Capturing Angels by V. C. Andrews

abductions, combing through police reports and newspaper stories as if I expected to learn that one important detail that would solve our tragedy.)
    Not sharing bad news or problems among themselves was a family value for John’s parents and him. Some people kept their illnesses secret because they didn’t want to be constantly reminded of them through the sympathetic looks they would get or the questions about themselves they would be constantly asked. But I always felt it was more a question of self-pride and even embarrassment for the Clarks. It occurred to me that maybe they were more like Puritans, people who believed that we were punished on earth for the things we did on earth. If you had a serious illness, God was getting back at you for some serious sin. Maybe they believed, contrary to what I believed or what other people thought, that they wouldn’t receive sympathy when people heard about their misfortune but would receive suspicion and derision instead.
    It was ideas like these that battered the fortress of my own faith. More and more, I was viewing not only our religion but all religion as more of an obstacle to good feelings about yourself and also to good relations with others. Either we were born with original sin discoloring our souls, as John and Margaret believed, or we were weak and very susceptible to it. How imperfect we were, and how often our religions reminded us. I wasn’t coming to these conclusions because God let my little girl be taken from me. I was coming to these conclusions because religion was trying to tell me that it was all right. There was a greater destiny awaiting us. Get over it. Go back to church.
    By now, my bitterness was spilling over. John was beginning to keep his distance, stepping back like someone who was afraid of being scalded. For nearly eight months, even with John keeping close track of my periods, I failed to get pregnant. I wondered if our failure to produce another child was damaging his faith and if that could only be my fault.
    One night, after one of our usual almost rehearsed dinners, I sat back and stared at him so coldly he had to say, “What?”
    “I was just wondering if you believe God is punishing us for something that I might have done.”
    “Why would you think that?”
    “He can’t be rewarding us by taking away our little girl,” I said.
    “We’ve been through this, Grace. We are to God what ants are to man. Just like ants can’t understand us, we can’t understand God’s decisions.”
    “Good,” I said dryly. “I was worried I was doomed to go to hell because someone abducted our daughter.”
    He folded his napkin neatly. Whenever he became annoyed with me—or with anyone, for that matter—John closed himself up and directed his attention and energy to something he could do meticulously. I laughed to myself, thinking he might have made a great brain surgeon if he could be kept angry at the time of surgery.
    “Do you have any interest in our going on holiday this year?” he asked.
    “Provincetown, maybe?” I said sarcastically, thinking of our honeymoon and our plans to take Mary to the dunes.
    He looked at me with a lightning flash of anger in his eyes.
    “I think it was a mistake for you to avoid this new therapist. In fact, I think you should consider it even more seriously now.”
    “I’ll wait for God to tell me,” I said.
    “If you listen, you can hear Him telling you now,” he replied, and rose to leave the table and go to his ships in a bottle.
    Maybe that is where he has put me now, I thought, in one of his bottles. With his meticulous efforts, he’s taken me apart and put me together in a tiny way so he can lock me up under glass and put me on a shelf.
    How do I get out?
    I tried not to think about it. For the next few days, we were like two shadows moving around the house. Back-to-back we slept. The house that we had once loved and cherished like a garden growing love and hope was closing in on me. All of the