Angel Falling Softly (7 page)

These days, if David asked somebody else to pray she could count on the person throwing in a heavenly petition on Jennifer’s behalf. Spiritual pandering, perhaps, but Rachel had long ago determined not to be above it.

They chorused an
Amen
and sat down and commenced to eat.

Troy positioned himself across from Milada. As he casually deboned a chicken breast, he asked, “So, Milada, what do you know about the Mormon church?”

“Very little, I’m afraid.”

“Well,” he said, “if you want to find out more, this is the place.”

Milada clearly didn’t get the pun.

“You know, Darin Pelton—he lives right around the corner—he’s the ward mission leader. We could round up a couple of the full-time missionaries. You got a free night this week, say Wednesday or Thursday?”

Milada surely had no idea what he was talking about.

“A new sister missionary got transferred into the ward last week. She’s from Finland. Amazing, don’t you think?”

Milada didn’t reply. Instead she did something that Rachel hadn’t expected at all. Troy’s left hand was resting on the table next to his plate. Milada reached over and lightly touched his hand with the tips of her fingers. “We shall talk about something else now. Sports, perhaps?”

Her voice was so low and direct that Rachel wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t been paying close attention. It wasn’t a suggestion. Troy didn’t mull it over. He stopped mid sentence—mid thought, even. He said to Brent Millington, “Hey, Brent, what do you think about the Y’s chances this year?

Rachel said to Milada, hoping to help push the conversation onto that track, “Brent was an offensive lineman at BYU.”

“Second string,” responded Brent. “Warmed a lot of bench.”

Milada politely acknowledged the honesty in the qualification and turned to Laura, perched on the end of the picnic table bench. Laura was eating a hot dog with one hand, holding the book with the other. Rachel was about to tell Laura to put the book down, but a passion for reading was something a parent shouldn’t mess with. After all, Laura dutifully read her Bible and Book of Mormon. That her taste in literature had grown more gothic over the past year should have surprised no one.

Milada asked, “What are you reading, Laura?”

“It’s this book by Annette Curtis Klause.” Laura showed her the cover. “It’s about a guy who’s a vampire. But he’s a
good
vampire, like Angel on
Buffy.
Except he has a little brother who got turned into a vampire when he was little and never grew up. So he’s evil.”

“It is nice to know that there are good vampires around,” Milada said. “Bram Stoker gave us Carpathians such a bad reputation. And they do grow up. It only takes forever and a day.”

When Laura was sure she wasn’t being made fun of, she grinned.

Rachel felt the tension oozing out of her neck and back. The chicken was edible—David was demonstrating some real skill at the barbecue. With Troy distracted and her daughter’s attitude on hold, things couldn’t have turned out much better than this. She excused herself and went into the house to get boxes of Popsicles and ice cream bars out of the freezer. Outside she distributed them to the Millingtons, making sure Andy didn’t get anything with milk or soy in it. She sat down and listened as her daughter and Milada talked.

“I was born in Romania,” Milada was saying, “but I grew up in a little town in Hungary called Szeged, on the Tisza River. It’s grown to the size of Salt Lake City by now, or so I am told. I haven’t been back in centuries.”

“You sound like you have a British accent,” Laura said.

“We resided in London for many years. I live in New York now. I’m what New Yorkers sound like when they’re trying to rise above their immigrant roots.”

“New York City, you mean? Wow, what’s New York like?”

“
It’s a helluva town,
” she said, half-singing the Leonard Bernstein melody from the Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra musical.

Laura asked, “Is there really a Transylvania? Isn’t it in Hungary?”

“Hungary and Romania have been fighting over it for the past five hundred years. Since World War II it’s been a province of Romania.” She quipped, “Our loss. Or theirs.”

Rachel asked, “Do you have family in New York, Milada?”

“My father—stepfather—and my two sisters, Kamilla and Zoë. Kammy’s a doctor.” The pride was evident in her voice. “She’s a fellow at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She’s currently a visiting professor at the University of Utah.” Milada paused, and a distant, fleeting look came to her eyes. Rachel knew that look. Milada hadn’t mentioned her mother or her natural father. She hadn’t said what Zoë did.
They do grow up. It only takes forever and a day.

And Rachel said to herself:
I could understand this woman.

Everybody was pretty much done eating. They munched on potato chips, sipped lemonade, digested. The men argued sports. BYU versus the University of Utah. Jazz basketball. The long-term viability of the major league soccer franchise. Charlene, her littlest one on her shoulder, chatted with Doris, casting an occasional glance at the three older Millingtons gallivanting across the yard.

“Do you wish the plates left in a certain place?” asked Milada, picking up hers.

Rachel said, “Oh, no, we’ll get that later.”

Laura said, “Meaning she’ll make me do it.”

“We’ll do it together, okay, Laura? Why don’t we sit over here?” Rachel indicated the pair of faux-redwood deck chairs. Rachel took the one on the left, the one with the right arm missing. Laura sat down on her chair sideways, her legs swung over the side, her back against her mother’s shoulder.

Milada settled into the deck chair, her countenance white and ghostly in the falling light. “Forgive my ignorance, but do you deify dragons as guardian angels?”

It took Rachel a moment to realize what she was referring to. She laughed. “It’s got nothing to do with Mormon theology. When Jennifer was diagnosed with cancer, she took to the idea of having a guardian angel, like on the television show. But she felt that
her
guardian angel should be as strong and terrible as the thing she was fighting. She’s got quite a collection of them.”

Laura said to Milada, “What do you do in New York?”

“I buy things. Companies, mostly.”

“You buy companies? Wow. Like Wal-Mart?”

“Not Wal-Mart. Small-cap, high-tech companies.”

“Is it fun?”

Milada smiled. “For the most part, yes, I do enjoy my work.”

Almost absentmindedly, Rachel drew back her daughter’s hair and began to braid it. Laura didn’t duck or shake her head the way she was wont to do. Perhaps, her mother thought, they should have Milada over more often.

Laura said, “Is your hair like that naturally?”

“It does run in the family.” Another small smile. She was not a woman easily offended by personal questions. Or perhaps not easily offended by children. She had taken to Laura—or was it the other way around?

Just then, Brother Millington bellowed—and the man could bellow like a water buffalo—“Andy!” He stood at the edge of the patio and stared out at the yard and field beyond.

Laura jumped up, the braids falling out of her hair. Her mother stood behind her. Charlene hurried up to them, her eyes full of fear. Rachel said, “Charlene, what’s going on?”

She gasped, “We can’t find Andy.”

T
he men coalesced in a phalanx around them. President Forbush asked, “Where did you last see him?”

“Maybe he wandered down to the creek bed,” the bishop suggested.

Brother Millington shook his head, but not in disagreement. “I’ll just bet that’s what he did. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times—”

Troy said, “He probably followed the trail the Cub Scouts use.”

Milada joined Rachel. Laura said under her breath, “The Pillsbury Dough Boy bounced away.” Her mother didn’t bother admonishing her. Laura had much experience babysitting the Millington children.

Rachel agreed with her husband about the creek bed of the arroyo. “It’s like a magnet for kids around here. A boy drowned there last summer in a flash flood.” She grimaced to herself as she spoke.
Why in the world did I say that?
Perhaps it was to state the worst-case scenario so anything else would be an improvement.

The men fanned out across the field and snaked down the crumbling, sandy slopes, Brent Millington’s voice blaring like a foghorn.

With a dispassionate expression on her face, Milada watched the men move off. Then she kicked off her shoes and stepped up on the picnic table bench, her gaze moving slowly like a predator scanning the Serengeti for fresh prey. She stepped down, put on her shoes, and walked to the edge of the property line.

Laura took off after her. Rachel said to Charlene, “It’ll be okay.”

Charlene sighed wearily, then snapped at her two older children, “Mary, Brent Junior, get over here and sit down. Don’t want you getting lost as well, for Pete’s sake.”

High along the ridgeline of the Wasatch Mountains, the setting sun gleamed off the granite walls of Twin and Lone Peaks. The contrast threw the shadowed valley floor below into an exaggerated darkness. Milada waded through the tall, dry grass with unhurried strides. Not toward the arroyo but toward a John Deere backhoe parked next to a gnarled apple tree at the edge of the new housing lots. Rachel jogged to catch up with her, and then fell back a step behind with Laura. The field hummed with the buzz of cicadas. Mormon crickets sprang out of their path. The grass, charred from the harsh September sun, shattered at the touch.

A nervous droning sound grew louder as they approached the backhoe. It wasn’t the droning of cicadas. It reminded Rachel of the sound the vacuum cleaner made when it grabbed a penny off the carpet and jammed it against the belt. Laura ran ahead, stopped, let out a shriek, and retreated to her mother’s side.

The evidence of the crime lay scattered on the ground. The spent can of Raid left behind by the work crew. The survey stake Andy had managed to heft and swing with unfortunate accuracy, knocking the nest from the overhanging limb. The crumpled hive buzzing with angry yellow jackets—

And Andy’s still, flaccid body a few feet off, his puffy skin dotted with red welts. “Milada—” Rachel started to say, but Milada hardly hesitated. She picked up the nest and flung it a dozen yards into an open house foundation. Not a yellow jacket lit upon her. She knelt next to Andy. Rachel said to her daughter, “Laura, go get your father.”

She didn’t move. “Laura!” her mother said again. Laura took off across the field.

Rachel kneeled next to Milada, who said in her calm voice, “The boy has stopped breathing.” She pressed on his sternum with the palm of her hand. Air rushed hollowly out of his mouth. She compressed his chest twice more.

Andy’s head lolled to the side. She picked up his right arm, the ball of her thumb pressing tightly at the bend of his elbow, lowered her mouth to his wrist—

And then—

Rachel’s mind went blank. Literally blank. Static on an empty television channel. She blinked and shook her head. Her brain fired up, jerked her back to reality. Milada looked at her, her crystal-clear eyes filled with concern. She touched Rachel’s cheek with her fingertips. “Are you all right, Rachel?”

She nodded. She hadn’t fainted, had she? She didn’t faint over something like this—after all, she’d handled bloody catastrophes at girls’ camp. She was still kneeling at Milada’s side. Only a moment had passed, but whatever had happened in that moment had evaporated into nothingness.

Milada said, “The boy is breathing.”

“He’s breathing?”

Milada scooped the boy into her arms and stood up. Rachel remained on her knees, still dazed. Milada said, “In the right pocket of my jacket—”

Rachel leapt to her feet. Andy was a big boy for his age, but Milada’s voice was not even strained. The thought struck her:
Good heavens, she’s strong.

“My cell phone—”

Rachel reached into her jacket pocket and found the little Nokia. She popped it open and dialed 9-1-1. “An eight-year-old boy just got stung by yellow jackets. I think he’s in anaphylactic shock. We did CPR. He’s breathing now. We’re at 445 Willow Way in Sandy.”

People ran toward them. Laura arrived first, her eyes wide. “Andy!” Brent Millington shouted. Milada carried Andy to the lawn and set him down on the grass next to the patio. Andy stirred, twitched, and kicked like a sleeping dog. He coughed, his stomach heaved, and he threw up pink lemonade, half-digested hot dog, and melted orange Popsicle onto Milada’s jacket.

Brother Millington sat Andy up and patted him on the back, making sure he didn’t choke. “You all right, Sport?”

Andy weakly bobbed his head.

A police cruiser drove up, siren screaming in the quiet twilight, strobe lights painting the street with ribbons of red and white and blue. The ambulance arrived soon after. The paramedics hefted the boy onto the gurney and started an IV drip.

A small crowd gathered in the street in front of the house. Bill Garner—the Garners lived three houses down—approached the bishop. “It’s Andy Millington,” David explained. “He got himself tangled up in a yellow jacket nest. But it looks like he’s going to be okay. Brent’s riding with him to Alta View Hospital. I’ll take Charlene and the kids and meet them there.”