Philip studied it and frowned. "I guess you can't see as much here," he said.
See as much what? Ivy wondered silently.
"Do you really want just your water angel back?" Philip asked.
Ivy knew he wanted to keep all the statues. "Just her," she assured him, then carried the porcelain angel into her own room. This was the statue Ivy loved most. Its swirling blue-green robe had prompted her to name it after the angel she had seen when she was four, the angel who had saved her from drowning. Ivy set the statue next to Tristan's picture, running her hand over the angel's smooth glazed surface. Then she touched Tristan's photo.
"Two angels-my two angels," she said, then headed up to her third-floor music room.
Ella followed her and leaped up into the dormer window across from Ivy's piano. Ivy sat down and began to work through her scales, sending out ripples of music. As her hands moved up and down the keyboard, she thought about Tristan, the way he'd looked when he swam, light scattered in the water drops around him, the way his light could shine around her now.
The late sunlight of September was a pure gold like his shimmer, and the sunset would have the same rim of colors. Ivy glanced toward the window and stopped playing abruptly. Ella was sitting up, her ears alert, her eyes big and shiny. Ivy turned quickly to look behind her. "Tristan," she said softly.
The glow surrounded her.
"Tristan," she whispered again. "Talk to me. Why can't I hear you? The others hear you-Will and Beth.
Can't you speak to me?"
But the only sound was the light thump of Ella leaping down from her perch and trotting over to her. Ivy wondered if the cat could see Tristan.
"Yes, she saw me the first time I came."
Ivy was stunned by his voice. "It's you. You really are-" "Amazing, isn't it?"
Within herself, Ivy could hear not only his voice but also the laughter in it. He sounded just as he always had when something amused him. Then the laughing ceased.
"Ivy, I love you. I'll never stop loving you."
Ivy laid her face down in her hands. Her palms and fingers were bathed in pale golden light. "I love you, Tristan, and I've missed you. You don't know how much I've missed you."
"You don't know how often I've been with you, watching you sleep, listening to you play. It was like last winter all over again, waiting and wanting, hoping you'd notice me."
The yearning in his voice made Ivy quiver inside, the way his kisses once had.
"If I'd had the right angelic powers, I would have thrown some broccoli and carrots at you," he added, laughing.
Ivy laughed, too, remembering the tray of vegetables he'd overturned at her mother's wedding.
"It was the carrots in your ears and the shrimp tails up your nose that made you irresistible to both Philip and me," she said, smiling. "Oh, Tristan, I wish we'd had this summer together. I wish we could have floated side by side in the center of the lake, letting the sun sparkle at our fingers and toes."
"All I want is to be close to you," Tristan told her.
Ivy lifted her head. "I wish I could feel your arms around me."
"You couldn't get any closer to my heart than you are now."
Ivy held out her arms, then folded them around herself like closed wings.
"I've wished a thousand times that I could tell you I love you. But I never believed, I just never believed I'd be given a chance-" "You have to believe, Ivy!" She heard the fear in his voice ringing inside her. "Don't stop believing, or you'll stop seeing me. You need me now, in ways that you don't know," he warned.
"Because of Gregory," she said, dropping her hands in her lap. "I do know. I just don't understand why he would want to"-she backed away from the most terrifying thought-"to hurt me."
"To kill you," said Tristan. "Everything that Philip described about that night happened, only 'the bad angel' was Gregory. And it wasn't the first time, Ivy. When you were alone that weekend-" "But it doesn't make sense," she cried, "not after all he's done for me."
She jumped up from the piano bench and began to pace around the room.
"After the accident, he was the only one who understood why I didn't want to talk about it."
"He didn't want you to think too much," Tristan replied. "He didn't want you to remember that night and start asking questions-such as whether our accident was an accident."
Ivy paused by the window. Three stories below her, Philip was kicking a soccer ball. Andrew, coming up the driveway, had stopped the car to watch. Her mother was walking across the grass toward him.
"It wasn't an accident," she said at last. She remembered her nightmare: she was in Tristan's car, and she couldn't stop-just like the night they'd hit the deer and couldn't stop. "Someone fooled with the brakes."
"It looks that way."
Ivy felt sick to her stomach at just the thought of Gregory touching her, kissing her, holding her close, close enough to kill her when the chance arose. She didn't want to believe it. "Why?" she cried.
"I think it goes back to the night of Caroline's murder."
Ivy walked back to the piano and sat down slowly, trying to sort things out. "You mean he blames me for his mother's-his mother's murder? It was suicide, Tristan." But as she said it she could feel a numbness in her chest and throat, a growing fear that threatened to shut down every reasonable thought.
"You were at the house next door on the night she died," Tristan told her. "I think you saw someone in the window, someone who knows what happened or was responsible for it. Try to remember."
Ivy struggled to separate her memory of the night from the nightmares that had followed. "All I could see was a shadow of a person. With all the reflections on the glass, I never saw who it was."
"But he saw you."
Bit by bit, the dream was unraveling. Ivy began to shake.
"I know," Tristan said gently. "I know."
Ivy longed to feel the touch that she had once felt when he spoke to her that way.
"I'm afraid, too," Tristan said. "I don't have the powers to protect you by myself. But believe me, Ivy, together we're stronger than he is."
"Oh, Tristan, I've missed you."
"I've missed you," he replied, "missed holding you, kissing you, making you mad…"
She laughed.
"Ivy, play for me."
"Don't-don't ask me that now. I just want to keep hearing your voice," she pleaded. "I thought I had lost you forever, but now you're here-" "Shhh, Ivy. Play. I heard a noise. Someone's in your bedroom."
Ivy glanced at Ella, who stood at the top of the Steps now, peering down into the darkness. The cat crept quietly down the stairs, her tail bristling. It's Gregory, Ivy thought.
She nervously opened a book and began to play. Ivy played loudly, trying to blot out the memories of Gregory's embraces, his urgent kisses, the night they had been alone in the store and the night they had been alone in the darkened house.
Trying to kill her? Killing his mother? It didn't make sense. She could almost understand how Eric could do it, half crazed with drugs. She remembered the message she'd overheard on Gregory's phone; Eric was always in need of drug money. Maybe he had tried to get some from Caroline, and things went wrong.
But what motive would Gregory have had for such a terrible thing?
"That's what I've been trying to figure out."
Ivy stopped playing for a moment. "You can hear me?" she asked silently.
"You don't cloak your thoughts as well as Will."
So he had heard everything she had just thought, including the part about the urgent kisses. Ivy began playing again, banging on the piano.
Tristan sounded as if he were shouting in her head. "I guess I shouldn't have been listening in, huh?"
She smiled and softened the music.
"Ivy, we need to be honest with each other. If we can't trust each other, who else can we depend on?"