Heather Graham (5 page)

A Higher Power he had to answer to.

Don held his temper and asked evenly, “How do we know what miracles we’re supposed to perform, and for whom?”

“It’s all in your list,” Gabriel said.

“Our list?”

“The one I’ll be giving you soon.”

“Of course.”

“The miracles must all be accomplished by the stroke of midnight,” Gabriel said.

“Six
miracles
between us by midnight?” Cathy said.

“Don’t worry. You won’t be expected to find the cure for a terminal disease or to bring peace to the world. But little miracles can be just as important as big ones,” Gabriel assured her. “Remember, every single man, woman, and child out there is important in God’s eyes.”

“Well, yes, of course—” Cathy began.

“Little miracles,” Gabriel said. He lifted his hands as if seeking a better explanation. “Christmas gifts.” He leaned forward. “Making something work out for people who just keep trying and believing against all odds. That is a miracle, you see. When all facts and figures suggest that something just can’t happen—but it does. When
faith
makes something happen. Do you understand? Well, if not, you’ll learn as you go along. No one starts out perfectly.”

“That’s a relief,” Don murmured.

“More rules,” Gabriel said. “You can each call on me once. Just once. And only if absolutely necessary. I can’t tell you how busy I am tonight. And I’ve a huge party tomorrow, you know.”

“We go by our list,” Cathy said. “We can each call on you once, we can appear and disappear, we have the power of suggestion and the power to move inanimate objects.”

“Very good,” Gabriel said.

“What happens if we don’t succeed?” Don asked.

“Then you’ll be judged.”

“By…?”

“Need you ask? May I simply suggest that you succeed?” Gabriel said, very politely.

“Is there anything else we should know?” Cathy asked.

To Don’s surprise, Gabriel hesitated. “I’m afraid it’s necessary that I warn you… especially you.”

For once, Don noted, Gabriel was staring at Cathy. The warning was specifically for her.

“Warn us about what?” Don asked.

“Remember, nothing is perfect,” Gabriel muttered. “You have a power… Well, you each have the power, once, just once, to give back life itself. But you mustn’t do it.”

“What?” Cathy gasped. “You mean, if someone is mortally injured—”

“If someone is stone-cold dead,” Gabriel interrupted, “you have the power to give back life to that person.”

“Do you mean we could even bring back to life someone who has been buried for years?”

“I certainly wouldn’t. What a mess. Haven’t you ever read ‘The Monkey’s Paw’?”

“But you just said—”

“Yes, I did. I said you have the power to bring life back. Once each. But you mustn’t do so. If you do, you risk eternity.”

“And damnation,” Don said lightly. To his discomfort, Gabriel did not correct him. He was still staring at Cathy with stern concern.

“If you use that power, I can almost guarantee that you will not receive your wings. You will no longer be a candidate for eternity as a Christmas angel.” He lowered his voice. “And again, no pun intended, God alone knows what will happen.”

“I don’t understand this,” Don said. “If we’re not to use the power—”

“Perhaps it has something to do with man’s free will,” Gabriel said. “I don’t know everything,” he added impatiently. “Just bear in mind that though you have the power, you have it once. Only once. And using the power can cost you absolutely everything you do have. Each other. Your future for all eternity. Now, have I explained it all to you clearly?”

“Clear as … mud,” Don said lightly, and smiled to Gabriel.

Gabriel didn’t crack a grin. He pressed a paper toward Don. “Sign on the dotted line.”

“Sign on the dotted line?” Don demanded incredulously.

“Yes, sir, you heard me!”

“I have to be hallucinating!”

“Seconds are ticking away on Earth,” Gabriel reminded him politely. “And you only have until midnight.”

Being an attorney, Don immediately picked up the paper to read it. It seemed to be an explanation of all that Gabriel had just told him.

A disclaimer?

Exactly. By signing, he and Cathy accepted all possible repercussions should they fail to follow the rules.

“You know, there is print on this contract so small an owl with a magnifying glass couldn’t possibly read it.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Gabriel said.

“Don,” Cathy murmured, “I don’t think this is one of those occasions when we really have a lot of choice.”

“May I have your—” Before Don could say the word pen, a handsome white feather quill floated before his hand. He plucked it from the air and signed his name on the paper.

Cathy took the paper and added her signature, beneath his.

Don felt as if they were buying a used car. He tried to tell himself again that he had to be hallucinating, dreaming, or the like.

But he’d seen himself—seen himself dead.

“Let me get this straight. If I find some poor kid about to drop dead from cancer on that list, I’m supposed to perform a miracle—but I can’t give him life.”

“On the contrary, you
can
give him life,” Gabriel said.

“Well, hel—”

“Don,” Cathy grated.

He inhaled. “Then I am confused.”

“You
can
give him life. You’ve the power to do it. It’s simply that you must not do it. It may well be your own soul you lose in return.”

“Then what good am I?” Don asked.

“Life—on Earth—only lasts so long for any man, woman, and child. It’s a gift, like any other. And quite fleeting at the very best, against the spectrum of time. But there is a quality to every man’s life. Life is a gift to be used to the fullest, no matter how the days are measured. Perhaps life itself is the greatest gift, but sometimes it takes a miracle to make people see that. You’ll know more once you two get started. Ready?”

“Definitely. Christmas Eve is ticking away,” Cathy said.

“But,” Don began, “I still don’t understand…”

“You may never understand,” Gabriel said pointedly.

“Now, dammit, are we going to go through all this sh—”

“We are ready!” Cathy said, cutting him off.

He inhaled. Exhaled. Smiled at Gabriel. “Thanks. Thanks so much for the warm and friendly help. Glad to have you in my corner!”

Gabriel stood, staring down at the two of them. He offered Cathy his hand. She took it.

“Things will come to you. You’ll see.”

“I’m certain,” she agreed.

“And remember, you can each call on me once. Only once, though, so make sure it’s when you really need help.”

“I understand,” Cathy said.

Gabriel handed her a folded sheet of ivory paper and a very small book. “Your lists,” he told her. “And a little manual in case you forget anything or have problems. Now, come along. I’ll do my best to get you started off in the right direction.”

Don stood quickly, pulling Cathy’s chair back from the desk so that she could rise more easily. Since Gabriel was already starting out of the office, Don looked at Cathy and shrugged. She gave him a stern warning glance in return. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “It’s a nightmare. I’m telling you; it has to be.”

“If it were, wouldn’t we have gone straight to hell?” Cathy asked.

“It’s an imaginative nightmare,” Don said.

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine.”

“Why am I having it, too?”

“Because you’re merely in the middle of my nightmare,” Don explained, looking at her and not at where he was going. He crashed straight into Gabriel. The angel had stopped to wait for them.

“Will you get off my feet, please?” Gabriel demanded.

“Sorry,” Don said stiffly.

“You two are dawdling away precious time,” they were warned.

“No, no, we’re on our way,” Cathy said.

Gabriel took her elbow and led her to a small rise in the cloud formation. Don came quickly around her other side and stood next to her.

He took her hand.

“Ready?” Gabriel asked.

Cathy nodded.

“You’ll do fine,” Gabriel assured her.

“Thanks,” Cathy said.

“Just remember to do your best to keep that ass in line.” Gabriel lifted a hand in farewell.

“Hey, now, wait a damned minute!” Don protested.

But Gabriel was already walking away, hurrying back along the corridor, having dismissed them completely. And their little patch of raised cloud was now moving at a swift pace downward.

“Don, you’ve really got to stop with the ‘hells’ and ‘damns,’” Cathy warned nervously.

“
Ass!
” Don exclaimed incredulously, barely hearing her. He stared down at her. “Did you hear that? He just called me an ass! An angel can’t say that, can he?”

Cathy quirked a brow at him, a half-smile playing upon her features. “I guess he can,” she said. “He just did.”

S
HARON O’CONNOR STARED INTO
her oven, at her rapidly crisping turkey.

She could feel her father standing not far behind her, in the kitchen doorway.

She closed her eyes tightly. Please God, she prayed in silence, please make Jimmy come home now. I know it would be a small miracle, but please let Jimmy come home, and let him come home sober.

“Thought you said Jimmy was coming home early for Christmas Eve dinner,” her father said.

Sharon straightened, working a little pain out of her back as she did so. She turned the oven to off, deciding it was going to be a minor miracle if the bird was edible. She’d started turning the heat down on it bit by bit almost three hours ago when she’d first realized that Jimmy wasn’t going to make it home around noon, when his office was supposedly closing for the day.

“He should be here soon, Dad. The traffic is so bad and all.”

Her mother, Sharon realized, was standing beside her father. “Yeah,” she heard her father mutter, “the traffic at Mulligan’s strip joint and bar.”

“Shh! She’ll hear you,” her mother said.

“She ought to hear somebody,” her father muttered. He walked away, going back out to the parlor to talk to Timmy and Laura.

Sharon set her hand, fingers outstretched, over her expanding stomach. This one was another boy. Due on February fifteenth. That would make them a family of five. Just what they had planned. On paper, it was all perfect. They’d been married nearly ten years. They had an eight-year-old son, an adorable four-year-old daughter, and an infant boy on the way. They had their own house, a modest home, but a warm one not far from the Common, which they’d managed to keep no matter what Jimmy had lost through his gambling and drinking. They’d hung on to it because she’d worked hard making and selling custom clothing for infants, children, and women, and she’d kept their mortgage money separate from everything else.

It was so strange. Jimmy’s drinking hadn’t seemed so bad when they had first met. He’d been twenty-two, she’d been twenty, and a junior at Boston College. Jimmy had been a Harvard man. From the very beginning, she’d been crazy about him, and the more she had seen of him, the more deeply she had fallen in love with him. He was the most wonderful man she’d ever met. He planned to be an architect, he was brilliant, he was wild, and he was fun. He’d serenaded her dorm room one night, had presented her with a diamond engagement ring while kneeling in three feet of snow.

Jimmy O’Connor was from an affluent family who could trace their roots back to the sixteen-hundreds. They had produced doctors, lawyers, architects, writers, and PhDs by the score. At twenty-two, Jimmy had been gorgeous, with just a touch of red in his sandy hair, bright green eyes; tall, lean, with the quickest, sexiest damn smile in the world. He was popular, always surrounded by friends. And girls. That he had found Sharon attractive at all had amazed her—she was shy, quiet, almost reclusive, working class all the way. She’d made Boston College on a scholarship, and she’d known all her life that she’d have to keep up her grades to stay in school. Jimmy attracted a “play” crowd—adventurous, buxomy women. She was reserved and slim rather than curvaceous. When he’d asked her to marry him, she hadn’t believed he could want her.

Their honeymoon had provided her with some of the most wonderful days a woman could imagine. Italy first, long nights drifting down the canals of Venice with a bottle of champagne towed behind the gondola. But then there had come the night when he’d gotten involved tasting wine with the owner of the small
pensione
where they had elected to stay.

He hadn’t come back to their room until five in the morning. She’d waited up. They’d argued. He’d told her that she had married him, not taken him prisoner. Naturally, she’d been hurt. She’d never wanted to make anyone a prisoner.

She hadn’t realized she was becoming one herself.

There were still good times. Jimmy could be a wonderful father. That was one of the reasons she held on so tightly. But there were the bad times.

He’d been fired from his first job after they’d been married four years. The boss had claimed Jimmy was brilliant but unreliable. He showed up for work late. He disappeared too often at lunch.

Jimmy said the boss was a stuffed shirt, jealous of anyone who was capable of having a drink and a laugh.

He’d found a new job. A good job. And for a while, he’d been punctual and responsible. He’d been more shaken up than he cared to say by his firing.

That job had lasted three years.

Once again, he’d found employment. A Harvard degree could still talk, and the O’Connor name meant something in the Boston firms.

How long this job would last, Sharon didn’t know. Her fingers shook as she placed them on the mound of her stomach. Her baby. Their baby. It was strange. She still loved Jimmy very much. The evenings he’d come home late, reeking like a brewery, he’d always tell her he knew when to stop. He’d been fired twice, but he was convinced that he didn’t have an alcohol problem. A few times, when she’d known where to find him, he’d been in the midst of an admiring crowd—men and women. He didn’t cheat on her, he assured her, and he couldn’t help who hung around him, he had never hurt her, never taken a hand to her, though he had come close upon occasion. She tried to tell herself that if he’d ever hit her, she would have walked out.