of Don Mattingly, fossils from Andrew, and a rusty railroad spike.
Philip and Maggie had arrived home that afternoon just as Will was dropping off Ivy. After Ivy and Philip shared a snack, she'd scooped up his school-books while he carefully carried his newest treasure, a moldy bird's nest, up to his room. Ivy watched him install the nest in a place of honor, then she ran her hand down the line of angel statues. She touched one that wasn't her own, an angel in a baseball uniform with wings.
'That's the statue Tristan's friend brought me,' Philip told her. 'I mean the girl angel. I've seen her a couple of times.'
'You've seen another angel? Are you sure?' Ivy asked, surprised.
Philip nodded. 'She came to our big party.'
'How can you tell her apart from Tristan?' Ivy wondered.
Philip thought for a moment. 'Her colors are more purplish.'
'How do you know she's a girl?'
'She's shaped like one,' he said.
'Oh.'
'Like a girl your age,' he added. From beneath a stack of comic books, Philip dug out a photograph with a strange pale blur in it. Ivy recognized the picture: it was the first photo that Will had taken of them at the arts festival.
Philip studied it and frowned. 'I guess you can't see as much here,' he said.
See as much what? Ivy wondered silently.
'Do you really want just your water angel back?' Philip asked.
Ivy knew he wanted to keep all the statues. 'Just her,' she assured him, then carried the porcelain angel into her own room. This was the statue Ivy loved most. Its swirling blue-green robe had prompted her to name it after the angel she had seen when she was four, the angel who had saved her from drowning. Ivy set the statue next to Tristan's picture, running her hand over the angel's smooth glazed surface. Then she touched Tristan's photo.
'Two angels-my two angels,' she said, then headed up to her third-floor music room.
Ella followed her and leaped up into the dormer window across from Ivy's piano. Ivy sat down and began to work through her scales, sending out ripples of music. As her hands moved up and down the keyboard, she thought about Tristan, the way he'd looked when he swam, light scattered in the water drops around him, the way his light could shine around her now.
The late sunlight of September was a pure gold like his shimmer, and the sunset would have the same rim of colors. Ivy glanced toward the window and stopped playing abruptly. Ella was sitting up, her ears alert, her eyes big and shiny. Ivy turned quickly to look behind her. 'Tristan,' she said softly.
The glow surrounded her.
'Tristan,' she whispered again. 'Talk to me. Why can't I hear you? The others hear you-Will and Beth.
Can't you speak to me?'
But the only sound was the light thump of Ella leaping down from her perch and trotting over to her. Ivy wondered if the cat could see Tristan.
'Yes, she saw me the first time I came.'
Ivy was stunned by his voice. 'It's you. You really are-' 'Amazing, isn't it?'
Within herself, Ivy could hear not only his voice but also the laughter in it. He sounded just as he always had when something amused him. Then the laughing ceased.
'Ivy, I love you. I'll never stop loving you.'
Ivy laid her face down in her hands. Her palms and fingers were bathed in pale golden light. 'I love you,
