Free The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman Page A

in people when she was young, long before she'd come to London.
    They could hear some guests down on the sixth floor, a little tipsy, laughing. It was ten-thirty and then ten thirty-five and then it was a quarter to eleven. There was no evidence of a ghost, or whatever the thing had been.
    â€œWhat happened to it?” Teddy Healy asked.
    Lucy leaned in close to him. “You're a good man. Maybe that's all you needed to know. You always were. You were good to me.”
    â€œWhat I did for you was nothing.”
    â€œYou couldn't be more wrong, Mr. Healy. It was everything to me.”

    M ADDY SPENT THE next day alone. It was nothing new to her. But this day was different. Today she wished she was with the rest of her family. She went out wearing jeans and flip-flops and the T-shirt she had slept in. The heat wave hadn't eased and many restaurants had run out of ice and cold drinks.
    Maddy had her hotel key and some money in her pocket. She felt homeless and lost. She found her way to the garden in the park with the huge white roses, where she sat on a bench. A man was sleeping on the bench directly across from hers. It was quiet in the garden. Maddy couldn't hear the traffic on Brompton Road. Time seemed to have slowed down. For once she thought about the things she had done and she wasn't pleased. When the man began to moan in his sleep, Maddy got up. She walked for miles. By the end of the day her feet hurt; she went into a pub in the late afternoon where she drank a warm Coke. No one bothered her. A few people glanced at her, then looked away. A pretty woman in bad shape. She hadn't washed her hair, only pinned it up. Her clothes were rumpled and she looked on edge, as though she'd had better days in some other place and time.
    Maddy tried to phone her mother's hotel room several times to check in and see how Paul was doing, but Lucy was never in. She left six messages with the front desk. She phoned the hospital, but when the switchboard answered and asked who it was she'd like to speak to, she hung up.
    It was nearly dark when Maddy made her way out of the pub. She had wasted the entire day with soda and chips. The air was ashy and deep. There was a rosebush growing by a garden gate around the block from the hotel, with flowers that appeared almost blood red in the gathering dark. That night underneath the sycamore tree when they cut themselves, Maddy realized that if she decided not to feel any pain, nothing could hurt her. She let her sister be the one with hope, while she believed in nothing. She was more like her mother than she would ever have imagined.
    Maddy ate her dinner in the hotel restaurant that night. She sat at the bar.
    â€œYou're here more than Teddy is,” the barman said. “A regular. He's even been getting his post here.” He held up an envelope. Inside was an old snapshot of a girl and a dog sitting on a bench. The barman had peeked. Someone had written with gratitude on the back of the photograph.
    â€œWell, I won't be a regular after this week,” Maddy assured him. “I'll be going home.” She ordered soup and wine, but she drank just the wine. The soup was watery with thinly cut vegetables floating on top. She had no appetite anyway.
    â€œI hear we're rid of our ghost,” the barman went on. “I have no idea how it was done, but it's a miracle. Teddy himself tried to shoot him once, but the bullet went right through him. As far as I can tell, ghosts are the essence of a person filtered down to the basics. A circle of vibrant illumination. That's what we're supposedly all made of.”
    â€œYou sound like a believer,” Maddy said.
    â€œI saw him on occasion,” the barman confided. “Wandering the hallway. Lost as a mouse. Poor fellow. I guess he finally went on to his just reward.”
    When Maddy went upstairs she ran her hand along the wall to feel for the bullet hole in the plaster outside the door to 708. She went into her room, took