Free Capturing Angels by V. C. Andrews Page A

Talking seemed to be the only way right then. That and keeping busy in the kitchen with my mother and my mother-in-law.
    Later, I learned that the FBI agents finally had gone over to Margaret Sullivan’s to speak with her. We were told that she was so overwrought that she said she couldn’t come right over to comfort and be with us. She told them she would make some food to bring over later. Flowers and baskets of fruit with messages of support and hope began to arrive almost every passing hour after the news became more widespread. It really began to feel like a wake.
    Lieutenant Abraham called Agent Joseph late in the morning to say that he had not been able to make anything of the Santa Claus who had been seen in the mall. The few who remembered him during the possible time of Mary’s abduction clearly remembered him being alone. In fact, from what he could tell, the man wearing the Santa costume hadn’t even stopped in any store. None of the security personnel recalled anyone in a Santa Claus outfit driving in or out. It was as if his going through the mall was like taking a shortcut to somewhere. The whole thing hung out there like an anomaly no one could explain satisfactorily, perhaps as bizarre as the sighting of a possible flying saucer.
    The remainder of the day went by without any call for ransom and with no new information. It was truly as if Mary had just disappeared from where she had stood outside the department store. As far as we knew, there hadn’t even been any credible possible sighting reports generated by the posting of her picture. Of course, the FBI agents kept assuring me that there would be, and that they would spend as much time as necessary chasing them down.
    Margaret Sullivan finally came over just before dinner with one of her delicious pot roasts. She was a sixty-four-year-old woman with remarkably thick and rich red hair with just some slight graying at the roots. She kept her hair wrapped in a tight bun because she hated the idea of cutting it. Margaret was only an inch or so taller than I was, but she looked much taller because of how svelte she kept herself and, according to John, because she had perfect posture, giving her a strikingly stately appearance. That and her youthful emerald-green eyes and soft habitual smile won her admiring looks almost anywhere she went. People were always trying to introduce her to a rich widower, but she was too content with her widow’s life. Her husband had left her very comfortable. She enjoyed not having to compromise anything in order to find a new companion.
    I knew she used babysitting Mary as her top excuse for turning down dinner invitations or other dates that men and would-be matchmakers proposed, but I also knew she really loved Mary, saw her as special, and enjoyed being with her.
    When we all had first met, I thought John and Margaret wouldn’t get along and that he wouldn’t approve of her as a babysitter for Mary. Margaret was much more rigid when it came to her political beliefs. He liked to tell her that she was just to the right of Attila the Hun, but she was unflappable, and I think in the end, he respected her more for her self-confidence and the certainty with which she held her opinions. He always admired men or women who were like that, because he was, too.
    The other thing that guaranteed her a seat at our table was her religious beliefs. She believed everything that John believed but was even more confident, if that was possible, that God had a role in anything and everything that happened on his prize creation, earth. John was willing to describe some of the biblical stories as metaphors, but Margaret was not. She was, as he would call her, a strict constitutionalist. She refused to accept evolution in any form, creative or not. She believed that Satan walked the earth and that the world was a constant battleground between God’s army and his. She could be quite vivid about it.
    When I asked her why God would permit that if