"Very well," Gabriel said. Taking her hand, he bowed over it. "I'm sorry to have troubled you."
Sarah stared after him as he walked away, bewildered by his old-world courtliness. She took a few steps, then turned back, intending to apologize for her rudeness, but it was too late. He was gone.
She glanced around, wondering how he had disappeared so quickly, and then, with a sigh, she walked home, back to the quiet four-bedroom house that had once symbolized everything she held dear; a house that was empty now, as empty as her life.
Inside, she sat in the front room, sitting in the dark as she had every night since she got home from the hospital. She couldn't make herself sleep in the king-size bed she had shared with David, couldn't make herself go into the nursery. She didn't answer the phone, didn't open the mail, didn't turn on the television. She slept during the day so she wouldn't have to remember how full her life had once been.
Before the accident, each new day had been brimming with promise. On weekday mornings, she had spent a quiet half-hour with David before he went to work, packing his lunch, eating breakfast, kissing him good-bye. Shortly thereafter, Natalie would wake up, eager to be held. She'd been such a happy, contented baby, always smiling, her chubby fingers reaching out to grasp at life, eager to explore...
Sarah shook her head, willing the images away, not wanting to remember, unable to forget. She closed her eyes and the memory of a tiny white coffin resting amid three larger ones rose up to haunt her.
The tears came then, and she huddled in a corner of the sofa, steeped in misery, wishing the stranger she'd met in the park had been the depraved killer she had read about in the paper a few days before the accident. The woman in the story had claimed that a monster with red eyes had attacked her in an alley and bitten her in the neck. "Just like Dracula," she had claimed.
Sarah frowned. Perhaps, subconsciously, she'd been hoping to run into the blood-sucker when she started walking in the park at night.
Just before sleep claimed her, she found herself thinking of the strange man in the park. There had been a world of sadness in the depths of his dark gray eyes, but she had been too caught up in her own misery to spare a thought for his.
Now, on the brink of sleep, she wondered if he, too, had lost a loved one. If he, too, had been wandering in the dark, searching for oblivion.
She dreamed of him that night, odd, fragmented dreams that made no sense upon awaking, but then, dreams never made sense in the cold light of day.
For a little while, she stared up at the ceiling, trying to remember what the dreams had been about, but all she could remember was the sound of his voice, lost and alone, whispering her name, and the sadness in his eyes, a sorrow that went beyond grief, beyond pain. An endless eternity of sadness, she thought.
Sarah glanced at the window, saw that it was almost dawn, and drew the covers up over her head, shutting out the light, turning her back on the memories that crowded in on her.
She went back to the park that night. Sitting on the hard stone bench, she stared at the swings, wondering why she did this to herself. On one level, she told herself she didn't want to remember, yet she came here every night and stared at the swing, remembering the sound of Natalie's laughter as her grandmother pushed her in the swing, higher and higher...
She knew he was there even before he appeared beside the bench. Looking up at him, she refused to admit that she had come to the park that night hoping to see him again.
"Good evening," Gabriel said. He gestured at the bench. "May I?"
She shrugged. "It's a free country."
He was wearing black again. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black cowboy boots. Somehow, she couldn't imagine him in any other color. He was dark and mysterious, like the night, she thought fancifully, and black suited him very well.
"How are you this evening, Sarah?" he asked, and his voice was warm and thick, like sun-baked honey.