Where Angels Fear to Tread

people every time you get annoyed, maybe you should think about the benefits of some female companionship.”

Mulvehill’s words were like a kick to the teeth, and Remy really didn’t know how to react.

“You’re not pissed that I said that, right?” Mulvehill asked cautiously as Harry returned to the table with their check and Remy’s leftovers wrapped in foil.

“No,” Remy lied.

“You’re not gonna cook my ass?” he asked, pulling the wrinkled gift certificate from the inside pocket of his sports jacket and placing it in the leather folder with the check and an equally wrinkled twenty-dollar bill.

At first Remy didn’t answer.

“You heard what I said about the dangerous levels of alcohol in your body.”

“Screw you. Are you mad at me or not?”

“I’m not mad. I just don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Remy said, slowly getting up from his seat.

“You said Maddie’s been gone for less than six months, and I bet it’s been the longest almost six months of your life, hasn’t it?” the normally unemotional man said, gripping Remy’s elbow. “I hate to see you like this and then to hear you say things about losing control. It just gets me thinking that. .”

“I’m all right, Steven,” Remy said, forcing a smile. “Really, I’m all right. I think this case just brought out my bad side, but it’s done now, and I can get back to my naturally cheerful self.”

He felt his friend studying him, searching for a sign, a crack in the armor. Remy started for the door so Mulvehill couldn’t look closer.

“Hey, Chandler,” his friend called.

Remy turned slowly.

The homicide detective was holding the piece of foil-wrapped hamburger.

“You taking this or do you want to be on your dog’s shit list?”

Remy returned to take the package from Mulvehill.

If there was one shit list he couldn’t bear to be on, it was Marlowe’s.

Marlowe paced excitedly in the backseat of Remy’s Corolla.

“Rabbits.” Remy heard the dog muttering beneath his breath in the guttural language of his breed. “Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.”

“And maybe squirrels,” Remy contributed, looking at the dog’s reaction in his rearview mirror.

“Maybe squirrels,” Marlowe repeated. “Rabbits; maybe squirrels.”

Remy had returned to his Pinckney Street home, strangely agitated after his dinner with Steven Mulvehill. His friend had definitely touched on a particularly sensitive nerve.

Putting his signal on, Remy took a right into the parking lot of Mount Auburn Cemetery. He had the pick of the lot and eased into a space in a nice patch of shade thrown by an oak tree.

His wife had been gone for nearly six months and he still felt the magnitude of her passing each and every day. The idea that he could push aside her memory, and the love he still felt for her, was unthinkable.

So why was it that deep down, he knew his friend was probably right?

Marlowe was panting like a runaway freight train as he turned off the car’s engine and opened the door to a blast of August heat.

“All right, all right,” Remy said, opening the passenger-side rear door.

Marlowe leapt out, immediately placing his nose to the ground and beginning to track his prey.

“Anything?” Remy asked.

“Rabbits; maybe squirrels,” Marlowe reported quite seriously.

“Thought so,” Remy answered.

There was no one in sight, so he let Marlowe roam. He followed his dog through the metal gateway onto the winding path that led through one of the prettiest cemeteries in the Greater Boston area. Marlowe continued the hunt, nose moving along the ground, and off the path to the grassy areas around the trees and grave markers.

“Hey!” Remy called.

The Labrador stopped and lifted his head.

“No peeing on the headstones,” Remy reminded him.

“No pee,” Marlowe grumbled.

It was certainly hot, but there was a hint of a cooling breeze from the north, a harbinger of less-stifling weather, and perhaps even some much-needed rain, the angel thought.

The vast lawns surrounding the grave sites were dappled with dried, brown patches of grass, and even the trees had that parched, withered look with branches hanging low.

But things couldn’t have been more different at Madeline’s plot.

The green around her grave site was lush, dark, and healthy, with wildflowers more vibrant than all the colors of the rainbow surrounding her concrete marker as if in celebration. This was how it was year-round, a special gift to her memory—a thank-you from the Angel of Death, Israfil, to Remy, for his help in preventing the angel from triggering the Apocalypse.

Remy approached the grave as he normally did, feeling the same pangs of sadness then that he’d had during his very first visit.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said, reading her name on the stone, while admiring some of the more unusual blooms that flourished there. He was pretty sure that most of the flowers weren’t even native to this hemisphere, but here they were, growing just for her.

“How’re things?” he asked, kneeling upon the grave. There were some weeds growing up amongst the flowers, and he reached down, plucking them from the always-fertile ground.

Remy knew his wife wasn’t actually there anymore.

He knew full well that when she had passed, her remaining life energies had immediately left her body and returned to the source of power in the universe that made all things. The stuff of creation; Madeline was in the sun and the stars, the trees and the grass; a part of everything that flew, crawled, swam, slithered, ran, and walked upon the surface of the earth.

Yes, Madeline as he remembered her wasn’t there anymore, but he liked to come to this place of beauty to honor her memory. It was a monument to the amazing person she had been and to the special love they had shared.

Remy found himself pondering Mulvehill’s words. They’d struck a chord deep within him.

It wasn’t as though he’d never had the thought himself. Remy knew he was lonely, and in moments of weakness, had briefly considered the what-ifs of seeking companionship. But his thoughts would always return to Madeline and how it all felt like some sort of horrible betrayal to her memory.

That was why he had come today, just the thought that Steven Mulvehill might be right sending him to his wife’s grave site for penance.

“There could never be another you,” he used to tell her, and he remembered the smile that would appear on her face. It still had the same effect on him, even if it was only from memory.

His stomach sort of dropped, as though he were on an elevator suddenly starting down to the next floor, and then he smiled, recalling how lucky he had been to have had her in his life.

But now she was gone, leaving behind a sucking void of loneliness that seemed impossible to fill.

And did he truly want to?

That was the question, and the reason he was so disturbed by Mulvehill’s observation that it might be time to let go of the past and look to the future.

“If I can’t have you, do I want anybody else?” he asked the grave, not expecting an answer.

He rose to his feet, brushing some stray blades of grass and dirt from the front of his jeans, and looked to see where Marlowe had gotten to. He could see the dog off in the distance, circling the base of an oak tree, and called to him. The dog glanced threateningly up the tree, then gave a single bark, a warning to a squirrel that next time it wouldn’t be so lucky, before bounding across the cemetery toward Remy.

“Did you give that squirrel the business?” Remy asked the Labrador as he lovingly patted his head.

The dog panted furiously, lapping up the affection.

“Gave business,” Marlowe agreed, his thick pink tongue lolling with the heat.

“I think it’s time to go,” Remy told him, and the dog agreed, turning toward the trail back to the parking lot and the air-conditioned car.

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to Madeline?” Remy asked the back of the animal.

“Not there,” Marlowe said, not even turning around. “Madeline gone.”

Madeline gone.

* * *

They returned to Beacon Hill only a little late for Marlowe’s supper, but the dog nevertheless wasted no time in letting Remy know.

“I don’t remember your ever being this demanding,” Remy said. He picked up Marlowe’s water bowl and rinsed it before refilling it with fresh water. “Is this some new teenage phase you’re going through?”

“Hungry,” the dog said, his tail wagging.

“You’re always hungry,” Remy responded, pulling a plastic container filled with food out of a lower cabinet. Using a metal measuring cup, he dumped a full scoop of the nugget-sized food into another metal dish.

“This stuff looks delicious,” Remy said jokingly, giving the bowl a shake. The contents rattled enticingly.

Marlowe’s eyes were locked on the bowl as Remy crossed the kitchen to set it down beside the water.

“Go to it,” he said, stepping back as the hungry Labrador charged the bowl and immediately began to eat.

“Don’t forget to chew,” Remy warned. They’d had some problems with this in the past, usually on the living room carpet or in Remy’s bed.

“Is it all right if I have a moment to myself now?” he asked the animal.

The dog ignored him, chowing down on the tasty morsels that filled his bowl.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Remy said. He reached down and thumped the dog’s side with his hand, before turning toward the kitchen doorway.

And then he noticed the flashing red light of his answering machine on the counter.

“Huh,” he said, having a hard time remembering the last time he’d had a message on his landline, never mind receiving a call. Most of his calls these days came over his cell, or the office phone.

He stopped and pushed the PLAY button.

You have one new message, the machine told him in a clipped, mechanical voice, over the sound of Marlowe’s slurping at his water bowl.

At first there was the hiss of silence, and for a second Remy thought it might be a hang-up, but then a woman began to speak.

“Um, hi. .” There was another pause, the woman grumbling something beneath her breath that Remy couldn’t make out.

He leaned closer to the machine.

“Yeah, ummm, this message is for Remy Chandler. . I’m calling because. .”