The Dark Divine(26)

I drew in a breath. “The Garden of Angels. I heard someone talking about this place once, but I never knew where it was.” I moved down the path to the next regal statue. This one was a woman with long, beautiful wings that tumbled down her back like Rapunzel’s locks.

Daniel followed behind me as I floated from angel to angel. Some were old and ancient looking. Others were young children with eager faces, but they were still slender and noble like the rest. I stretched up on my toes at the edge of the path to brush another angel’s wings.

Daniel laughed. “You never stray from the path, do you?” He passed close behind me, his arm brushing across the small of my back.

I looked at my toes perched on the border of the gravel trail, and rocked back on my heels. If only he knew how imperfect I felt most days. “Isn’t that supposed to make life easier?”

“Doesn’t that make life boring?” Daniel flashed me a wicked grin as he slipped between two of the statues and disappeared into the mist. A few moments later, he reemerged onto the path near an angel statue that was taller than the rest.

“This place was built as a memorial for Carolyn Bordeaux,” Daniel said, his voice drifting back to me. “She was rich and greedy and hid away her wealth, until one day, in her seventies, she took in a stray dog for no apparent reason. She told people that the dog was an angel in disguise, who revealed to her that she was supposed to help people. After that, she devoted the rest of her life and fortune to helping the needy.”

“Really?” I walked closer to him.

Daniel nodded. “Her family thought she’d gone crazy. They even tried to have her committed. But at the moment she died, an otherworldly chorus of beautiful voices filled her bedroom. Her family thought the angels must have returned to claim Carolyn’s soul, but then they realized the house was surrounded by singing children from the orphanage where Carolyn volunteered. The Bordeaux family was so touched they built this memorial for her. They say there is an angel for each of the people she helped. There are hundreds of them throughout the garden.”

“Wow. How do you know all that?”

“It says it on that plaque over there.” Daniel grinned, as devious as ever.

I laughed. “You had me going there. I was starting to think you were some kind of intellectual, what with all this knowledge of obscure local history and quoting religious scholars.”

Daniel bowed his head. “I had a lot of time to read where I was.”

The air felt thick between us. Did Daniel want me to ask him where he’d been for the last three years? I’d wanted to—since the moment I first saw him. That question was just as important as finding out what happened between him and Jude. No doubt those two answers were connected. I told myself to seize the opportunity—to finally find the answers I needed so I could fix things for good.

I clenched my hands, digging my fingernails into my palms, and asked before I could change my mind, “Where did you go? Where have you been all this time?”

Daniel sighed and looked up at the tall statue next to him. This angel was a young man—early twenties, maybe—who was accompanied by a stone dog that sat at attention at his side. The dog was tall and slender like the angel, its triangular ears stretched to the man’s elbow. It had a long snout, and its bushy coat and tail seemed to get lost in the intricately carved folds of the angel’s robes.

“I went back east. Down south. Out west. Pretty much every other directional cliché you can think of.” Daniel crouched down and studied the dog. “I met him when I was back East. He gave me this.” He brushed his black stone necklace with his fingertips. “He said it would keep me safe.”

“The dog or the angel?” I goaded. I should have known better than to think Daniel would give a straight answer to my question regarding his whereabouts.

Daniel swept his shaggy hair out of his eyes. “I met the man this statue was carved for. Gabriel. I learned a lot from him. He talked about Mrs. Bordeaux and the things she did for other people. He was the one who made me want to come back here. To be close to this place again … and other things.” Daniel stood and sucked in a deep drag of foggy air. “Coming here always gave me such a high.”

“You mean you used to come here to get high,” I said, hazarding a guess.

“Well, yeah.” Daniel laughed and sat on a stone bench.

I instinctively took a step farther away from him.

“But I don’t do that anymore.” He tapped his fingers on his legs. “I’ve been clean for a long time.”

“That’s good.” I dropped my hands to my sides and tried to look casual and unshaken by his admission. I knew that he was no saint. I knew that his life had gone to a dark place long before he’d disappeared. I’d seen him only three times in the six months after he moved away to Oak Park with his mother—the six months that led up to his vanishing altogether. The last of those three times was when the Oak Park public high school called Dad because Daniel had been expelled for fighting. They couldn’t reach his mother, so Dad and I had to escort him home. But in some ways it was like thinking of my own brother doing drugs or something worse.

I glanced at the tall statue of Gabriel the Angel looking down on us. His carved eyes seemed to rest on the crown of Daniel’s head. That thread of curiosity pulled me to the seat next to him on the bench. “Do you believe in angels? Real ones?”