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In the distance, a car turns toward the house, its headlights scouting ahead in shafts of yellow-bright light When the light touches the the curb The lights cut off

He hears the sound of a door opening, then the easy rhyth in the passenger seat

She cliht around her, and the i for the first tiiven her back her smile

It should hurt, seeing her look at another man with love in her eyes, and so he waits for the pain to hit, but it never comes, and the absence surprises him

He knows he can still feel pain He’d felt it earlier today when Madelaine had come out of the house Her eyes had been puffy and red froe of her standing there on the porch, wearing his old shirt, had made him hurt Deep, deep inside him, in the place where his heart used to be

But now she is s, and so radiantly beautiful that he finds it difficult to draw an even breath She seems to float up the ay toward hiolden light

He realizes all at once that they look young and happy, both of them It is the way they used to look at each other all the time, the way she never looked at him

Strangely, the knowledge warh to float off the porch swing A prickling sensation h him—this time he almost believes that it is real It starts in his toes and works upward It feels as if pure white-hot sunlight is slipping through his veins, illuiddy sense of weightlessness

He expects to float away, and when he doesn’t, he looks down, and finds thatbut shadow steeped on shadow

It surprises and confuses hi of his body, but it doesn’t scare hiht

When he looks back up, he sees that Madelaine is on the porch beside him He can hear the hushed sound of her voice as she talks to his brother, though he can’tsound not unlike the whispering of the trees

He wants to be near them, to wave his hand and say I’m here, see me

She opens the door and flicks on the porch light, and there, in the golden glow, he sees a shadow standing alongside them

He knows somehow that it is the shadow of the man he once was Mesmerized, he watches himself slip into his brother’s shadow and stand there, close enough to touch them

It feels so right to be there in his brother’s shadow, a part of Angel and yet separate He can feel hi A relieved sigh slips fros and soars from the apple tree in the front yard