In the blink of an eye, Tristan matched thoughts with Will and slipped inside him. He heard Ivy's music through Will's ears now. When she had finished playing, he rose up with Will. He clapped and clapped, hands high above his head, high above Will's head. Ivy bowed and nodded, and glanced over at him.
Then she turned to the others. Suzanne, Beth, and Eric cheered. Philip jumped up and down, trying to see over the heads of the standing audience. Gregory stood still. Gregory and Ivy were the only two people in that noisy park standing motionless, silent, gazing at each other as if they had forgotten everyone else.
Will turned abruptly and walked back toward the street. Tristan slipped out of him and sank down on the grass. A few moments later he felt Lacey next to him. She didn't say anything, just sat with him, shoulder touching shoulder, like an old team member on the swim bench.
"I was wrong, Lacey," Tristan said. "And so were you. Ivy doesn't see me. Ivy doesn't see Will, either."
"She sees Gregory," Lacey said.
"Gregory," he repeated bitterly. "I don't know how I can save her now!"
In a way, dealing with Suzanne after the performance had been easier than Ivy expected. As planned earlier. Ivy met Philip and her friends by die park gate. Before she got a chance to greet them, Suzanne turned away.
Ivy reached out and touched her friend on the arm. "How did you like Will's paintings?" she asked.
Suzanne acted as if she hadn't heard.
"Suzanne, Ivy was wondering what you thought of Will's paintings," Beth said softly.
The response came slowly. "I'm sorry, Beth, what did you just say?"
Beth glanced uneasily from Suzanne to Ivy. Eric laughed, enjoying the strain between the girls. Gregory seemed preoccupied and distant from both Suzanne and Ivy.
"We were talking about Will's paintings," Beth prompted.
"They're great," Suzanne said. She had her shoulder and head turned at an angle that cut Ivy out of her view.
Ivy waited for some kids with balloons to pass, then shifted her position and made another attempt to talk to Suzanne. This time she got Suzanne's back in her face. Beth stood between the two girls and began to chatter, as if words could fill up the silence and distance between them.
As soon as Beth paused for breath. Ivy said she had to go, so that she could get Philip to his friend's house on time. Perhaps Philip saw and understood more than Ivy had realized. He waited until they were a block away from the others before he said, "Sammy just got back from camp and said not to come till after seven o'clock."
Ivy laid her hand on his shoulder. "I know. Thanks for not mentioning it."
On their way to the car. Ivy stopped at a small stand and purchased two bouquets of poppies. Philip didn't ask her why she bought them or where they were going. Maybe he had figured that out, too.
As Ivy drove away from the festival she felt surprisingly lighter. She had tried hard to reassure Suzanne, to please her friend by keeping her distance from Gregory. She had reached out to Suzanne several times, but each time her hand had been slapped back. There was no reason to keep trying now, to keep tiptoeing around Suzanne and Gregory. Her anger turned to relief; she felt suddenly free of a burden she hadn't wanted to carry.
"Why do we have two bouquets?" Philip asked as Ivy drove along, humming. "Is one of them going to be from me?"
He had guessed.
"Actually, they're both from us. I thought it would be nice to leave some flowers on Caroline's grave."
"Why?"
Ivy shrugged. "Because she was Gregory's mother, and Gregory has been good to both of us."
"But she was a nasty lady."
Ivy glanced over at him. Nasty wasn't one of the words in Philip's vocabulary. "What?"
"Sammy's mother said she was nasty."
"Well, Sammy's mother doesn't know everything," Ivy replied, driving through the large iron gates.
"She knew Caroline," Philip said stubbornly.
Ivy was aware that a lot of people hadn't liked Caroline. Gregory himself had never spoken well of his mother.
"All right, here's what we'll do," she said as she parked the car. "We'll make one bouquet, the orange one, from me to Caroline, and the other, the purple one, from me and you to Tristan."
They walked silently to the wealthy area of Riverstone Rise.
When Ivy went to lay the flowers on Caroline's grave, she noticed that Philip hung back.
"Is it cold?" he called to her.
"Cold?"
"Sammy's sister says that mean people have cold graves."
"It's very warm. And look, someone has left Caroline a long-stemmed red rose, someone who must have loved her very much."
Philip wasn't convinced and looked anxious to get away. Ivy wondered if he was going to act funny around Tristan's grave, too. But as they walked toward it he started hopping over the stones and turned back into his old cheerful chatterbox self.
"Remember how Tristan put the salad in his hair at Mom's wedding," Philip asked, "and it was all runny?
And remember the celery he stuck in his ears?"
"And the shrimp tails in his nose," Ivy said.
"And those black things on his teeth."
"Olives. I remember."
It was the first time since the funeral that Philip had spoken to her about Tristan, the Tristan he had once played with. She wondered why her brother was suddenly able to do so.
"And remember how I beat him at checkers?"
"Two out of three games," she said.
"Yeah." Philip grinned to himself, then took off.
He ran up to the last mausoleum in a row of the elegant burial houses and knocked on the door. "Open up in there!" he shouted, then flapped his arms and flew ahead of Ivy, waiting for her at the next turn.
"Tristan was good at Sega Genesis," Philip said.
"He taught you some cool tricks, didn't he?"
"Yep. I miss him."
"Me, too," Ivy said, biting her lip. She was glad that Philip had rushed ahead again. She didn't want to ruin his happy memories with tears.
At Tristan's grave Ivy knelt down and ran her fingers over the letters on the stone — Tristan's name and dates. She could not say the small prayer that had been carved on the stone, a prayer that put him in the hands of the angels, so her fingers read it silently. Philip also touched the stone, then he arranged the flowers. He wanted to shape them into a T.
He's healing. Ivy thought as she watched him. If he can, maybe I can, too.
"Tristan will like these when he comes back," Philip said, standing up to admire his own work.
Ivy thought she had misunderstood her brother, "I hope he gets back before the flowers die," he continued.
"What?"
"Maybe he'll come back when it's dark."
Ivy put her hand over her mouth. She didn't want to deal with this, but somebody had to, and she knew that she couldn't count on her mother.
"Where do you think Tristan is now?" Ivy asked cautiously.
"I know where he is. At the festival."
"And how do you know that?"
"He told me. He's my angel. Ivy. I know you said never to say angel again" — Philip was talking very fast, as if he could avoid her anger by saying the word quickly—"but that's what he is. I didn't know it was him till he told me today."
Ivy rubbed her hands over her bare arms.
"He must still be there with that other one," Philip said.
"That other one?" she repeated.
"The other angel," he said softly. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a creased photograph. It was a picture of them that had been taken at Old West Photos, but not the same one she had been given. Something had gone wrong with the developer, or perhaps the film itself. There was a cloudiness behind him.