My Way to Hell (37 page)

Marcella gave vague thought to the idea that it was ludicrous to get all up in an archangel’s business, but she was so sickly touched by the idea that anyone, and of all people Kellen, was defending her, that it physically hurt. She let her head fall to her chest in tearful awe.

Uriel’s expression was that of surprise. “Good-byes? Naw. You’re golden, Marcella. Me and the Big Kahuna had a long sit-down a little while ago. Carlos’s mother brought this Armando to our attention.”

“Solana?” Marcella asked in disbelief.

“Yeah.” He bobbed his head full of sun-kissed hair. “That’s her. The coolest lady, like, evah. Sick with worry over her little guy, too.” He ran a hand over Carlos’s dark head with an affectionate palm, pressing light fingers to the boy’s eyelids. “She told us what you did, Marcella. Why you did it.”

Her chin lifted in defiance. Nothing would ever make her regret killing Armando Villanueva. Not even the Big Kahuna. Tears fell from her eyes when she gazed upon Uriel. “I don’t regret it. He would have taken my son, David, and ruined him. He would have turned him against everything I believed in. I don’t regret it,” she said stonily, defying this Uriel to slap her down.

He held up his slender hands and smiled that beatific grin. “Whoaaa-ho, lady tiger. I get lookin’ out for your cubs. You were a good mama. Now, I’m not condoning murder. Let’s keep that straight up. But I can overlook stuff for the bigger picture. Armando was a dicey dude. One of those loose cannons us folk from upstairs don’t much like running footloose and fancy free. Feel me? You protected an innocent child from a psycho nut. We appreciate that where I come from. So here’s the deal. I have a message from Solana and the big guy for you—for
both
of you.”

Marcella was stunned to silence, gripping Kellen’s arm.

“Here’s the skinny. Solana knows how much you love Carlos and her father. She said to tell you this is the best gift she can give her son.”

“Gift?” Marcella and Kellen echoed.

“The gift of a good life with someone who’ll love the little man like he’s their own. The gift of
familia
, was the word she used. She wants Carlos to have a mother and, eventually, a father who’ll do all the things with him that his father can’t because he’s on the other side.”

“I—I—don’t understand,” Marcella stammered.

“I know this is gonna sound all kooky, but I guess it can’t get any kookier than what you’ve already been through. So hear me out. You and Solana, you’re like twins. You now know that’s because she’s your granddaughter. Here’s the plan. You get in her body. Just like you did with that poor wahine, Rick. Only this body you get to keep for as long as it has breath in it with Solana’s blessing. She wants this, Marcella. We all do. You’ve suffered so she could have life. There’s nothing we can do to change what happened. We can’t change that you lost decades with your family or that you were in total suckage as a demon. But we can change how it’s dealt with. And we all agree your sacrifice has to be totally recognized.”

Marcella’s mouth fell open, the air from her lungs thin and shallow. Words came from Uriel’s mouth. She heard them. Felt their impact. Yet couldn’t respond. The kind of hope he was offering her was the kind of hope she’d never dared, not once since she’d made the choice to save David, to ever wish for. And in the blink of an eye, it could all be over. Every long night wondering, worrying, wishing, for seventy-six years was just over.

Just over?

To have that erased without a battle—without her having to sacrifice something else—was almost too vast to wrap her head around.

“Marcella? Take my hand,” Uriel coaxed.

She reached out with a trembling limb, placing her hand in his. A hand that was warm, soft, and encompassed everything good and right. Her breath hitched at the comfort it brought, the peace it gave deep within her. He brought her fingers to his cheek with a whisper of skin against skin, leaving her light-headed with surreal joy.

“Do you want to stay, Marcella? I didn’t ask that. I just assumed.”

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. She wanted to stay. For as long as she could.

Kellen craned his neck around the pair to look at Marcella with warm hazel eyes. “Under normal circumstances, your mouth in the closed position would be something akin to nirvana for me, but your timing’s off. Answer the nice archangel, honey. And no pressure here, but I’m a little nuts about you. Take that into consideration when you finally find that sharp tongue.” He chuckled, rocking Carlos in his arms.

Her heart swelled with a stinging jolt. “Yes,” she managed, failing at hiding her sob of gratitude. “I want to stay. More than anything, I want to stay.”

Uriel winked. “Coolio. So come with.” He gave her a gentle tug toward Solana’s body, lying peacefully where Armando had so casually dumped it.

“I just get in?” she squeaked. Her legs trembled, her stomach flip-flopped.

“Yeah, dudette, that’s what I’m saying. Go on, jump in,” Uriel cajoled with a smile of encouragement.

Marcella held a shaky hand up. This was all going so fast. Too fast. She scrambled for a reason to slow this down. “Wait. How old is Solana? I mean, look at me, right?” She waved an abstract hand around her body. “I couldn’t be the equivalent of more than thirty human years, at best. But I’d settle for twenty-five.”

“Marcella?”

Her eyes sought Kellen’s, bleary and red from battle, but warm and loving when he looked at her. “Yes, Kellen?”

“Get in the goddamned body or I’ll throw you in there myself.” Then he frowned, looking toward Uriel. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

She gave him a coquettish smile. “Have I told you how hot it is when you make demands?”

“Have I told you how completely bat shit you make me?”

“There’s been a heated occasion or two.”

“Get—in—the—body—now.”

She took a deep breath, trying to assimilate. “Wait, and I’m being very serious when I say wait. This seems so wrong—so—I dunno, like I’m violating her.” She turned to Kellen, her eyes wet with un-shed tears. A huge surprise. “There isn’t anything I want more than to be with you, Kellen—with Carlos, but this was his mother. She knows things about him I never will—the little things mothers know. Like what his favorite toy was when he was a baby. When he lost his first tooth. What he likes on his hot dog. I can’t be her. She was my
granddaughter
, for God’s sake!”

Kellen began to speak, but Uriel held up a hand with a comforting smile to quiet him. “That you care enough to worry about those things makes you one rad wahine, Marcella. You made a crazy sacrifice all those years ago—to save Carlos’s grandfather—your son—and you took it like a warrior. All the years you were forced to let everyone believe you were someone other than who you really are is hard-core loyal. But the way I look at it is Carlos needs a mother. Little man’s been through some roughage. It’s gonna take a long time to get his head back on straight and help him deal with what’s gone down. I can erase some of it, but I can’t stop the afterlife from paying him visits. He is what he is. A conduit to upstairs. A special, rare one at that. You could be the one to help him do that. You and Kellen.”

Her lips trembled. “But what about what Armando did while he was in Solana’s body? What about all those disgusting men he . . . And oh, God. He was so awful to her mother. Mrs. Ramirez’ll have me locked up in the loony bin just like that.” Marcella snapped her fingers, her heart torn.

Uriel nodded his understanding, but his next words soothed. “I got your back. The only thing you have to do is jump, Marcella. Tomorrow when you wake up, Carlos and his grandmother won’t remember anything but that his mother’s hard-core cool and she’s going to start dating a guy they both think is pretty awesome. What happens after that’s up to you two.”

She was being given this enormous gift, and it was almost too much. It left her overwhelmed, humbled beyond repair. The domino effect for a gesture so magnanimous floored her. Not only could she be with Kellen and Carlos, but her son. David. After so many agonizing, worry-filled years apart. He wouldn’t know who she really was—she’d in essence be his daughter. Yet that didn’t leave her with regret. Just to see him, be near him, talk with him for however long he had left on this Earth made inexplicable joy bubble up inside her.

Uriel placed a hand on her shoulder. “This is a lot, right? Like, all at once because everything’s been such a struggle for so long.”

She was slow to nod. “I’m afraid that I’ll screw it up—that it’ll all . . .”

“Be taken from you,” Uriel finished. “Not this time, Marcella. I’m always lookin’ out for the good guys. You won’t see me, but you’ll feel me.” He cupped her cheek, wiping away the tears that fell in fat, salty bubbles.

She looked to Kellen. “But what if you don’t like Solana? I know we look almost exactly alike, but we must have differences that you’ll notice when . . .” She snapped her mouth shut, shooting Uriel a guilty glance. Only she could bring up a fear as inappropriate as the humpety-hump in front of an archangel.

Kellen spoke then, gruff, his voice hoarse when he planted a kiss on her forehead and held her close. “I love you.
You
. Who you are. How you became who you are. The rest is inconsequential.”

She laughed a watery giggle. “I bet you wouldn’t be saying that if I had a lumpy ass.”

Tilting her chin up, his eyes honed in on hers. “No. You’re wrong. But I look at it this way—someday, whether you like it or not—you will have a lumpy ass and that’s just life as a mere mortal. And even then, I’ll still love you.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “What am I thinking? Leaving my spectral body has its disadvantages.”

“Honey?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Get in the body.
Now
.”

She touched her lips to his briefly before looking to Uriel. “You promise Carlos won’t be scarred by this? I need to know that.”

Uriel held up two fingers. “Archangel’s honor.”

“You’ll get Little Anthony and poor Rick home safely? Can you do the mojo thing to them, too? You know, so they don’t remember?”

Jamming his hands in the pockets of his shorts, he rocked back on his bare heels. “You betcha.”

“And Darwin. Oh, God. What about Darwin? I won’t be able to see him anymore. I never thought I’d shed a single tear over that meddling half-breed, but if not for him, I never would have survived this.”

“Who is Darwin, honey?”

“I’ll explain later. Promise,” she said to Kellen, then touched Uriel’s arm. “You know who I mean, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I got it covered. I can’t say when or where, but you’ll see Darwin again. That’s a promise.”

With a deep breath, Marcella knelt before her granddaughter, marveling at the uncanny resemblance to herself. Wanting to tell her how endlessly grateful she was for this chance to be with her family. To share with her how much she would have liked to have known Solana the child, the woman, the mother she’d become. She wanted to whisper soothing words at the loss of her husband as she rocked her. To tell her she herself knew loss and how devastating it could be. She wanted to bid her
vaya con Dios,
safe passage as she crossed, but all she could manage was “Thank you” in a trembling whisper and then her eyes sought Uriel’s once again. “You will thank her, won’t you? For me. I’ll never be able to say that enough,” she choked out.

Placing a hand on her shoulder, Uriel whispered, “You got it,” just before he gave her a slight nudge, sending her tumbling into Solana’s prone form.

The transition wasn’t anything like possessing Rick. It was as though she hovered on a cloud for a moment, weightless and lighter than a feather. Then the cold ground was seeping under her thin shirt and her hands were touching her face.

Kellen knelt beside her, setting Carlos, still sound asleep, on his knee. Instantly her hands went to Carlos, running them over his silky hair, trailing a finger across his freckled nose, bringing his hand to her lips. She kissed the tip of each finger. To feel his skin near hers, to touch him made more tears flow from her eyes. Pulling her up to his chest, Kellen invited her into the circle of his arms.

Strong, confident arms that held Carlos and now her. Grateful tears slid down Marcella’s face, soaking the shoulder of his jacket.

Uriel bent at the waist and placed his palm on Carlos’s head. He closed his eyes, then popped them open and smiled. “So I’m out, peeps. You stay hard-core, Marcella, and, Kellen, give this gift-of-sight thing some time, dude. Once you catch the wave, it’ll be a rad ride. Promise.”

Just as he rose to leave, Marcella gripped his hand. She had no words. Nothing flippant or funny to say in the way of the kind of thanks she so wanted to express.

Instead, she let her eyes meet the archangel’s before she closed them and held her face skyward.

In deep appreciation.

Uriel’s lips brushed Marcella’s forehead and he whispered, “Safe journey, wahine.” With the sign for hang loose, he was gone.

 

 

 

They sat on the steps at the entryway to Carlos’s apartment for a long time, fingers entwined, Carlos safely wrapped in her arms, Kellen’s jacket around her shoulders. In silence. In thought. In awed reverence.

When Kellen finally spoke, his voice was scratchy and filled with emotion. “So, I’ve been thinking.”

“Do tell.”

“We’ll have to take this slowly. This thing we have going on.”

“Because of Carlos and Mrs. Ramirez.”

“Your daughter-in-law, uh, mother. Yes. Because of them.”

She smiled. “Absolutely.”

“You do know there’s nothing more I’d like to do than have my way with you right here on the steps, right?”

Her grin grew wider. “I’m right there with you.” Then she sighed with a forlorn exhale.

“But Carlos has been through a lot. So we do this the right way—for him. Set a good example on how to woo the woman of your dreams.”