Vera dropped Maxwell’s hand.

Her dreams. It knew about them.

No, no, no…She’d hoped—no, she was convinced—that the sleepwalking and dreams were signs that she was growing into her gift, like her mother. She thought she was coming into her place in the family. She wasn’t sure she wanted that, but she was positive she didn’t want the alternative. Just the suggestion from her mother had been an insult.

Vera stumbled back a step, her shoulder hitting into the corner of the doorjamb.

“Death is just like falling asleep,” it threatened. “Wanna try it?”

“In nómine Patris et Fílii et Spíritus Sancti,” Father Chuck recited in Latin, making the sign of the cross.

“So predictable! Don’t you see? You’re…too…weak!” Its skull thrashed, arms rising. Then the sheet that covered its body fluttered up with its limbs, forming wings, bleached white and sprawling. All at once, the hefty curtains, made of long pearly blackout fabric, tore from the walls with the splintering crack of crumbling Sheetrock. The drapes tumbled to the hardwood floors, cheap metal rods clattering against the boards as the morning sun exploded into the room in perfect spotlight beams. Smoke rose in spiraling bits of grime, pirouetting in a blazing light so blinding, Vera squinched her eyes.

That was when she saw it. For just a moment, a vision crept up from deep inside:

Maxwell’s mother is stunning in ivory linen pants and a springy floral blouse. There are balloons in the yard. No, there are three balloons. Maxwell and Chloe grip the milky globes tied with string, waiting for her. But she is here, inside this room, sitting on an unmade bed, her chest constricting so much Vera reaches for her own heart. It has been years, and the grief corroding her soul hasn’t lessened. Not for a moment.

Until today.

Endless nights, she’s prayed and prayed for a magical fix that will transform her very being back into who she was before, that will stop the constant agony found in moving through each day. But there are no answers. There is no respite.

Then she touched it.

Her fingers brushed against the cool surface of the Angel, and for a fluttering instant the perpetual ache that infiltrated her bones, muscles, organs, and breath lifted into the ether. It was only a flicker, but it was enough to convince her. It is enough to devote her. She wants more. She wants to feel that relief all the time.

Vera watches this woman, this mother, sit in her bedroom and lift the Angel of Tears from a crisp white shopping bag. She carries it to the shelf in her closet. “I can’t keep going on like this. I miss you so much, and they deserve better,” she whispers, laying fresh lilies on her newly formed shrine. “I just wish everything could go back to the way it was before. I want to feel like I did today, all the time. Make me forget what I lost. Help me move on without this pain. I’ll do anything. Anything.”