Last Chance Christmas (Last Chance #5)(39)
Author: Hope Ramsay

And then the angels came. All of them. Just like before. There was a rush of wings and a flash of bright light almost like lightning, and it was just like in the play. Haley knew all of the narrator’s lines:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host.

They didn’t exactly come praising God, though. They swooped down on Sheriff Bennett like a bunch of golden-haloed turkey buzzards. They circled around him, and then one of them picked Jesus up off His foundation and threw Him right down on the sheriff.

The sheriff screamed as the statue came flying at him, but once it hit him upside the head, he fell down and didn’t move.

The angels circled once and headed back up into the clouds. All except for the Sorrowful Angel. She drifted over and sat next to Haley and Daddy.

And she started to cry.

Haley started to cry, too. Daddy wasn’t moving.

And that’s when it started to snow.

Stone wasn’t sure where the fog had come from, only that he’d been wandering in it for a while. It was cold and wet against his face and muffled everything around him. He couldn’t see anything except for a soft blue flicker that reminded him of a TV set in a darkened room. He chased that flickering light for a long time.

It seemed like he was always chasing that light. Like he’d been chasing it for an eternity.

This must be a dream. He often fell asleep with the television going. The noise made him feel less lonely.

He wearied of the chase; there was no point following that light—it was always just out of reach. He gave up and lay down on some grass at his feet. It was cold.

“You need to get up,” Sharon said. “You’re not dead, you know.”

He relaxed. Everything was okay and back to normal. Sharon was always bossing him around. But that was okay. He enjoyed doing her honey-do chores. It made him feel needed.

He drew in a lungful of freezing air. He needed to move, but he felt complacent.

“You stay here, and the snow is going to cover you up,” Sharon nagged.

Snow? In Florida? Not likely.

He opened his eyes. And remembered that he wasn’t living in Florida anymore, and Sharon was dead.

It was a crushing memory. It left no room for anything else. Snow pelted him in the face, cold and wet. He squeezed his eyes closed again. His head felt muffled and far away. His ears were ringing.

Why was it snowing?

“Daddy, wake up.”

Haley’s voice. He opened his eyes again. Haley was leaning over him, tears streaming down her beautiful face. Over her shoulder, he could see Sharon. His wife was crying, too.

And that was weird, because he couldn’t remember ever seeing Sharon cry. She hadn’t shed one tear even when Tyler had died.

What was Sharon doing here? He was starting to remember. He’d gone out to Golfing for God to get Lizzy and her boyfriend.

“Get up, Stone. You’re not dead. Your children need you.”

Haley leaned forward a little more, obscuring his view of Sharon. “Daddy, you need to listen to the Sorrowful Angel, okay? It’s snowing, and it’s cold and…” Her voice wavered. “The sheriff shot David, and Lizzy is crying, and Miss Lark is trying to calm her down. David is bleeding, and the angels came, and I’m so scared. Daddy, you need to wake up.”

He closed his eyes again. “Sharon,” he whispered.

“I’m here. I’ve always been here. You haven’t let me go, and…” Sharon’s voice faded into the whistle of the wind. It felt like a freaking blizzard had just hit town.

He opened his eyes again. The wind was whipping the snowflakes in swirls. In the twilight, the snow almost looked like mist, or even swirling ghosts.

He stared up into Haley’s face. Her cheeks were red. Her shepherd’s costume was wet. She was shivering.

Memories came flooding back to him. Horrible memories. He pushed himself up off the ground and was assailed by vertigo. Sharp pain knifed through his chest. He looked down at his uniform shirt. It had been torn when the bullet struck him and knocked him back. But, of course, he’d been wearing body armor.

He was going to have a big bruise on his chest and maybe a couple of broken ribs. He touched the back of his head and found a knot the size of a walnut. That explained the vertigo. He was probably concussed.

“Are you okay?” Haley asked. “The angels say you’re going to be okay. They say David is going to be okay, too, but Lizzy doesn’t believe it.”

In the distance, he could hear Lizzy sobbing. And something else.

Lark. Lark was here. She was speaking in calm reassuring words about applying pressure to David’s wounds. He should get up and help her. But he couldn’t quite make his body work, and Haley had kind of crawled up into his lap, pinning him down.

Haley wiped the snot from her nose on the sleeve of her shepherd’s costume. “Daddy, the angels who had wings were kind of scary, and they were really warm, and they smited Sheriff Bennett on account of the fact that he was shooting people. But even before the angels with wings came, the Sorrowful Angel tried to beat up the sheriff. Why did the sheriff shoot David?”

“The Sorrowful Angel doesn’t have wings?” The minute he asked the question he knew something inside him had snapped.

“No, Daddy. That’s why she’s here, see, and not in Heaven. She can’t get to Heaven without wings.”

All of a sudden the ability to see angels didn’t seem like such a curse. Sharon said she’d never left him. And if he could see her, then he could talk with her. He could be with her. He didn’t have to move on. He didn’t have to change. He could just hold on to her until it was his time to go.

“Tell me more about the Sorrowful Angel,” he said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say. He should be asking about the sheriff. He should be taking Haley’s eyewitness report. He should be dragging himself over to where Lizzy and David were. Why had he asked this stupid question?

“Uh, well, see she isn’t golden-like. She’s more blue, you know. And she’s cold. The other angels are really, really hot. And they’re gone now, but the Sorrowful Angel is still right here.”

“Where?”

Haley pointed. There was nothing there. But a moment ago, Sharon had been there, all blue and glowy and bossing him around like she always did.

“She said she’s not supposed to be here. Didn’t you hear her? I thought you were talking with her. I thought, maybe, you could see her.” Haley’s voice sounded so small and frightened.

He pulled Haley into his arms and gave her a fierce hug. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her cold nose against his neck. “I think I have a picture of the Sorrowful Angel,” he said.

“You do? Really?”

“Yeah. I do. I’ll show you tonight when we get back home. And maybe she’ll talk to us again.”

Just then the sound of sirens destroyed the strange, muffled quiet of the golf course. Stone held his daughter and watched the snow falling. He should be doing more than just hugging his daughter and talking about a ghost. But he couldn’t muster the strength to get up.

“I guess maybe there is a Santa,” Haley said.

“Why’s that, sugar beet?” he whispered.

“Because I asked him to please, please, please get me out of the Christmas play and also to make it snow.”

“That’s all you asked for?”

“Uh, well, I also asked him if he would please find a way to get the Sorrowful Angel to Heaven.”

Guilt shivered up his spine, but he didn’t have a minute to examine it because Lark came bounding up from the tenth hole and skidded to a stop.

She got down on her knees. Her big brown eyes looked bright and fierce. There were ice crystals sparkling in her hair. And he thought she looked very beautiful and bright like that. The crisis had brought out her color somehow. She didn’t look like a little brown bird, the way she had when he’d first met her. Now she seemed like a flare in the darkness. And he almost wanted to gather her up into the hug he was sharing with Haley.

But he didn’t exactly know how to do that. She seemed so competent at that moment. So in charge. Like she didn’t need him. So instead of reaching out, he tried to push himself up off the ground.

She pushed him down gently. Her hand felt oddly warm on his shoulder. “You’ve had a head injury. I don’t want you to move. I used Lizzy’s cell phone to call nine-one-one, and help is on its way. David has been shot but I don’t think it’s life threatening. Lizzy’s applying direct pressure to his wound, and he’s sheltered in the Christmas display on the tenth hole. I’m afraid that Mr. Marshall is dead. The sheriff is unconscious but breathing. I used some duct tape I found in the office up in the Ark to bind his hands and feet. I’m going out to the road. I’ll flag down help.”

She stood and ran up the path. And it occurred to him that Lark was like a sergeant reporting to his lieutenant, or a deputy reporting to the chief. She’d gone into battle mode, and she was seriously impressive.

Obviously, she had conquered her fear. Hell, she’d probably saved David or Lizzy’s life with that foolhardy but incredibly brave move of throwing the ashes at Billy. If Stone hadn’t arrived right at that moment, Lark might be numbered among the dead.

He couldn’t think about that. It was too frightening even to let his mind go there. He clutched Haley to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut. His head swam. It felt like he’d had too much to drink. He had to open his eyes again and fix a horizon just to keep the dizziness at bay.

Just then Damian Easley, Stone’s deputy, came pounding down the path followed by the Allenberg County volunteer fire department and EMT squad.

In the mayhem that followed Stone lost track of Lark.

Lark clutched the hot cup in her shaky hands and stared at Damian Easley across the table. The aroma of coffee permeated the atmosphere. She was sitting in the interview room at the Last Chance Police Department, and she was still shivering.

If she had been cold, perhaps the coffee would have warmed her. But these shivers weren’t from the cold. They were the aftereffect of the adrenaline.

She’d given her eyewitness report. She’d hung out with Damian at the golf course for a while. She’d watched the forensics team do their thing, and the coroner take Lee Marshall’s body away.

She’d thought about Pop and Hettie and the Rhodes family.

Nothing and everything had changed.

She’d spent ten days here. She’d discovered a half sister and uncovered a mystery. She’d fallen for Stone Rhodes. But she still didn’t belong here. She never would.

She realized it the minute she’d spoken with Stone, just before the EMTs arrived. He had been talking nonstop about his wife. He seemed to think that Haley’s Sorrowful Angel and Sharon were one and the same.

It was crazy, of course. But head injuries—even minor ones—could make people kind of crazy for a while. Lark had seen plenty of that in the field. Stone would recover. But his current hallucinations pretty much confirmed where Lark stood with him.

And she didn’t want to play second chair to Sharon’s ghost.