Where Angels Tread by Clare Kenna Page B

to dissolve into heaving sobs when she realized that the life she and John planned together would never come to pass, she now found herself more focused on the new life she knew she needed to build for herself. It’s not that her love for John had dimmed in the years since his death; if anything, it had taken on an almost fairytale quality. He remained frozen in her mind as the perfect husband, the most loving father. His death had wiped away his faults, leaving Heidi with nothing but happy memories. Somewhere along the way, her grief had started to replace itself with cold, quiet acceptance.
    She knew that Zachary’s memories of his father would soon fade. Just last week, before bedtime, Heidi was sitting in the kitchen enjoying a cup of chamomile tea when she heard Zachary’s frantic voice calling out to her from his bedroom. When she hurried into the room, her heart thumping with fear, she found him sitting up in bed grasping his hair between his hands, rocking back and forth and quivering. “What’s the matter?” she had asked, rushing to his side and pressing her palm against his forehead.
    “It’s Dad,” Zachary said, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand.
    “What about Dad?”
    Her son had gazed unseeingly into the darkness for several moments. Finally, he turned to her with tears swimming in his blue-green eyes. “I can’t remember,” he had whispered, his voice trembling with grief and, Heidi suspected, a hint of rage, “the color of his eyes.”
    Could she? Heidi wondered later, after she had sat quietly with her son for the better part of an hour, rubbing his back while he sobbed into her shoulder. How many times had she stared into those eyes while she and John made love? Fought over something stupid? Dreamed about their life together? If someone put a gun to her head and demanded that she describe her husband’s eyes, would she be able to accurately describe their exact shade of ocean blue? Time had dulled the edges of her memory. John’s voice, even after death so loud in her mind, had begun to quiet. She supposed, as painful as it was to admit, that in some ways she was moving on. And in some ways she never would.
    Right now, Zachary was still a little boy, lost in a world that had shown itself to be cruel at a devastatingly young age. But he, too, would begin to heal. Just in the last few weeks, Heidi could see the process already taking place. And she knew that a big part of that was Shane’s presence in their lives.
    He had awakened something in both of them, a light, long dimmed, that was slowly creeping back into their lives. For Zachary, Shane represented not only a friend, but a mentor and—dare she say it?—a father figure. For Heidi, it was the belief that she would one day allow herself to fall in love again, if only she would open up her heart and mind to the possibility.

    “What I don’t understand,” Buddy said with a satisfied groan, leaning back in his chair and loosening his belt a notch, “is why you’re still helping out the kid. You said she didn’t want to go out with you, so what’s the point?” Out of the corner of his eye, Shane could see Maribel rolling her eyes in her husband’s direction as she poured each of them another glass of wine. Shane’s determination to return to the land of the living, as Buddy had so aptly phrased it, prompted him to finally accept an invitation to dinner at his friends’ house. Shane was surprised to find that he was actually enjoying himself.
    “I see them as separate,” Shane replied. “I’m not using Zachary to get to Heidi. I genuinely want to help this boy. If you met him, you would know why.” He shook his head sadly. “He’s been through a rough few years, apparently, although I don’t know the details. I haven’t wanted to ask.”
    Maribel nodded wisely. “Losing a parent is probably the most traumatic thing that can happen to a child.” She smiled fondly at three year old Henry, who was smashing a