a boy standing beside it. His hands were in his back pockets, his dark hair rumpled by the wind as he looked up at the tree’s branches.
As I approached, Alex turned at the sound of my footsteps. His eyes widened in a flash of blue-grey. I stopped short as our gazes met, my mouth dry.
I saw him swallow. “I just…wanted to see it,” he said finally, nodding at the tree.
“I’m glad,” I said as I started to cry. “I mean, I really, really cannot tell you how glad I am.”
I took another step towards him, and then I was running. Alex met me halfway and caught me up hard in his arms.
For a long time we just held each other. I clung to him, my face tight against his neck as I drank in his familiar scent – the feel of his arms around me. Finally he stroked my hair back with both hands. Without speaking, he started pressing slow kisses over my face, brushing away the tears.
His warm mouth caressed its way over my cheeks, my lips. “I thought I’d never see you again,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “That years would pass – that you’d fall in love with someone else…”
Alex stopped and stared at me. “Are you crazy?” He sounded almost angry. “There will never be anyone else for me, Willow. Never. If you hadn’t come after me, I’d have come back here in a few weeks – I’d have begged you on my knees.”
I reached up and gripped both his hands. He rested his forehead against mine; we stood with our heads bowed. The willow tree stirred as the wind whispered around us.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Alex, I was just so angry and confused…”
“I know,” he said. “I deserved it. Don’t apologize.”
And somehow that was all that needed to be said.
We drew apart a little, gazing at each other. I slowly felt a smile spread across my face. I just stood there, smiling. I couldn’t stop.
Finally I cleared my throat. “You know, there’s something I have to do,” I told him gravely – and I took his head in my hands and kissed him, gliding my fingers through his dark hair.
By the fourth kiss, he was grinning. “Wait, are you sure you definitely want me back? You seem kind of indecisive.”
I could feel myself grinning too. “Don’t talk,” I said. “Just kiss.”
Epilogue
MY MOTHER’S BURIAL TOOK PLACE five days later. It was the day after we’d buried the Pawntucket fighters, in the same old cemetery outside of town. I’d always liked it there – it was so quiet. Some of the headstones in the cemetery had mellowed with age, and in the summer the oak trees cast a dappled shade.
There weren’t many of us present. Alex and me. Nina and Jonah. A few others. Seb wasn’t: he’d left to go after Meghan. We’d spoken to the Idaho AKs on the shortwave by then – Meghan was heading to Tulsa to see her family. Seb hadn’t been in contact with her yet. He said you couldn’t tell a girl you loved her over the radio. I closed my eyes briefly, wishing him luck as hard as I could.
Aunt Jo wasn’t at the funeral either. Now that the angels were gone, she seemed much more bitter, and had stayed on at the lakeside cabin. I hoped that she could find peace.
I hoped we all could.
My grandparents were buried in the cemetery; they’d died before I was born. As everyone said a few words at my mother’s graveside, I found myself studying their double headstone with its stark black letters. In a strange way it was comforting – as if they’d take care of her.
I was the last to speak. I hadn’t planned what I was going to say. But I talked about how Mom used to play the guitar when I was little. How hard she’d tried to be there for me as she grew sicker, and how often she’d failed. How amazing it had been whenever she opened her eyes and really saw me.
“Mom, I wouldn’t have traded you for anything,” I finished softly. “So much of me is you. Thank you.”
“You okay?” whispered Alex, as I went and stood beside him again.
I nodded, leaning against him as he put his arm around me. “Yeah,” I murmured. “I really am.”
I held his hand tightly as they lowered Mom’s coffin into the cold ground. I’d dreaded this moment all my life, but now that it had come, it was impossible to feel too sad.
Mom was finally free.
In the spring, Alex and I went back to our cabin in the Sierra Nevadas.
What we’d planned as a one-month break stretched seamlessly into two. Neither of us could get enough now of simply lying on the grass, listening to the wind in the pines. Or sitting up for hours talking. Or taking our sleeping bags outside and sleeping under the stars, our bare limbs entwined.
Slowly, I was getting used to having the angel part of me so diminished. There were days when I thought it would have been easier if she’d just vanished. But then, touching her shining presence, I knew I’d rather have this little bit than nothing at all. And being at the cabin, with its total peace, was healing.
Being with Alex was healing.
One day in June, we were lying on the grass, soaking up the sun. All Alex had on was a pair of shorts; his eyes were closed, his hands folded on his tanned stomach.
“Hey, have we figured out yet if I’m an older woman or not?” I said drowsily. I was lying beside him, my head against his.
He grinned and made a lunge for me; I gave a laughing shriek as he pulled me on top of him. “I think you’re just two weeks younger than me now,” he said, nuzzling at my neck. “You’re catching up.”
“I’ve done all the catching up I’m ever doing.” I drew a blade of grass across his perfect mouth. “You are
“Oh no! How am I going to live, now that you’ve squelched my dream?”
“You’ll manage.”
There was a vibration in my shorts pocket as my cell went off. I hardly ever remembered to charge it up here – we had an extension that ran off the truck’s battery. I slid off Alex and pulled the phone out. A message from Seb:
I showed the text to Alex; he grinned. “Hey, so they’re really doing it.”
“Yep,” I said, smiling at the screen. “They’re really doing it.”
It had been weeks after Seb left before I found out what happened with him and Meghan. Finally I’d received a letter in Pawntucket from him that had gone on for pages about his journey. I’d scanned it impatiently, knowing he’d done this to torture me.
It ended:
“What?!” I yelped. “Oh, Seb, you are in so much trouble—” And then I saw his postscript, in tiny letters…and a grin burst across my face.
Seb had been busy these last few months, though. He’d never been able to get the street girl he’d once saved out of his mind – or, I suspected, the street child he’d once been himself. Now he was about to head back down to Mexico; he planned to start a centre to help street kids who’d been left even more destitute by the quakes.
And Meghan was going with him.
I texted back:
I glanced at Alex as I put my phone away. “He’s making me feel incredibly lazy, you know. He’s been setting this up for months.”
“Lazy’s good – for now, anyway.” Alex laced his fingers through mine. “God, Willow, if anyone deserves a
