She twisted the pendant, and it popped open unexpectedly. The little motion made me jump; I never knew that the pendant was a locket. Then she reached inside, pul ed out a smal key, and handed it to my dad.
He slid the key into the box’s lock and opened it with one deft turn. Moving slowly and careful y, he thumbed through the items inside and removed a yel owed envelope. He placed it in my hands.
The envelope was sealed. Working my finger under the one loose corner, I looked up at my dad for confirmation that I could open it. He nodded.
Gingerly, I loosened the flap on the back and peered inside. A stack of what looked like photographs rested within.
I slid them out. They were indeed photographs, al of varying vintages. Some were fairly recent—black and whites from the nineteen forties maybe—and some were so old that they were printed in sepia. Flipping through them quickly at first, I thought they were postcards because they depicted so many exotic locations. They showed the pyramids of Giza in the late eighteen hundreds, the Great Wal of China in the early nineteen hundreds, even the Empire State Building under construction, with an attractive couple in the foreground.
As I examined the pictures more closely, they appeared too amateurish and informal for postcards. The lighting and focus were often blurry, and the centering sometimes seemed a bit off. The more I studied them the more they looked like snapshots of different couples on their holidays. Why were my parents giving me these? Particularly now.
As if reading my thoughts, my dad said softly, “Look closely.”
I stared at the pictures, wil ing them to make some sort of sense. Then I recal ed that the couple was identical in every photo. Different hairstyles, different clothes, but otherwise the same couple looking precisely the same for a span of nearly one hundred and fifty years. Only then did I realize that I knew them: they were my parents.
“Oh, so this is supposed to be your proof of immortality, I take it?” I asked. My skepticism had returned.
“You think these are fake?” my mom said. She sounded stunned and a little hurt.
“Anything can be Photoshopped, Mom.”
“You think we prepared these so that we could make up an elaborate lie about being angels?” She moved past stunned and on to furious. “And how do you explain your little flying sessions?”
When she put it that way . . . The crazy thing was my parents were the most practical, down-to-earth people I knew. Or thought I knew, anyway. I scrutinized the photographs again. There, among the pictures of al the far-flung destinations was one smal ish photo of my parents in period garb staring at each other. The joyous expressions on their faces caught my eye, and I took a closer look. They were seated before the white-washed church on the Til inghast town green, a familiar enough setting. Except that the church was the only structure in sight; none of the other storefronts and homes that surrounded it had been built yet.
I held up the picture. “This is Til inghast?”
My dad drew close to the photo, and smiled at the memory it evoked. “Yes, that is Til inghast in the late eighteen hundreds.” He handed it to my mom. “Remember, Hannah?”
She smiled back at him. “Yes, we were so happy here, despite al troubles.”
“What troubles?” I asked.
The grin disappeared from her face. “Like many New England towns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Til inghast suffered from several outbreaks of tuberculosis and consumption. Some of us who were attempting to find a path toward redemption visited here in the early days and tried to bring the many dying over to God. Unfortunately, these efforts were witnessed by a few Til inghast townsmen and mistaken as the work of vampires, as your father described.” The smile resurfaced. “Stil , we loved it here. That’s why we came back—when you arrived.”
I stared up at my parents, seeing them as if for the very first time. Suddenly, without warning, I believed them.
“You two are angels. Fal en angels, to be exact.” I didn’t intend it to be a question, but a statement. “The good kind.”
“Yes,” they answered in unison.
“So you can fly and read people’s thoughts? By touch or blood?”
“We could,” my mom answered, alone this time.
“What do you mean? I thought you said that angels could do al that stuff.”
“They can. But we can no longer do those things. For the most part,” my mom said.
“Why not?”
“That part is not real y important. We chose a different path.”
“What path is that?”
“Part of our path is to teach people ways to care for this earth so it can be saved.”
I nodded. “What’s the other part of your ‘path’?”
“To watch over you,” my mom said.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
What was so special about me that two angels needed to keep an eye on me? Then it dawned on me. Angels weren’t supposed to be able to procreate, but my parents obviously ‘procreated’ me. “Is it because you were able to have a child, even though God—or whoever—banned the angels from conceiving?”
“Something like that, dearest. We have always felt blessed to care for you,” my dad said.
“So I’m a fal en angel? Like you two?” Just saying those words aloud, aligning myself with them, made me feel lighter. Less alone. I was shedding the weighty, dark secret I’d been keeping—and living—for the past couple of months.
“Not exactly, El ie. You are somewhat different from the rest of us, either those that keep to the darkness or those that chose the light.”
“But I can do al the things that you described—the flying, the reading of people’s thoughts.”
“We know. Now.”
“What am I?”
My mom stepped in. “We cannot tel you just yet. It isn’t time. But we wil . Please trust us.”
My dad reached over and touched my cheek. “Maybe it’s better for you to get some rest, dearest. We can talk more tomorrow and answer some of your questions. At dinner.”
Sleep? Who could sleep with al this revelation? The very suggestion made me mad. They wanted me to sleep on a secret they’d kept from me for sixteen years. A major, major secret. I needed answers about my nature, my powers, and my immortality—for God’s sake. And I needed them now.
“No way. There is no way you’re going to spring al this on me, and then expect me to go to sleep.” I was as angry at my parents as I’d ever been.
“We know that you are angry, dearest. It is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. But there’s time enough for your questions when you’ve slept,” my dad said. His voice had a curious, singsong quality to it.
I started to object, when al of a sudden, sleep real y did seem like the most logical suggestion in the world. My dad took me by the hand and brought me to my bedside. My mom pul ed back the quilt and motioned for me to slide into the sheets. I had no choice but to fol ow them like an obedient child. Even though a tiny voice in my head wondered whether they stil had some of those angelic powers of persuasion and were using them on me.
Snuggling down into my covers, I looked up at my parents. My mom cast upon me a smile that could only be described as beatific, like some Madonna. Or maybe I was just seeing angels and saints everywhere.
The last words I remembered hearing before I drifted off into a deep sleep came from my mom. She said, “El speth, try to shroud—in your mind—
what you’ve learned tonight from Michael.”
The last thought I remembered thinking before I drifted off into that deep sleep was that it took a curiously long time for them to mention Michael.