She nodded.
“Didn’t that scare you when you felt someone’s hand in the darkness?”
She looked at me as if I couldn’t understand anything. “Angels aren’t scary,” she said. “They’re nice. She held my hand and another angel held my mom’s hand.” That threw me for a moment.
“How do you know an angel held your mom’s hand?”
She was getting exasperated with me. “Because that’s what they do. They always watch us. When we die God sends an angel to hold our hand so we won’t be afraid. Then when we die we float up to heaven with that angel.” I could see Mom wipe her eyes. It’s what she had told me four years ago after Sean’s accident. The story of the angel was helping Emily with her mother’s death and I wasn’t about to change that. She needed to get through the grief in her own way. I took her hand and started walking toward the parking area. “Don’t you believe me, Patricia?” Her voice was small, not as strong as it had been earlier. “Don’t you believe that God sent my angel?” I searched her eyes. She believed everything she had told me.
“Yes,” I said, pulling her toward me. “I believe you.” She reached for Mark’s hand and we walked in silence to the car.
Meghan Andrews put the last of the roast into a glass dish and covered it with Saran Wrap. Nathan’s grandmother came up behind her and moved her out of the kitchen. “You cooked for us. Now we clean. Sit down before that baby decides to pay us all a visit on Christmas Eve. And you know what will happen if the baby comes too early?”
Nathan kissed his grandmother’s cheek. “We know, Gramma,” reciting the old wives’ tale she’d told him for the past nine months. “If a baby comes early it’ll be slow to walk and slower to talk.”
“That’s right. Your grandpa came early and he was nearly four years old before he talked.”
“Maybe he didn’t have anything to say. Maybe he was the strong, silent type.”
“Your grandfather couldn’t keep silent if you paid him!”
Nathan laughed and helped his grandmother clear the table.
“What I would give for this baby to come,” Meghan said, sitting at the table. “I can hardly breathe anymore.”
Jack smiled and helped clear the table. He didn’t say it but Nathan knew his dad was anxious to meet his first grandchild.
Lydia held her hand on Meghan’s stomach. “Oh, my goodness. We’ve got a little one who’s excited about Christmas in there.” Lydia had married Jack four years earlier. Nathan wished his own mother could meet his children and be called Grandma by little ones who clamored to get onto her lap but he had realized a long time ago that that would never happen. Lydia would be the baby’s grandma. She had grandchildren already and was a good grandma. Nathan and Meghan knew she would love their child as one of her own as well.
When the dishes were finished, everybody sat in the living room by the tree and continued to talk about work, family, old friends, and the new baby. At nine o’clock the phone rang and Nathan answered it.
“Just another holiday in the ER.” It was Rory.
“Are you still standing?”
“Barely. I have something for you.”
Nathan walked to the closet and pulled the timepiece out of his pocket.
“There was a Sean Addison brought in four years ago on Christmas Eve.”
Nathan looked at the inscription on the watch. “Mom, Always … S.”
“Did anyone happen to record his personal items?” Nathan asked.
“No, there’s nothing listed.”
Nathan sighed. He knew it had been too much to hope for. He closed his hand around the pocket watch. “I owe you one.”
“Actually, you owe Stephanie in Records. She did all the work.” Nathan wished Rory a merry Christmas and hung up the phone. He sat on the sofa and wanted to share the story with the rest of his family but they were looking at Meghan’s ultrasound pictures … again. He held the watch in his hands and shook his head. What if the watch didn’t belong to the young man who had died that night in the ER? The S on the watch might not mean Sean. It could be for a Steven or Sarah or Susan. What if he gave this to Patricia Addison and she thought he was crazy? He had to be at the hospital early tomorrow; he could leave the watch on the Addison’s front porch without their knowing and if it didn’t belong to Patricia then she’d just assume someone left it at the wrong house. But with that settled, the question still nagged him: what if he was mistaken? He rubbed his thumb over the engraving on the watch, then put it in his shirt pocket, propped his feet up on the coffee table, and smiled. It wouldn’t be the first time he was wrong.