Where Angels Tread (11 page)

Later that evening, after Shane had gone home, Heidi sat at the dinner table with Zachary, toying with her own food and watching as he devoured a plate of macaroni and cheese with gusto, all the while chattering on and on about the other boys who were planning to try out for the team. “Eddie’s pretty cool,” he said through a mouthful of noodles. “His father’s in the army and lets Eddie try on his uniform. They live in a big house with a pool and Eddie already invited me to come over this summer and swim!”

“That’s great,” Heidi said gently, wetting her napkin in her water glass and wiping a dribble of cheese from her son’s chin. “Sounds like you’ve made a lot of new friends.”

“Uh huh,” Zachary said, nodding proudly. Without warning, a sad look crossed his face and he began pushing the soggy noodles around his bowl absentmindedly.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” Heidi asked, lifting his chin with her fingers.

Zachary heaved a sigh and gazed at her with pleading eyes. “What about Shane?”

“What about him?”

“Do you think he’ll still be able to come over, even after I make the team?”

Heidi covered the little boy’s hand with her own. “I’m not sure if he will,” she said honestly. “Shane’s a very busy man with an important job, and he promised to help you all the way through basketball tryouts, which was already a lot more than he needed to do. I think that once tryouts are finished we should let Shane get back to his own life.”

Zachary hung his head in disappointment. “I’m sure you’ll still see him every so often,” she added. “And we’ll have to come up with a special way to thank him for being so generous with his time.”

“We could have him over for dinner,” Zachary said excitedly. “I could cook! Do you think he likes macaroni and cheese?”

A smile played across Heidi’s lips as she imagined serving Shane pasta out of a box as a thank you for spending countless hours with her son. She had no doubt in her mind that he would clean his plate and politely ask for more. “We’ll see,” she said. “Maybe I’ll think of something we could make together.” She glanced at the clock above the kitchen stove. “I didn’t realize it was so late! Finish your dinner and brush your teeth, then I’ll come upstairs and read a chapter to you before bedtime. Why don’t you pick out a new book?”

As her son scampered out of the room, Heidi rose from the table and began clearing away their dirty dishes. She added a squirt of soap to the dishpan and watched as it filled with hot, sudsy water. Despite having for the first time in several years a kitchen with a fully functioning automatic dishwasher, on most days Heidi preferred to scrub the plates by hand. She had always found the repetition soothing, a way to allow her mind to wander. Some of the most important decisions in Heidi’s life had been made while she was washing dishes: where she wanted to go to college, what to name her first child, how to make a living for herself and her son when she was thrust unwillingly into the perilous world of single motherhood.

Now, as she grabbed the sponge to work on a particularly stubborn pot, she began imagining for what seemed like the thousandth time over the past three years what her future would look like. While thoughts like this used to immediately cause Heidi to dissolve into heaving sobs when she realized that the life she and John planned together would never come to pass, she now found herself more focused on the new life she knew she needed to build for herself. It’s not that her love for John had dimmed in the years since his death; if anything, it had taken on an almost fairytale quality. He remained frozen in her mind as the perfect husband, the most loving father. His death had wiped away his faults, leaving Heidi with nothing but happy memories. Somewhere along the way, her grief had started to replace itself with cold, quiet acceptance.

She knew that Zachary’s memories of his father would soon fade. Just last week, before bedtime, Heidi was sitting in the kitchen enjoying a cup of chamomile tea when she heard Zachary’s frantic voice calling out to her from his bedroom. When she hurried into the room, her heart thumping with fear, she found him sitting up in bed grasping his hair between his hands, rocking back and forth and quivering. “What’s the matter?” she had asked, rushing to his side and pressing her palm against his forehead.

“It’s Dad,” Zachary said, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“What about Dad?”

Her son had gazed unseeingly into the darkness for several moments. Finally, he turned to her with tears swimming in his blue-green eyes. “I can’t remember,” he had whispered, his voice trembling with grief and, Heidi suspected, a hint of rage, “the color of his eyes.”

Could she? Heidi wondered later, after she had sat quietly with her son for the better part of an hour, rubbing his back while he sobbed into her shoulder. How many times had she stared into those eyes while she and John made love? Fought over something stupid? Dreamed about their life together? If someone put a gun to her head and demanded that she describe her husband’s eyes, would she be able to accurately describe their exact shade of ocean blue? Time had dulled the edges of her memory. John’s voice, even after death so loud in her mind, had begun to quiet. She supposed, as painful as it was to admit, that in some ways she was moving on. And in some ways she never would.

Right now, Zachary was still a little boy, lost in a world that had shown itself to be cruel at a devastatingly young age. But he, too, would begin to heal. Just in the last few weeks, Heidi could see the process already taking place. And she knew that a big part of that was Shane’s presence in their lives.

He had awakened something in both of them, a light, long dimmed, that was slowly creeping back into their lives. For Zachary, Shane represented not only a friend, but a mentor and—dare she say it?—a father figure. For Heidi, it was the belief that she would one day allow herself to fall in love again, if only she would open up her heart and mind to the possibility.

“What I don’t understand,” Buddy said with a satisfied groan, leaning back in his chair and loosening his belt a notch, “is why you’re still helping out the kid. You said she didn’t want to go out with you, so what’s the point?” Out of the corner of his eye, Shane could see Maribel rolling her eyes in her husband’s direction as she poured each of them another glass of wine. Shane’s determination to return to the land of the living, as Buddy had so aptly phrased it, prompted him to finally accept an invitation to dinner at his friends’ house. Shane was surprised to find that he was actually enjoying himself.

“I see them as separate,” Shane replied. “I’m not using Zachary to get to Heidi. I genuinely want to help this boy. If you met him, you would know why.” He shook his head sadly. “He’s been through a rough few years, apparently, although I don’t know the details. I haven’t wanted to ask.”

Maribel nodded wisely. “Losing a parent is probably the most traumatic thing that can happen to a child.” She smiled fondly at three year old Henry, who was smashing a hole in the center of his mashed potatoes to create a volcano. “But there’s one thing about this whole situation that I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?” Shane frowned.

“Why are you giving up so easily?”

Buddy stared at his wife in disbelief. “Didn’t you hear what Shane said? She shot him down without a second thought. Women,” he muttered. He leaned in toward his son, who was now adding a dollop of gravy to the center of his mashed potatoes. “Don’t ever get married, son,” Buddy whispered. “Take it from your old man.” Henry giggled and sprinkled a few peas on top of the volcano.

Maribel swatted her husband’s arm. “Just because you don’t know anything about women doesn’t mean you should poison our son’s mind.” She turned her attention back to Shane. “Try and see it from Heidi’s point of view. I don’t think the problem here is that she isn’t attracted to you or interested in dating you.”

Shane wrinkled his brow in confusion. “What else could it be?”

“A lot of things, I’m sure. She’s probably still mourning the loss of her husband, which means that her feelings for you are causing her a lot of pain and confusion. Add in the fact that she has a son to protect, and she’s probably very wary of bringing a man into Zachary’s life if she isn’t certain that he’ll stick around for a while. She can’t go playing the field, bringing home a new man every other week.”

Shane cringed at the thought. “Somehow I don’t think she’s like that anyways,” he muttered, annoyed at the idea of Heidi out on dates with faceless strangers.

“What I’m trying to say,” Maribel continued, “is that you didn’t give her enough time. If I were you I would have expected her to say no the first time you asked her out. She needs to know that you’re serious about her, and it’s up to you to show her that’s the case.”

“What if he’s not serious about her?” Buddy shot at his wife. “He barely even knows her. Once he gets to know her more, he may not like what he finds.”

Maribel shrugged. “That’s a risk, I guess, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case.” They both looked pointedly at Shane, waiting for a response.

“You’re right, Maribel,” Shane said, a warmth spreading through his body as he pictured Heidi’s face, the way her long hair swept her shoulders, the tinkling of her laugh. What he wouldn’t give to be able to take her in his arms, trace his fingers along her cheekbones, kiss her softly as he felt her body melting into his. He gave an involuntary shudder of pleasure. “I am serious about her. I’ve only known her for a couple of months, that’s true, but there’s a connection between us that I’ve never encountered with another woman. Not even close.”

“Then you need to express that to her,” Maribel said with a faraway look in her eyes. “Be persistent, but patient. Let her know that she’s special to you. I’m willing to bet my marriage that she’ll come around.”

“Hey!” Buddy crossed his arms and pouted. “Don’t gamble with our marriage. What if you’re wrong?”

“Because,” Maribel replied, reaching across the table to squeeze her husband’s hand, “I’m so sure that Heidi feels the same way about Shane that I’d only bet on something I’d never want to lose.”

*

Shane glanced around the bleachers lining both sides of the basketball court, trying to find an open seat. He felt uncomfortable among the throngs of eager parents, aware that he didn’t quite fit into their world. “Come on, Kenny!” a man nearby yelled through cupped hands. “Show ‘em what you’re made of!”

Spotting a seat near the back of the bleachers, Shane wound his way through the other spectators as they craned their necks to see around him and onto the court. Once he settled in, Shane stared around in interest. So this is what it’s like to be a parent, he thought as the woman in front of him cheered and jumped up and down as her son, who had just made a shot, threw her an embarrassed look before quickly jogging away.

Scanning the crowd of middle schoolers, Shane spied Zachary’s mop of red hair bobbing up and down on the other side of the court as he jumped in the air, waving his hands around for the ball. Holding his breath anxiously, Shane watched as a teammate passed the ball to Zachary, who took careful aim and lobbed it through the hoop. “Yes!” Shane whispered, pumping his fist in the air discreetly.

The gray haired man sitting next to him winked. “That your boy?”

“A friend’s son,” he replied amicably. “I’ve been helping him prepare for tryouts.”

“Is that so?” the man asked, his eyes fixated on the game. “I’ve been doing the same for my son.” He pointed to a short boy with black hair dribbling the ball down the court. “Paid a fortune to send him to basketball camp over the summer, but it was worth it. Future scholarships and all.”

“Hum,” Shane offered vaguely.

“So did you hire a coach to train him? How long has he been preparing? Word on the street is that this league is pegged to win the state championship this year.”

Shane was saved from responding when he spotted Heidi worming her way through the crowd self-consciously. “Excuse me. Sorry,” He heard her say as she stepped around a couple screaming at their flustered-looking son. Shane waved his hand in the air; when she spotted him, she smiled gratefully. “Thanks,” she said, plopping down beside him and shoving her bag under the bleachers. “I got held up at work. Did I miss anything?” As she turned her head to squint at the court, Shane caught an intoxicating whiff of her flowery shampoo.

“Zachary’s doing great,” he said, leaning away from her. The man next to him winked knowingly, but Shane did his best to ignore him. “He already made a couple of baskets.”

“Look, there he is!” she cried as Zachary weaved his way through his opponents, dribbling the ball confidently. When he raised his arms in the air and aimed for the hoop, Heidi reached out and clutched Shane’s hand, then buried her face in his shoulder. “I can’t watch,” she groaned. “I’m so nervous!”

Shane gave a shaky laugh and patted her arm, tossing the man beside him, who was now leering at Heidi, a filthy glare. “Don’t be,” he said, and Heidi raised her head an inch. “He just made the shot!” He raised his hand in the air, and Heidi high-fived him enthusiastically.

“I can’t help it,” she said. “This means so much to him. I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen if he doesn’t make the team. All the progress I’ve made with him over the last couple of months will be undone.”