Fallen Angel (20 page)

"Yeah. Mostly. Just some broken glass and water--nothing major. We'll be open in a couple of days!" That seemed optimistic, but she said, "Excellent!" and they went on past to the bookstore.

Cate's sign was still in the window, and she pulled it off as they entered the store, but as she was starting to throw it into the trash, she said, "
Are
we opening?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Just thought I'd better ask," she said, and threw the sign away.

The store was quiet; no one seemed to be interested in Christmas shopping, since they were mostly busy cleaning up their own yards and homes. There were quite a few houses that had been damaged, a lot of cars that had been crushed by falling trees, and more broken windows than could be counted. After sitting around the store for a couple of hours talking mostly to each other, Sarah decided they could be of better use elsewhere.

"Make a new sign, why don't you?" she asked Cate, and they stuck the newsign ("Closed for the day--come back tomorrow!" with the flying trees of yesterday now lying on the crayoned sand) on the door and took off walking to see if there was anything useful they could do. They didn't get far--they ended up helping the deli owner sweep out the broken glass from the store and mop up water, and he fed them lunch as a reward.

Over pastrami sandwiches and bottles of soda, they commiserated with him over the damage to the store, and gossiped about their neighbors. Bob, the deli owner, had heard that at least one yacht had sunk in the bay, but hadn't walked over yet to see since he'd been busy securing the store. He also said that some of the expensive homes near the marina had been damaged, one losing most of its roof, but "don't quote me on that," he said. The local high school had been turned into a shelter for the temporarily homeless, and Sarah thought that must be pretty funny--Sarasota high society mixing with the already-homeless folks that she was sure would turn up there, too, would undoubtedly be interesting. Maybe it would be worth volunteering just to see.

She decided she'd call later and see if the Red Cross needed help, which reminded her about the phone. She asked Bob, "Does your phone work?"

"Nope. It's been out since yesterday."

"Are the Grahams at home, do you know?" She'd forgotten to check on them.

"Nah. They
were
, but they took off early. Went over to the marina, I think, to see if anybody needed help."

That sounded like them. Wrapping gifts at the bookshop when they were shorthanded, and looking for a way to help those displaced by the storm the next day. "Okay, we'll go looking for them. Thanks for lunch!"

"No problem. Take care now." By now the street crew had cleared the street of trees, and they got back in the car and drove slowly toward the marina.

"Wow." A yacht. In the street, almost. They had arrived at the marina to find a group of people crowded around a yacht that had been beached. Well, maybe not a
yacht
--Sarah had never had much interest in boats and wasn't sure when a boat became a yacht, but this, if just a boat, was definitely a
big
boat. In the group, Sarah spotted Elizabeth and Donald, and they picked their way through the crowd to reach them. Elizabeth immediately hugged Sarah.

"Oh, I'm so glad you girls are all right!" she cried. "I wanted to call you, but the phones were out, and I thought we should come check on you, but Donald said he was sure you were all right."

"And I was right, wasn't I?" he said, but hugged Sarah, too. Even though the rain had stopped, they were both wearing yellow slickers over their shorts, and Donald's face was streaked with mud. Elizabeth reached over to scrub at his face with a handkerchief, and Sarah asked, "So what have you guys been up to?"

"Just sightseeing, mostly," Elizabeth said. "Donald helped pull a tree off a car, though, down the road that way." She pointed. "It's much worse on that side of town. Lots of signs and trees down, and a lot of roofs torn off. Did you hear they turned the high school into a shelter?" She grinned mischievously. "I bet
that's
something."

Sarah laughed. "Yes, I heard. I considered volunteering just to get in and see."

Elizabeth chuckled, "Me, too."

After awhile they grew bored of watching the group of men standing around the boat (yacht?), and Sarah and Cate headed back toward the store. Elizabeth and Donald wanted to check on some friends of theirs across town, so they parted ways, promising to check in later.

"Sarah?" Cate asked, once they were in the car again.

"Yes?"

"Do you think I might go home?"

"Oh, Cate, I'm sorry!" Sarah laughed. "I totally forgot you
had
a home! I thought you might just live with me for awhile." She smiled over at her, and then sobered. "Man. I hope your house is okay."

"Yeah."

"Well, let's go see."

* * *

It was, mostly. There was one broken window--a tree branch had speared it--but the roof was okay except for a few torn off shingles. Cate's pottery studio--really just an outbuilding that she had converted to hold a pottery wheel and kiln--had fared worse. The roof had been torn off, and one wall had collapsed, leaning sadly against the kiln. Pottery in various stages of completion lay broken on the ground, and the boards she had used as shelves were scattered all over the yard.

"Well, it was mostly bad pottery anyway," Cate said, surveying the damage. She picked up a small black pot that had survived unbroken. "Most of the good stuff was in the house or out on consignment--" She bent over and picked up another small pot, this one painted white and black. "A lot of the little stuff seems okay. Help me pick it up." They walked around the yard picking up pots;
Kind of like an Easter egg hunt
, Sarah thought. They managed to find six unbroken pieces among the shards of broken clay, and Cate placed them carefully on her kitchen table.

28.

Sarah picked up the little black and white pot. It was about the size of a grapefruit or a large orange, rounded and smooth. More of a cup, really, than a pot, it was glazed a smooth white with tiny flecks of brown; painted on the pot in graceful calligraphic strokes was the same ideogram Sarah had tattooed on the inside of her wrist.

Cate saw her looking at it. "Oops," she said. "That was going to be your Christmas present."

"Oh, Cate, it's beautiful," Sarah said, turning it over in her hands. It really was a beautiful piece. "I didn't know you'd gotten so good."

Cate shrugged. "It's okay." Then she grinned. "Yeah, I've gotten a lot better lately. Damn it, I wish you hadn't picked that up. Now what am I going to do for your Christmas present? Although I guess it's good it didn't get broken." Sarah handed it back to her. "You're going to keep it and wrap it and give it to me for Christmas, and I'm going to pretend I didn't see it."

"You sure?"

"Of course!"

"Okay. Cool."

She took the cup from Sarah and placed it on the table among the other unbroken pieces, then said, "You sure you like it?"

"Like what?" Sarah asked, and Cate grinned again.

"Okay, so now what?"

"I don't know . . . want to help me get a Christmas tree?"

"Sure!"

* * *

The last Christmas tree Sarah had had was the one she and James had put up in their apartment the year before she got pregnant. They had only been married about a year, and they'd bought the biggest tree that would fit in the apartment, not thinking about the fact that they had almost no ornaments for it. They put up the few they had, then popped endless bowls of popcorn and strung popcorn and cranberry garlands to fill in the empty spaces.

The next year they were busy getting ready for the baby, and about the time they would have started thinking about getting a tree, Sarah went into the hospital, and by the time she came out, her family was gone and there was certainly no point in putting up a Christmas tree. And then--well, she was on her own, and it just wasn't something she felt like doing. She enjoyed looking at other people's trees, at the shiny decorations and glittering lights, but it never occurred to her to put up her own. Christmas was a time of grieving for her, not celebration.

But now . . . she suddenly felt like putting up a tree. And not only a tree, but also maybe also a wreath for the front door, and who knew what else? "Let's go see what we can find," she said to Cate, and they jumped into the car and headed for the Christmas tree lot.

Sarah had always enjoyed picking out the family Christmas tree with her father. They would go to a Christmas tree lot, usually at night, where the rows of trees lit by strings of bulbs above felt like some kind of mini-forest in the middle of the city. She would walk down the row of trees with her father, holding his hand, followed by one of the tree lot employees, usually a big man bundled up in a parka, stamping his feet and clapping his gloved hands together to keep warm.

They would carefully select a tree, and the man would hoist it onto his shoulder and carry it back to his workbench, where he would take a saw and cut an inch of trunk off the bottom, then wrap the tree in a net and lash it to the roof of their car for the drive home. If they were lucky, it would start snowing while they were outside, and the ride home would be magical.

Picking out a tree in Florida was sort of the same, except that the people who worked there were usually teenaged boys wearing shorts rather than men in parkas, and there certainly wasn't any snow. The rows of trees still smelled the same, of pine and resin, and they still cut an inch or so off the bottom of the tree so it could absorb water when you got it home. She worried a little bit about that--after sitting outside in the Florida sun for a week or ten days, the trees couldn't help but be a little bit dry. Of course, after the storm, you couldn't really tell if they were dry or not, and quite a few of them were battered and broken. To their credit, the tree lot people had reduced the prices, and the trees were priced at a fraction of their original exorbitant prices.

They found one that wasn't bad--a sturdy evergreen that Cate christened "The Christmas Bush," and the young man working at the tree lot cut the requisite chunk off the bottom, wrapped the tree in a net bag, and lashed it tightly to the top of Sarah's car. They bought a wreath from him, too, and a big red ribbon bow. The front of the tree dangled down over the top of the windshield, and it made Sarah laugh every time they stopped at a stoplight and it bounced in front of them. She wanted to stop and buy Christmas ornaments, but they decided they'd better get the tree off the top of the car first, before it caused an accident.

It wasn't exactly easy, and Cate wished aloud that they'd brought the tree lot guy home with them to unload, but they finally wrestled the tree off the top of the car and onto the porch, where they stuck the trunk in a bucket of water while they went off to buy decorations.

A couple of hours and several discount store visits later, they were back at Cate's house. "Are you sure you don't want me to come home with you and help you put up the tree?" she asked Sarah as she stopped in the driveway.

"No, I think you've helped me enough for today. I can put up the tree. You have a quiet night, and I'll see you at the store tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. Have fun putting up the tree! See you tomorrow . . ."

Sarah watched while Cate unlocked her door, went inside and turned on the lights, then turned and waved before closing the door behind her.

* * *

Sarah spent the evening putting up the tree and decorating her house for Christmas. One of her purchases had been a tree stand, and she got the tree into it, then spent several minutes lying on the floor tightening first one screw, then another. She would step back and check to see whether it was straight, then tighten whichever screw seemed most likely to push the tree into position. She finally got it right, and started circling the tree with strings of white lights.

Sophie and Dinah, who seemed to have become fast friends during their day alone, came to watch, sitting bewitched as Sarah flipped the switch and the tree glowed with silvery light. There were red glass balls, too, and golden bells, and a few silly things like prancing elves and a Santa or two. There was an angel in a stiff muslin dress, and a silver star for the top of the tree.