What makes it even worse is that on Friday, Mom lies down and never really gets back up.

She stays in bed in her pajamas, laid back on the pillows like a porcelain doll. Sometimes she reads but mostly she sleeps, for hours, day and night. It becomes a rare thing to catch her awake.

In the middle of the next week a nurse shows up, Carolyn. I’d seen her before at the congregational meetings. Her specialty seems to be end-of-life care for angel-bloods.

“I don’t want you to worry about any of the details,” Mom says one day when Jeffrey and I are both keeping her company. “Billy is going to take care of everything, okay? Just be there for each other. That’s what I want. Hold fast to each other. Help each other through. Can you do that?”

“Okay,” I say. I turn and look at Jeffrey.

“Fine,” he mutters, and then leaves the room.

He’s been pacing around our house all week like a caged animal. Sometimes I feel his rage like a blast of heat, at how unfair this all is, our mom dying because of a stupid rule, our lives dictated by some force that doesn’t seem to care that it’s ruining everything. He hates his own powerlessness. And he especially hates all this isolation, having to stay inside, hiding out. I think he’d rather just go out there and face Samjeeza and have it over with.

Mom sighs. “I wish he wasn’t so angry. It’s only going to make things harder for him.” But truth be told, the isolation is starting to get to me too. All I have now is school, where the presence of Samjeeza keeps me on constant alert, and then home, where the thought that Mom’s about to die is always with me. I talk to Angela on the phone, but we decided it was best for her to lie low since Samjeeza showed up, since he doesn’t know about her. Plus she’s been quiet in an offended way since I told her about Aspen Hill Cemetery.

“I have a theory,” she says to me one night over the phone. “About your dream.”

“Okay.”

“You keep thinking that the reason Tucker’s not there is because he’s hurt or something.”

“Or something,” I say. “What’s your point?”

“What if he’s not there because the two of you break up?” It’s funny that somehow that thought scares me even more than the idea that he’ll be hurt.

“Why would we break up?” I ask.

“Because you’re supposed to be with Christian,” she says. “Maybe that’s what the dream is telling you.”

It hurts me, that thought. I know I could make it better by going to see Tucker in person, by kissing him and assuring him that I love him and letting him hold me, but I don’t dare. It doesn’t matter what Angela thinks. I can’t risk putting him in danger. Again.

I’m upstairs doing the laundry, sorting the whites from the darks, and all I can think about is what Angela said. Maybe we break up. And not because I’m “supposed to be with Christian,” I think then, but because I want him to be safe. I want him to be happy. I want him to have a normal life, and I’d have to be tripping to think that kind of thing is possible with me. I toss the whites in the washer and put in some bleach and I feel such a heaviness and a sense of dread that I want to scream, fill this silent house with my noise. This is not another person’s sorrow, not a Black Wing’s, but my own. I’m bringing it on myself.

I go to my room to take a crack at my homework, and I’m sad.

I talk on the phone with Wendy, and I’m sad. She’s all excited about college, going on about what the dorms are like at WSU and how awesome it’s going to be, and I’m sad. I try to play along, act like I’m excited too, but all I feel is sad.

Sad, sad, sad.

Later, the washing machine beeps. I go to transfer the clothes to the dryer. I’m elbow deep in damp clothes when suddenly the sadness lifts. Instead I feel this incredible, permeating joy, warmth flooding me, a sense of well-being, a whirl of true happiness so overwhelming it makes me want to laugh out loud. I put my hand over my mouth and close my eyes as the feelings wash over me. I don’t understand why. Something strange is happening.

Maybe I’m finally cracking under the pressure.

The doorbell rings.

I drop a pair of Jeffrey’s underwear on the laundry room floor and run downstairs for the door. I get up on tiptoes to peer out the small window at the top of the door. My breath catches.

There’s an angel standing on my doorstep. I can feel him. An angel. A White Wing, to be exact. A tall golden-haired man with such love pouring off him that it brings a whole different kind of tears to my eyes.

I fling open the door.

“Dad?”

He turns to me and smiles, a goofy lopsided grin that I had totally forgotten about until right this minute. I stare at him wordlessly, take in the way the sun glints off his hair with this definite unearthly kind of light. I examine his face, which hasn’t aged a day, not since I saw him four years ago, not ever, in all my memory of him. He hasn’t changed. Why did I never notice that before?

He’s an angel.

“Don’t I get a hug?” he asks.

I move zombielike into his arms.

Here’s what I would expect to feel in this moment: Um, surprised. Amazed. Astounded.

Knocked over flat by the sheer impossibility of the idea. But all I feel right now is his joy. Like pink curtains, Dad’s hands on my waist, holding me up high. That kind of joy. He hugs me tight, lifts me off my feet, laughs, then sets me down.

“I’ve missed you,” he says.

He’s stunningly handsome. Just like Samjeeza, like he was molded from the perfect male form, sculpted as a statue, but where Samjeeza has this dark beauty to him, Dad’s all golden.

Golden hair. Golden skin. Silver eyes that seem cool and warm at the same time, something ancient about them, so much knowledge in their depths. And like Samjeeza, he’s ageless, like he could pass for twenty, thirty, or forty, depending on how closely you look at him.

How is this guy the awkward, absent father of all those tortured phone calls over the years?

“Dad . . . ,” I say. “How?”

“There will be time for explanations. But right now, can you please take me to see your mother?”

“Sure.” I step back into the entryway, watch as this glowy, broad-shouldered man comes into our house, his movements fluid and graceful, so clearly not human. There’s something else about him, too, something that makes me see him in two layers, like that human suit Samjeeza wears, a blurring around him when he moves. With Dad both layers seem more solid, shifting over him. I can’t tell which is the real him and which is the suit.