Capturing Angels by V. C. Andrews Page A

rooms began to look smaller, with furniture crowding more and more space. Clocks ticked louder, water gushed out of our faucets instead of streaming, and lights were blinding. Whenever I saw Margaret coming to the front door and ringing the doorbell, I didn’t answer. Later, when she called to see why, I pretended I had been asleep.
    “You should get out more,” she said. “Fresh air will do you some good. Do you want to go shopping with me?”
    “No. I don’t need anything right now. Thanks for calling, Margaret,” I said, and hung up before she could string along some other sentences to keep me talking.
    In fact, I went through a torturous debate whenever the phone did ring. Should I answer? Do I hope it’s some miraculous news, and when I discover immediately that the call has nothing to do with Mary, do I continue to hold on to the receiver? Do I speak?
    Margaret’s mention of shopping reminded me that I had yet to return to the mall where Mary was abducted.
    A number of times, I set out to do so, harboring the hope that I would see something, remember something, that would lead to her safe return, but every time I started out for it, I turned around because I would start to tremble and cry.
    How many times had I dreamed of returning and finding her myself? I told myself I should have gone back that first night. In my dreams, I always heard her voice and turned to see her come running to me, her arms out, her face full of joy. I covered that face in kisses, embraced her, and lifted her.
    “Where were you?”
    “Just over there looking at something pretty,” she would say, and point off to the right, but off to the right everything was in darkness.
    That didn’t matter. She was back in my arms, and I was taking her home. She was hungry and eager to help me prepare dinner. Daddy was going to be proud of her. There would be choruses of laughter around our table. The glow would return. Every minute would be more precious than the previous one. Once again, our home would be a womb of contentment giving birth to happiness beyond compare. Our windows would brighten as if they were filled with hundreds of candles building a fortress of light to stave off the darkness. Our neighbors would once again look upon us with reverence and envy.
    John’s rendition of the Twenty-third Psalm would resonate and echo into the homes beside ours, giving hope and faith away generously. “The Lord is my shepherd . . .” Later, we would tuck Mary into bed, join her in evening prayers, and then find ourselves settling comfortably into our own beds to sleep and greet a new day.
    My dream was my prayer now. I couldn’t ask God for anything in church. I had exhausted the words, the promises, like Hemingway’s old man in The Old Man and the Sea, who vowed he would say all the Hail Marys if only God would let him have his big fish.
    “You cannot bargain with God,” John would tell me. “God can’t be made to owe you anything. He’s not a storekeeper who will give you what you ask for if you just pay Him the price. That’s why these people who attend church services only when they feel like it or only on holidays are even more despised than those who don’t attend at all. You can’t give God five days a year and expect something in return, a little good fortune, a little health and happiness. It doesn’t work that way.”
    He quoted more scripture, tried to read passages to me from the Bible or relate some words of religious wisdom that Father McDermott had offered. In fact, it seemed to me that the more time that passed since Mary’s abduction, the more religious John became. It was almost as if he wanted to show me more than he wanted to show his God how strong his faith was.
    I stopped mentioning the subject entirely.
    Finally, one morning, I rose when John did, and after he had left for work, I decided I would return to the mall and even to the department store and the very place I had stood when I had first realized that