Knowing she needed to pick her words carefully, Adriel said, “What do you think happened to him?”
A moment slid by while Pam framed her answer. “Kids end up on milk cartons all the time. He could have run away; he could have been abducted.” Her voice dropped an octave, quavered slightly, “He could be dead. They’re all horrible options. I can’t believe he would leave us voluntarily.”
“So you’ve ruled out him becoming a runaway.”
“My parents were older than most when they started their family. Daddy died on the operating table ten years after we lost Ben. Complications from a minor surgery. Mother left the porch light on for the rest of her life. Every night for twenty-six years. A shining beacon to guide Ben if he ever came home. She never stopped hoping. When she passed, I had a choice—keep the house and leave the light burning, or sell the place and accept my brother was gone. I sold the house. What does that tell you?”
“It must have been a difficult decision.”
“If he could have come home, he would have done it a long time ago.”
“So you think he’s…”
“Dead. I think he’s dead.” A pause. “I’ve never said it out loud. I was always afraid saying it would make it true. And yet, I’ve stayed in this hole of a town, waiting. Just in case.” Bitterness twisted her lips. “Maybe Mother wasn’t the only one with delusions.”
“I’m sorry.” Adriel’s heart broke for Pam. Not knowing Ben’s fate had taken a toll on her. Telling Pam what she knew might help the woman make sense of her loss, or it might make things worse. Without evidence, all Adriel could give her was a fantastic story and more speculation.
Outside the Jeep, everything stopped. Even Pam froze in time. Estelle had returned.
“Nice trick. You’re learning.”
From the back seat, Estelle said, “You can’t tell her yet.”
“I know.” Pique at being second-guessed wove through Adriel’s tone. Left alone, she might have tried to clue Pam in, though.
“Don’t get crabby with me; I’m just the messenger.”
“Not my first day.” Feeling defensive was a new emotion—one Adriel could have lived without.
“You talked me into meddling in the man’s mind,” Estelle’s words were an accusation. “And you knew it was against the rules.”
“Only a little.”
Estelle’s skeptical squint said more than words. “If he was supposed to be healed in this manner, his guardian would already have done so.”
“Not necessarily. A guardian should respect whatever choice a charge makes when it comes to issues like this. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the growth or safety of another. When there are additional factors like there are with this case—Pam, Ben, what happened with Lydia—a different course of action may be needed. He knows something, and without intervention the information might be lost. Plus, I couldn’t stand to see either of them in so much pain. Giving him a bit more lucidity seemed like a good compromise. What could it hurt?”
“I’m new to this angel stuff, but even I know that’s a bit of human justification. How are you supposed to train me properly if you can’t stay detached?”
Estelle’s disappointment left Adriel feeling like a chastised child. “I’m sorry. These human emotions are irrational sometimes, and a lot stronger than I ever expected. How people manage to hold up under the stress is beyond me. I feel like I’m being pulled in different directions all the time.” Estelle’s eyes flitted upward as she processed this information. When speculation narrowed them slightly, Adriel found herself becoming angry. “Don’t look at me like that. You should know what I’m talking about, you were human not so long ago yourself. None of this is new to you. Me? I’ve always been an angel until now. I’m not some test subject or one of those rodent whatsits,” Adriel snapped her fingers while she pulled the word from her mind, “wait, I remember. I’m not a Guinea Pig.”
“Technically, you are, though.” Estelle disagreed gently.
“Oink.” Adriel wrinkled her nose.
“Guinea Pigs don’t oink. They whistle.”
“Is that really germane to the conversation?”
Humor twitched Estelle’s mouth into a smile holding a level of fondness most angels learned to control in the early days of working with humans. As part of her training, Adriel should be telling Estelle it was time to become more detached, but lacking any other allies at the moment she chose to remain silent.
“Probably not.”
“I’m working on gut instinct most of the time. Sometimes human, sometimes angel. Make no mistake, you and Julius are in this as deeply as I am. If I’m a whistle pig, you’re another.” Estelle’s shoulders twitched and the smile never left her face. She was enjoying this too much, in Adriel’s opinion. “Craig’s mind looks a lot like his house—full of walls and maze paths. I suspect he’s trying to bury his memories and ,following that logic, there’s info stored in there somewhere I think will help me figure out how Ben died. With him going in and out of lucidity, the only way to get at what he knows is to go in there myself. I thought it better to help him think more clearly so he can make a choice.”
Compassion for humans was stock in trade for angels. Compassion tempered with a certain level of detachment—so when a charge needed to go through something painful in order to learn a lesson, the guardian knew when not to step in and take away the pain. That sense of detachment didn’t stand up to human hormones, and Adriel had those in spades.
“Be careful,” Estelle warned. “You’ll still have to answer for your actions.”
“This one’s not on me. There’s something else taking up space in his head. Something that feels evil.”
“Earthwalker?”
“Not sure. We’ll need to take a closer look.”
As Adriel watched, Estelle’s eyes turned unfocused. She was listening to
