She bent over, lit a Marlboro off the stove, inhaled a drag before the image of her mother came to mind. "Memories of home," she said, watching the ash glow red before she rested the cylinder on the lip of the saucer she'd been using as an ashtray. The cigarette burned low, scorched the ceramic, forced an amber ring that’d never come clean.

"It's funny, the things we remember," she smiled. He knew she wasn't really speaking to him. Talking to old ghosts, phantoms dogging her in the blossoming antemeridian. "Like the smell of a Marlboro lit off the burner of a stove, yeah?"

She picked up the cigarette, twirling it around between her thumb and forefinger, taking another hit before she set it back on the plate. "I remember... heat-lightning, and being afraid of the dark. Hiding under my parent's bed. Hoping, come morning, I wouldn’t be found. I remember the way everything clung, how I never felt like I could breathe."

Ice blue eyes absorbed her, from messy mascara to jeans undone. He loved her even more when she was coming apart. Sucker for a hard case, it came as no surprise to his friends when he fell so hard.

"Come on," he said in his quiet way, stretched out his hand to take hers, reached between them to snuff out the last few drags. In the bedroom, down the solitary hallway, he turned her in his arms and held her chin in the palm of his hand. "You can breathe with me. You never have to be afraid again. Most nights I never even close my eyes. Just watch you sleep. Keep you safe. You never know."

"How wrong you are," she whispered, leaning forward to kiss his lips, smoke sealing caustic around the edges. Darkness veiled her tears, narrow black tracks of liner smudged down her cheeks. “How wrong you are.”

I grew up in a small town. Population: 2000. It wasn't "The Corners," but it was small enough for people to know your name, your business, all the bad laundry hanging out on the line.

One day, as my mother was beating the living shit out of me, everyone ignoring it per usual, a knock fell on the front door, screen so scant it barely contained the flies. My mom told me to stay put, and I did, but I managed to hear the old man's voice. Caught a glimpse through the brown slat shutters of my bedroom window. Eighty if he was a day. Gaunt, tired, bald but for a few wisps of white.

Never seen him before, never seen him since.

When my mother came back to me... the memory of her deeds forgotten in the bloodless color of her face, I ask her what he wanted. "He asked for a glass of water." Mother, raised in Catholic schools, then went on to confess that as he handed the emptied glass to her, he said, "Pax vo biscum." Peace be with you. A gentle, but possibly preemptory farewell.

I don't always believe in much, but sometimes... I believe in angels.