An Angel for Emily Read online

  “Damn, damn, double-damn,” she muttered, then pulled a big corkboard screen from the corner and moved it around the table. “Go on,” she said in disgust. “But if anybody walks by here, you stop moving the papers, you understand me?”

  Emily wasn’t sure but she thought that as she turned away she distinctly heard a man’s voice say, “Thank you.” She threw up her hands. “Great. I am now helping ghosts to overcome their boredom.”

  Gidrah nodded toward the screen. “Who were you talkin’ to?”

  “Myself,” Emily answered. “I have my Madison research back there and I don’t want anyone touching it.” She moved away before Gidrah could ask why she didn’t put the papers back in the office. And what was she to answer—that she’d prefer that those two dead men, one of whom might be a murderer, stay out of her office?

  So now it was Friday and for four days the library had been a madhouse. At first the women had come to meet Michael, their eyes full of hope for a wild romance and a commitment. At least that’s what Emily saw in their eyes. But as the days passed, things had changed.

  “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” Gidrah had said on Wednesday afternoon as she looked at Michael, laughing with the children and showing them a game from the fifteenth century. “That’s what he reminds me of, what it says in the Bible. He wants the children to come to him. Just like Jesus.”

  “I think Michael is a different level,” Emily said tightly as she carried another stack of books to the checkout counter.

  “Level?” Gidrah said, then smiled. “I do believe that you’re jealous, Emily. And I find that rather odd seein’ as how you’re engaged to marry Donald. By the way, how is he? How does he like your livin’ with that gorgeous hunk of muscle and black hair?”

  As Emily put the books on the counter, she didn’t say a word.

  “Well, well,” Gidrah said. “If the color of your face is anything to judge by, I’d say that Mr. TV-man doesn’t know about this, ah, cousin. Tell me again, exactly how is he related to you?”

  Emily wondered how she could have ever liked Gidrah’s sense of humor. “On my mother’s side,” she said sweetly. “We have the same grandmother.”

  “Oh,” Gidrah said as she rapidly stamped three books. “Is this the same grandmother who used to go to school with my grandmother? The one who married that man from Tulsa and had only one daughter who was your mother? That grandmother?”

  “I hate small towns,” Emily muttered as she disappeared into the stacks.

  It was only at night that she spent any time with Michael, and that was only because they acted like fugitives and escaped. On Tuesday, as soon as she’d closed the library, there were women waiting with hot casseroles. “I thought that since you worked all day and had a guest you could use a little help in the kitchen,” a woman said, and Emily had no idea who she was. But there was a white line on her ring finger that showed that a wedding ring had recently been removed.

  “Thank you, but—” Emily began, but Michael was already taking the dish and smiling in delight at the woman.

  “And here’s my name, address and telephone number,” she said. “So you can return the dish.”

  Since the casserole was in a throwaway aluminum baking dish, Emily gave her a terse smile. “Of course,” she murmured. “How kind of you.” She looked at Michael. “Shall we go?”

  As they walked back to the apartment, four cars, with only women in them, slowed down and reminded Michael of some social invitation he had accepted. When they got to the apartment there were seventeen notes stuck between the door and the frame. “For you,” Emily said, as she shoved all of them at Michael.

  Once inside, she went to her bedroom with no intention of coming out ever again. She didn’t know what she was so angry about, but angry she was. When Michael opened her bedroom door without knocking, she started to tell him that this was her private territory, but instead, to her horror, she burst into tears.

  Immediately, Michael sat down beside her on the bed and pulled her into his arms. “It’s all right,” he soothed. “No one is going to come after me.”

  “It’s not that,” she said, wiping her tears on the back of her hand. “It’s—” Actually, she had no idea what was wrong with her, but it had something to do with Michael no longer being her private, secret property, and she did not, under any circumstances, want to look into that.

  “Let’s take the food and escape into the woods,” Michael said, his arm still around her. “I want to be with just you and I want you to tell me everything you did today and I’ll tell you about the children.”

  “And those women,” she said, sounding like a little girl.

  “You know, Emily, not one of them has as good a heart as you have. Not one of them has your purity of spirit or generosity. Why, some of them were downright…what’s that word for those fish you mortals think about so much?”

  She started to say porpoises but she knew he meant sharks. “Predators?”

  “Exactly. They didn’t like me or want to get to know me; they just want a male.”

  If he’d told her that she was the most beautiful woman in town, as most men would have done, she wouldn’t have believed him. But he said things about her heart, how he saw the inside of her.

  Before she could say a word, there was a knock on the door and she looked up with a grimace.

  “You get on your jeans, the ones with a hole in the seat, and I’ll go get some more food, then we’ll escape,” he said as he headed for the front door. “Alfred and Ephrim told me some things today, and tomorrow they want paper and pencils so they can make notes.”

  Emily opened her mouth to ask who Alfred and Ephrim were, but she knew. “They can’t let anyone see them writing,” she called after him. Then as she realized what she’d said, she laughed. Weren’t people supposed to be afraid of ghosts? She got up and went to her closet to get her torn jeans.

  Chapter 11

  BY THE TIME THEY GOT AWAY, AFTER EMILY HAD handed the telephone to Michael at least a dozen times, and she’d listened to him accept every invitation extended, it was nearly dark outside. “It’s too late to go now,” she said, her mouth in a thin line of disgust. Of course she knew she was sulking over a missed picnic, something that shouldn’t have bothered her at all. After all, she usually spent most of the week alone. And, truthfully, she even spent a lot of weekends alone, since Donald had to stay in the city if he was covering a breaking news story.

  But Michael put down the telephone, picked up the picnic basket, grabbed her hand and led her out the door, the phone ringing behind them. “Not afraid of the dark, are you?” he teased, leading her down the stairs so fast it’s a wonder she didn’t fall.

  “Not anymore,” she answered, laughing. “Not after today. Not after I’ve bawled out ghosts and told them to behave. And when did you have time to talk to them? Every time I looked up you were busy telling stories to the children.”

  “Ephrim came over and told me a story while I put little Jeremiah’s wagon back together. I just told it to the children.”

  They had reached the edge of the woods and Emily hesitated. Being a sane and sensible creature, she didn’t usually go into dense woods at night.

  “Come on,” Michael said, pulling on her hand. “The wood sprites will show us the way.”

  “Oh, of course,” she muttered, tripping along behind him. “Whatever was I thinking? Wood sprites. Ephrim wasn’t the one who…ah, uh…”

  “Murdered his wife, chopped her up and hid her body parts in a trunk?”

  “What?” she asked softly and stopped right where she was. Wood sprites or no, stories of chopped-up wives told in a dark forest were too much.

  Halting, Michael grinned at her and she could see his white teeth in what little light there was left. “No, Ephrim didn’t kill anyone. He was accused and executed but he vowed to stay on earth until the killer was found.”

  “Oh. And did he? Find the killer, I mean?”

  “Guess not sin