Free Capturing Angels by V. C. Andrews Page B

he could control everything, she replied that God wanted man, meaning man and woman, constantly tested.
    Well, I thought this evening, we were certainly being tested.
    Margaret was the fourth child of five and surely had been a beautiful woman when she was in her late teens and twenties. She had been working as an assistant hotel manager in Ireland when her husband set eyes on her. He had come to Dublin on business, and from the way she described their whirlwind romance, he wouldn’t leave without her. She was fond of calling her husband and herself soul mates.
    Now she cried with us, she comforted us, and she led us all in prayer. It wasn’t a prayer that ended with what I wanted, “Please, dear God, return Mary to us,” but instead, “Please, dear God, help us to understand.”
    John looked satisfied. I was too exhausted to complain about anything. My parents decided to go home to get more of their things and return, but John talked them into staying there.
    “Come back in a few days,” he said. “You’ll only wear yourselves out with the traveling, and that won’t be good for anyone. Of course, we’ll call you with any news whenever we hear it.”
    Reluctantly, my mother agreed after my father agreed with John and especially after Margaret promised them that she would look after us, get all the groceries and other things we needed, and prepare all the meals, at least over the next few days. John’s mother looked very tired, too, even more tired than my mom. She seemed to have aged overnight, or, I thought, I was just seeing more of her without her detailed makeup preparations and attention to her clothes and hair. In the end, everyone was grateful to Margaret. They left and said they would call in the morning and be close by if and when we needed them.
    When it looked certain that we were going into late-night hours with still no phone call from someone asking for ransom, Margaret suggested that I try to get some sleep.
    “Go on, dear,” she said. “I’ll sit with John until he wants to go to sleep. If you exhaust yourself with worry, you’ll be as useful as a lighthouse on a bog. I’m used to being up late, as you know.”
    That was true. She seemed to need only a few hours of sleep a night to function, and as she often said, she was fond of watching old movies late into the night.
    “Like with most people my age and older, television has become a close companion, you know. I fall asleep to it during the wee hours. Sometimes I turn down the sound and bathe in the light as if it were a heavenly glow sent to comfort souls like me,” she told me.
    She hugged and kissed me, and I retreated to the bedroom. I didn’t need to take any more pills. I was struggling to keep my eyes open as it was. Despite my determination to stay alert and think only of Mary, I literally passed out. I didn’t even dream that night, and when morning came, and I could sense that nothing was different, I struggled to get up to start another day of defeat and loss.
    In fact, the next three days seemed to take months. So much of what happened, what we did, what we said, felt exactly the same. It was like treading water, as if I was caught in some horrific version of the movie Groundhog Day . People who eventually leave Southern California or never settle there use the sameness in the weather as a reason. There’s not enough difference between summer, fall, and spring especially. When I looked outside now, it was truly as if the exact same cloud was in the exact same spot in the sky. There was no change in temperature, and even the breeze lifted the leaves on tree branches just the way it had the previous day.
    The effect of all of this déjà vu was to deaden my reactions. I stopped jumping into the sea of hope whenever the phone rang or someone came to the door. I barely looked up or shifted my dead gaze. I ate and slept in spurts. Margaret was always there prodding me to do this or that. I wouldn’t have changed my clothes if it