19

—

First they stopped at Feeler’s Flowers, around the corner from the apartment in a strip mall between a Chinese restaurant and a dollar store. A flower shop was a much nicer place to work than a lawyer’s office or the computing center at the college where Nicola’s father spent every day. Nicola told Irene this.

“You’re right,” Irene said as she unpacked a box of greeting cards. “It would be heavenly, if only I sold some flowers.” She looked closely at Lindsay. “Feeling better, Ms. Feeler?”

Lindsay nodded. “We’re going to walk June Bug.”

“You know it’s already four? It’ll be dark in an hour.”

“I’ll be back by then,” Lindsay said, with a hug for Irene.

As soon as they left the shop, Nicola told Lindsay, “It smells good in there. It smells sweet. So is an angel nearby?”

“Maybe,” Lindsay said. “Or maybe it’s just the flowers. We don’t know, right?”

“Every single flower shop can’t have angels in it,” Nicola said.

“Why not?”

“There are flower shops everywhere. Flowers are everywhere.”

“Angels are everywhere.”

Nicola sighed.

They picked up June Bug, then set out again. Not to visit Shady Oaks, but to see if Lindsay was right. If the doors to Mrs. Michaels’, Mr. Fitzpatrick’s and Mrs. Tanaka’s rooms were locked, Lindsay and Nicola would have to look in at them from the outside.

“I hope the curtains aren’t closed,” Nicola said.

“There aren’t any. At least, there weren’t in Mr. Milton’s room.”

“No smiling. No laughing. No curtains,” Nicola said.

Two blocks from Shady Oaks the little dog figured out where they were going and began pulling so hard on the leash that Nicola had to carry her.

“We haven’t visited for a few days. She really wants to go back.”

When they reached Shady Oaks, they saw the fence.Next door was a house. These Shady Oaks neighbors had young children. Nicola spotted the roof of a plastic playhouse protruding from a snowy hump, right next to the fence.

Nicola climbed up first and looked over into the yard of Shady Oaks. A tamped-down path led from the back gate to the back door, probably made by the people who delivered the food. Slanted icicles hung from the eaves and over the high windows, as thick as bars.

Lindsay passed June Bug up to Nicola and the two of them jumped down into the untouched snow on the Shady Oaks side. Lindsay went next. She waded to the corner of the building where the garbage and recycling bins stood and dragged one back. Clambering up on it, she broke off an icicle and used it to knock the others down.

Now she was just tall enough to see in the window. One peek and she jumped to the ground, making a face.

“What?” Nicola asked.

Lindsay pointed to the window.

Nicola climbed up on the bin and looked in herself. She saw a room eerily lit from the blue glow of a computer screen. Then she noticed another light across the room.

A cigarette.

A man was stretched out on a sofa, one arm bent to form a pillow behind his head. The man Nicola had seen the first day she came to Shady Oaks. He was smoking, flicking the ash into an ashtray balanced on his chest. When he lifted the cigarette to his mouth and sucked on it, the end flared red and reflected in his glasses lenses.

Nicola shuddered.

After a few puffs, he butted the cigarette and stood up, tall and hulking. He crossed to the sleeping computer and pressed a button.

Instantly, a murky cartoon landscape bloomed across the monitor, teeming with flies.

“Uggh!” Nicola said, jumping down from the bin.

“Mr. Devon?” Lindsay asked.

“He’s playing Inferno 2!”

Above them, a fingernail of moon hung in a graying sky. It was getting dark.

June Bug had already moved on to the next window. She stood on her hind legs with her front paws on the wall, sniffing the air and wagging like a maniac.

“We should hurry,” Nicola said, pulling the bin over. She got Lindsay to hold June Bug back while she swatted at the icicles.

“Whose room is it?” Lindsay asked.

Mrs. Tanaka’s. Nicola shouldn’t have been able to tell. She shouldn’t have been able to see Mrs. Tanaka shut up like this in the dark.

But she could. She blinked a few times, pressing her forehead and mittens to the frosty window.

The glass was vibrating. The vibration became tingles, the tingles a feeling spreading through her.

That feeling she’d had before.

“What?” Lindsay asked when Nicola climbed down.

The look on Nicola’s face must have said it all. Lindsay clambered up on the bin and, looking in, gasped. Gasped, then whooped and leapt down into the snow bank.

Lindsay hugged Nicola and tried to dance her around, but in their cumbersome winter clothes Nicola stumbled and fell into the thick snow. She moved her arms and legs around, swishing out an angel.

June Bug jumped onto her chest and licked inside her ears and nose and on the frozen apples of her cheeks.

The two of them, girl and dog, sprawled, kissing and giggling in ecstasy over what the girls had seen and the little dog had smelled.