Home Again

He reached his hand out, and in his palm lay a black velvet box. “Open it,” he said softly.

She looked up at him. Slowly, her hands shaking, she reached for the box and snapped it open. A brilliant diamond blinked up at her. “Oh, Angel…”

He eased the ring from the box and fit it onto her finger. “Marry me, Madelaine.”

She stared down at the ring, laughing and crying at the same time. It was an absurdly big diamond—conspicuous and dazzling and flashy—just like the man who’d bought it. She knew suddenly that her life would be different with Angel, more different than she could imagine. He would never do things the way other men did—he was like a flame, hot and dancing and capable of great destruction. But she knew—God, she’d known since she was sixteen years old—that there was no one else for her. “It’s so big…You shouldn’t have…Oh, Angel…”

He grinned. “I’m from Hollywood—the land of big jewelry. I want the world to know you’re mine.” He moved closer, and his smile faded. He looked at her with a seriousness that made her heart feel achingly full. “You are mine, aren’t you, Mad?”

“Always.”

His grin came back, brighter than the diamond. “Good. Now, dance with me, Mrs. DeMarco.”

The laughter rose through her and spilled out in a light, airy sound of pure joy. “Why, Mr. DeMarco, I thought you’d never ask.”

Epilogue

He sits on the porch swing, trying to make it sway beneath him. He can hear the high, clear sound of Lina’s laughter floating on the air. In the yard just in front of him, Madelaine and Lina and Angel are untangling a strand of Christmas lights. On the corner beyond, a young man stands in the shadow of a hundred-year-old oak tree, his hands jammed in his Levi’s pockets. No one in the yard has seen the boy yet, but he knows that they will. Soon Lina will look up and see the boy and go running down the walkway toward him.

He feels himself start to smile. It feels good, that slow, easy curving of the lips, and he realizes halfway into it that he can feel himself smiling. He notices that the wind is brushing his cheek, rustling his hair, and that he can smell the thick, puffy snowflakes that blanket the winter grass. He notices, too, that the birds have come back, and he can hear their magpie chatter.

He looks down, and for the first time in forever, he can see himself again. He places his feet firmly on the ground and gives a little push. The porch swing begins, very slowly, to rock beneath him. He hears the quiet, creaking whine of its movement.

In the yard, Madelaine pauses, her arms full of dark lights, her eyes—her beautiful mist-green eyes—riveted on the porch swing. He feels the heat of her gaze on him, and the heat grows stronger and stronger until it is so hot, he feels as if he’ll surely melt beneath it. The sunlight seems to come at him from all angles, sparkling on the new-fallen snow, glancing off the white fence posts, sifting down from a blue break in the clouds. It’s as if he’s standing in the path of the sun, and it warms him, oh, how it warms him.

“Look,” Angel says quietly, slipping his arm around Madelaine’s waist, drawing her close.

“The porch swing,” Lina says, moving toward her parents.

Together they walk toward him. He can feel their eyes on him, and he wants to sing out in triumph. He concentrates very hard and rises to his feet, and keeps rising.

He feels the laughter welling up inside him, spilling everywhere as he hovers above the ground, weightless and free. He hears his laughter in a dozen sounds—the chatter of the birds, the creaking of the swing, the falling of the snow from overburdened branches. In the distance a snowblower whirs to life, and he hears his laughter in that, too.

And through it all he can hear his old heart beating in Angel’s chest, beating and beating and beating like the steady hum of the wind as it pushes through the leaves.

For the first time in his life, he doesn’t feel as if there’s a hole inside him. Instead, he feels lighter than air, giddy with a sense of promise and discovery. He looks up at the sky, sees the distant blues and grays and whites whirl together in an impossible glow.

He looks at Madelaine, his Maddy-girl, and in a flash he sees her whole life, spinning out in front of him like the stuttering scenes of an old black-and-white movie. Her hair will never turn gray, it will instead turn a bright snow white, and she will live in this house, and sip lemonade on his porch swing, up until the day she dies. She will wear baggy sweats as an old woman and never need glasses, and she and Angel will name their son Francis, and they will call him Frank.

Because there’s already been a Francis.

He knows that she will miss him, always, and for the rest of her life, just as he will miss her. But she will have Angel, an Angel he never really got to know but always believed in, and she will have Lina. His precious Lina.

And he knows suddenly what kept him on the porch swing, watching the days bleed into one another and turn into shadowy nights. He is still part of that family on the snow-covered lawn, his family, and he always will be. He had it all wrong, and he realizes that perhaps that’s what life is, getting it wrong and going on, and still believing, always believing.

He feels himself going higher and higher, until they are three specks of darkness against a white, white world. After a few moments the porch swing settles again, and the family below goes back to setting up the Christmas lights.

He stares down at them, the three he loved so well, and knows that they will talk about this moment in the years to come.

They will talk of the afternoon that the porch swing creaked on its own and the winter sunlight seemed hot enough to cook eggs. They will offer to one another the comfort of belief, the promise of magic, and they will spend their lifetimes watching that old porch swing and thinking of a man they loved.

Francis smiles at the thought. And in the whisper of the wind, he hears their laughter for the very last time.

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