Free Web of Angels by Lilian Nattel Page A

house in winter. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
    “Well that’s my mother’s influence. She’s always scolding you to put another sweater on the kids.” He smiled at her. With his perfect teeth, made perfect by diligence, he smiled, and with his dark eyes, made perfect by God, he tried to coax the storm out of her gaze as if he didn’t realize that she never spoke without a purpose. As if she should be persuaded by his charm. As if she knew nothing of value when she needed to understand and she could not afford to be distracted from it by warm eyes on hers, by fingers covering hers.
    “I should check e-mail,” she said.
    “Okay. I’ll finish up here.” His smile disappeared. He got the code. He had said something wrong though he didn’t know what. She would be up late; she would talk online to other people whose conversation she preferred; he would go to bed alone.
    Downstairs she took the laptop from the dining room into the kitchen, setting it up on the blue table. She pluggedheadphones into the computer, and selected a classical music station. Outside the glass doors, the wind chimes pinged. The birch tree shone white and spare as she clicked on mIRC and signed in.
    Welcome to multiples-chat, a supportive chat room for people who have DID or DDNOS. Visit our homepage at www.multiplesweb.com.
    *S&ALL has joined multiples-chat
    S&All› Hello everyone
    Panther› hi s&all
    Janet› callisto! ltns i’m so glad to see you
    S&All› How did you know it was me?
    Janet› you’re the only one of you who says hello with a capital H
    Janet› how’re things?
    Janet lived on the Atlantic coast, where she raised goats, painted, and fostered children. Panther was a nurse in the southwest, mother of four, married to a math teacher. None of them had met in person, but here while the house quietly breathed, there was no need to hide who they were. If Callisto had a word for the warmth in her chest, it would have been friendship. If she ever smiled, she would have then, for in the virtual reality of bursting electrons, she existed, she was known, she had been missed.

CHAPTER
EIGHT
    T he memorial service for Heather was held on the Saturday after she was cremated. Neighbours who had worn black to flirt with darkness when they were young now dressed darkly to honour death, converging from the direction of Christie Pits and from Amy’s Animal Clinic, some coming up from the library or down from the railroad tracks. The service was being held in the gym of the Freedom Boys and Girls Club at Colborne Street and Ontario, a block from the public school, two blocks from the therapist’s house and her thickly carpeted, dehumidified basement. In the east the moon was coming out from behind a cloud, a hair short of full, waxing 99 percent gibbous and in the west the sun was falling below snow-covered railroad tracks.
    The boys and girls club had been built around 1960, at the same time as the arena, another square brick building that faced it across the street. There was a mulberry bush in front of the arena, and in summer families stopped to pick its berries while walking to the library or Christie Pits. Last year the rink had been refurbished, courtesy of a corporatesponsorship deal arranged by Heather’s father. He’d been working on a similar deal for the boys and girls club. Inside the gym, people were settling into the rows of folding chairs, holding black-bordered programs, draping their coats over laps or on the backs of chairs. At the front of the gym there was a podium with a microphone and on the floor nearby an enormous vase overflowed with tropical flowers. Set on window ledges, smaller vases of flowers released their perfume, mingling with the smell of wet boots.
    At the back of the gym, trying to be unobtrusive, Ingrid sat between Amy and Eleanor, whose husband, Bram, was next to her. Judy was in the daycare, helping to keep the younger kids busy with some of the staff who had volunteered their time during the