The Trouble With Angels Page 0,60

audience."

The sound that followed sounded suspiciously like the closing of a door. Maureen waited a moment, but Thom seemed content to do nothing more than hold her.

"Are you going to kiss me?" she asked.

"Do you want me to?"

"I don't know." She knew exactly what she wanted, but she wasn't willing to ask for it.

She felt his shoulders move with a silent laugh. "I'm going to kiss you, and when I do, you're going to remember it for a good long while. When I do, you won't ever confuse me with another man again, understand?"

Maureen nodded.

"Now tell me true, Maureen Woods, do you or do you not want me to kiss you?"

She broke away just enough to look him in the eyes. Her gaze fell on the table with the polished silver and the two place settings. At some point when she hadn't noticed, the girls had come in and lit the candles. No man had ever wooed her this way. No man had ever taken such time and care to court her. Not even Brian.

"Do you?" Thom pressed, growing impatient.

Maureen's gaze was drawn back to him. She smiled shyly and nodded. She wanted his kiss. Wanted it desperately. "Please, oh, please."

"Dad's going to be all right," Joe told his sister confidently. "I feel a whole lot better about everything since we talked to him." He smiled at Annie, who sat on the other side of the living room, reading a magazine. He was making one final phone call to his sister before leaving town. Now that matters were straight with his father, there wasn't any need to stick around California any longer. Annie, understandably, was eager to see her family.

"You're sure about Dad?" Bethany pressed.

"Relatively sure."

"Eric seems to think we might be glossing over the facts here. Even when he tries to convince us otherwise, Dad doesn't seem like his old self."

"Will any of us ever be the same after losing Mom?" Joe asked. He didn't mean to sound impatient, but he'd talked to Annie and they'd decided that morning to head out early. He didn't want to change their plans again.

"No, I guess we won't," Bethany admitted reluctantly. "Have you told Dad you're leaving yet?"

"No. He's disappeared again. Mrs. Johnson said he left shortly after lunch and didn't say where he was going. He'll be back before dinner. Annie and I'll tell him then."

Paul hated the smell of a hospital. It was sickness and death and hopelessness and pain all mingled with disinfectant and medications. Even when Barbara was home for brief periods, the scent had never left her skin and hair.

It assaulted him when he walked into the Westside Medical Hospital like a wave of August heat. He stopped in the foyer, uncertain for a moment if he could continue.

By the sheer force of his guilt and shame, he made his way toward the elevator and Madge Bartelli's room. He expected to find Bernard either in the waiting room reserved for families or at Madge's bedside, but Madge's husband was neither place.

Madge must have heard him enter the room because her head rolled across the pillow toward Paul. Even in her agony she offered him a weak smile. "Hello, Pastor."

"Hello, Madge." At her bedside was the worn leather volume of Psalms he'd lent her. Barbara had read it often in those final weeks. When the pain was the worst, he'd read the words of comfort to her, but he'd found little solace himself.

"How nice of you to come."

He should have been to visit her much sooner and far more often. "Joe's home." That was the only excuse he could think to offer, weak as it was. He wanted to beg her to forgive his weakness, but he didn't come to burden her with his guilt.

"I understand he's marrying." Her words were so weak, they were barely audible.

"This summer, it seems."

"Ah," she said, and closed her eyes, "I'll miss the wedding."

After all his years of schooling, after all his years of counseling and training, Paul discovered he hadn't an answer to that.

"Give him and his bride-to-be my love."

"I will."

How frail she was, Paul noted, and sinking more each day. He wondered if her children would arrive in time and prayed they would.

Prayer.

He had done precious little of that in the last few weeks. He discovered he couldn't talk to God the way he had before Barbara's death. He had a chip on his shoulder, he guessed, although a pastor generally wasn't supposed to possess negative feelings. After