“Don’t you want to try on a wedding dress, Gemma?” He reached for her hand which felt soft and silky in his.
“If I wanted to get married, yes. But no man—” She caught herself, ending her thought with a brilliant smile. “Anyway, the woman claimed to be an angel. But I thought it was a prank from my friend Tommy.” Gemma raised her free hand as if to catch the light. “She had a fragrance about her I couldn’t identify but now here it is in this heart.”
John mimicked her move, trying to catch the same light, but all he caught was the ends of her hair floating in the salty summer breeze blowing off the bay.
“Do you believe her? Was she an angel?”
“Until this moment, I didn’t know what to believe, but perhaps she was telling the truth. Also, when she’d gone,” Gemma turned back toward the fountain, “there was a pool of light on the floor just like the one at the fountain.”
“My mother and brother have encountered a man they call Emmanuel. He’s perhaps an angel, some guiding force.”
Gemma looked back at him. “God with us.”
“Pardon?”
“Emmanuel means God with us. In third grade, I had a part in a Christmas play that talked about Emmanuel, God with us.”
The second time she mentioned His name, the atmosphere popped and the Heart of God lights refracted with each syllable. God. With. Us.
A small laugh escaped Gemma and she walked deeper into the cathedral lights and John ached to follow, but his feet remained planted. All the while something akin to a low-grade fire ignited in his chest.
“Gemma—” He reached for her as she skip-danced past him.Join her. In the mysterious light.
He took a step then hesitated. He could fully sense the fragrance now. Even more, he couldn’t take his eyes off Gemma.
He started to call her again, but the moment was sacred. Maybe even holy. Like the brief moment after Holland’s funeral when he found the feather.
She was beautiful with the beams twisting into her hair, soaking into her skin, electrifying her clothes. Even her laugh expressed light.
Spinning, spinning, spinning, she stirred the atmosphere more and more until the light swirled into a cone and careened toward John, drawing the breath from his lungs. His strength left and he collapsed to one knee on the cobblestones. The oily fragrance saturated the air and covered him.
Then he heard the song of the stars. Incredible. Stunning. Divine. He reached for the light as Gemma had been doing and fell off balance. He laughed and tried to stand but the weight of the elements held him down.
Then, as quickly as it began, the experience ended. For one breath, two, three, John couldn’t move. When he raised up from the stones, the Heart of God flickered and beamed with the average, everyday cathedral lights.
John glanced around for Gemma. He spotted her a few feet away, head down, shoulders shimmying, her soft sobs flowing beneath the babbling fountain. “Hey, love, it’s all right, it’s all right.”
When he came to her, she fell against him, clinging, her sobs building, her tears soaking his shirt. Wrapping her up tighter, John rested his cheek on her head, then slowly began a gentle side-to-side sway.
Whatever they’d just experienced would take hours, maybe days, to unpack. Even then they might not understand.
As for her tears, they needed no explanation. They fell from her shadows, and if need be, he’d hold her until the light permanently shone in her eyes.
As she exhaled, releasing her tension, she reclined into him and John began to hum the melody he’d heard moments ago when he was kneeling down, listening to the stars.
* * *
Gemma
A soft rain cleansed Port Fressa by the time Gemma awoke the next morning. She’d slept deep and long, waking up in the same position as when she drifted to sleep.
The light from the Heart of God filled her and almost consumed her long after John delivered her to her guest suite.
She sat in the dark sitting area saying nothing, just being in a world where there was no Vegas, no broken hip, no shame, no fear. Without looking she knew the shadows in her eyes were rolled back if not gone.
Light always conquers darkness.
Kicking out of bed, she moved to the window and raised the sash, inhaling the glorious aroma of a summer rain. A pair of groundskeepers walked the lawn in raincoats and hats.
