Christmas in the City - Jill Barnett Page 0,29

if by doing so he could bring her home to him.

Fly home to me, my angel.

The kittens crawled up the chair and the rabbits chewed on his shoelaces. He looked at them, at the pin, then at the white silk shirt clutched in his hands.

A moment later he buried his face in the shirt and cried.

Chapter Fifteen

"Lilli's watching him,” Florie said. “Constantly she looks down below and watches him."

Saint Peter stopped pacing and looked at Florida. "Has she stopped crying?"

Florie shook her head.

He sighed, then moved across the clouds with Florie fluttering in his wake, until he stood near where Lillian knelt, clutching the rim of a cloud in tight hands and staring intently over the edge. Her halo had no glow and her wings drooped downward like the wilted petals of a broken rose.

She raised her head and looked up at Saint Peter, the tears she couldn't seem to stop streaming down her face. "He's at the park, calling my name."

Saint Peter looked down. "So I see."

She bit her lip and watched Daniel, his head bent, his hands shoved in his coat pockets and snow falling all around him as he walked despondently from the park. "He's alone and lost. Can't I help him? Can't you or someone help him? He's lost everyone in his life."

"Some people have a harder road to travel, Lilli."

She looked up at him. "I never really knew what Heaven was until I found Daniel."

Saint Peter looked at Florida, who was crying silent tears of her own. He shook his head and waved her away.

Lilli's shoulders shook and she hiccupped as she looked downward. "He's at the church now, praying. Hear him? D.L. Stewart in a church." She paused. "I can hear him."

Saint Peter sat down on the rim of the cloud. He looked down at the world below, then watched one man in particular—the dark and empty shape of a man.

Saint Peter was quiet, then he looked at Lillian for the longest time. After an eternal minute, he cleared his throat and said in a gruff voice, "So, Lillian. Tell me about your young man."

Daniel had searched everywhere. He went back to the German bakery and stood by the window, watching and hoping, until hope felt like nothing more than a fantasy. He sat on the same bench in the park for hours, wanting to see her running in the snow, her hat flying behind her, wishing to once again hear a little of that joyous laughter.

All he found was the world going on without him.

Scouring the Washington Market had done no good either. He had rung bells and asked children if they'd seen her, then bought them mugs of steaming hot chocolate to their delight. The joy in their faces made him think of her.

But, in truth, she seemed to be as elusive as Saint Nicholas. He went into churches, every church he could find, and he prayed, prayers that seemed to have no answers.

By midnight on Christmas Eve he had walked all the way to the opera house, not caring about the cold or the snow. There was a performance of Handel's Messiah scheduled. He wandered through the crowds until most had gone inside. He dug into his pockets and dropped coins and bills into every dented and rusty outstretched tin can along the way.

The snow began to fall in earnest, heavy and getting heavier. He tossed a gold coin into an old dented enamel bowl sitting by a blind man dressed in rough homely clothes, before he paused and said, "The storm is picking up. Do you have somewhere to go?"

"I live near Grand Street, east of the Bowery." The old man tried to get up but his hands were old and gnarled and he had no gloves to protect him from the elements.

Daniel helped him, and bent down and picked up the bowl and placed it in the man's gnarled hands.

He turned and hailed a hansom cab with a loud, sharp whistle.

"I've paid the driver to take you home," he told the old man, as he opened the door and helped him inside. He paused and looked into the old man's creased eyes, eyes that showed every hard year he had lived.

Like his grandfather.

Without a thought, he pulled off his gloves and placed them in the man's hands, closing his bent and aged fingers around them. "Merry Christmas," he said, then closed the door, tipping his hat. "Merry Christmas to you."

For the longest time he just stood there, watching the