The Night Angel by T. Davis Bunn Read Free Book Online Page B

situated. He used tongs hanging from the wall to open two lids. Instantly the room was bathed in a warm glow. “Would you take tea?”
    “That would be nice. Thank you.”
    She watched Falconer draw two mugs from a packing crate. He set a pot onto the stove lid that was still closed. While the water boiled, he opened a sack and put a heaping spoonful of tea into a mug, followed by a good dollop of honey. Serafina remarked, “Sailor’s tea.”
    “You remember.”
    “I’ll never forget.” She accepted the mug with a smile of thanks. “Will you join me?”
    “Yes, if you wish.”
    She studied him more carefully as he poured himself a cup. “Something is different. You’ve changed. What is it? You seem calmer, more at peace. Yes. That’s it.”
    Falconer said nothing. He lowered himself into a chair at the end of the table and took a cautious sip.
    “Are things to be better between us now?”
    Falconer seemed to taste his response with the tea. The stove’s glow reflected on his face, and she could see the pensive cast to his eyes. “Has God ever spoken to you?”
    Serafina heard more than the question. For the first time in weeks she heard again the voice of one who had become her dearest friend. The man she had trusted with her honor and her life. The brother who had helped her to trust in God.
    His dark eyes looked almost copper in the light. “Has He?”
    “Of course.” She found herself recalling the first time they had spoken like this. How astonished she had been to meet a man who treated God as the unseen presence within every room, every moment. “He speaks to me through His Word. He speaks to me in church. He speaks to me through a sunrise. Through the lessons I have learned in my mistakes. Through my family. And through my friends.”
    “No. I mean . . .” Falconer fumbled with the words. “Has God ever spoken to you in a voice that you could hear?”
    “I don’t understand,” she said with a small shake of her head. “What difference is there between one voice and another? If I have indeed heard Him, it is all the same. Is that not so?”
    He nodded slowly. “You have grown in wisdom, Serafina.”
    A shiver went down her back. Not at the words, but the way he said her name. With ease. Again. Finally. At long last. “Have I?”
    “Very much. Do you know, this is the first time I have asked your advice about faith.”
    “All I can offer you, John Falconer . . .” She sipped from her mug to ease the restriction in her throat. “Whatever I have learned, it is because you were there when I most needed a friend.”
    He had such a strong face. Fierce even in repose. Fierce and yet gentle. Equal amounts of strength and sorrow. She wanted to trace that scar with her fingers, but of course she would not. Yes, the sorrow was still there, and it wounded her to know that his unanswered love was the cause. Yet there was a new calm to the moment. A sense that God was there with them— a healing balm, even now. Falconer said, “Friends.”
    “Oh yes,” she said and smiled. Though the man at the table’s other end was rimmed by tears that could be held back no longer.

    That night Falconer slept a full eleven hours. He fell into bed at dusk and slept until the church bells woke him. He rose too swiftly and had to grab the wall for balance, he was so groggy. He stumbled while drawing on his pants, then stumbled again over the doorstep and would have sprawled flat had Gerald Rivens not caught him. “Steady on, friend.”
    Falconer walked barefoot across the almost frozen ground. He dunked his entire head into the rain cistern. Bits of ice laced his skin before he came up blowing like a whale.
    He walked back around and hurried inside, for he saw now that Gerald was seated on a narrow bench beneath the cottage window next to Mary, and both were dressed for the Sabbath. Falconer tugged on boots and donned a formal high-collared shirt. He combed his hair and tied it back, then returned outside and