Old Margaret might be onto something here, Gabriel thought on the way back home. A visit to the Keys would be nice. Nice not to freeze my butt and hang out in shorts for a few days. The red truck was not speeding on the snowy road. Gabriel slowed down even more when approaching the snowplow coming in the opposite direction. The idea of seeing his mother was nice too. Even if he had to meet the boyfriend for that. He snorted.

The wipers were working hard on the windshield while Gabriel was waiting on the hard shoulder, looking at the plow clearing the path ahead. His thoughts drifted back to his mother’s new life in the sunshine. He realized he was having "negative thoughts", as Lucy would say, about someone he had never met and could not help but feel bad about it. He smiled thinking about what Emma would say: "Screw that! You’re only human, Angel!" That’s what she would say.

But Emma was not there and he could not speak to her because she persisted on not answering her phone, although he knew she was back. Which only meant one thing: something went very wrong during her visit in Paris.

He let the snowplow drive pass him and waved at the driver, recognizing little Jimmy Harvey whose older brother Ed he used to play football with in high school. Once the plow was gone, he went back onto the road and headed home.

The snow started to fall harder and the darkness was not making things easier on the road. She probably found out he’s gay, Gabriel thought as he was taking a right onto Newbould Lane. He had guessed pretty much the first time he saw the man, and Lucy teased him endlessly about how weird it was he picked it up so quickly and went on and on about the ‘gaydar’ theory. Personally, he thought it was a silly theory.

He had never told Emma about his suspicions though, because he felt it was none of his business, as Lucy had pointed out to him, and also because he knew that it would hurt Emma and make her angry with him.

He sighed as he was approaching the house. In the driveway, he parked behind his Lucy’s dark Subaru station wagon, leaving her enough space to maneuver out. He parked the truck and turned off the engine before checking his watch. It was almost 6.00. He hoped he wasn’t too late.

He got out of the car and glanced towards the house. Several rooms were illuminated on the first floor, mainly the kitchen and the lounge, he knew it, because that was where Lucy spent most of her time in the house. He ignored the front door and passed the kitchen window, the sound of his footsteps swallowed by the thick snow on the ground. He walked around the house to the back door, because he knew Lucy had been cleaning and he did not want to mess the hall with his wet boots. Thirty-two years of habits in this house were hard to break.

He opened the kitchen door and walked in, after carefully tapping his boots onto the side of the steps to get rid of the snow stuck in his soles. A gust of hot and scented air blew in his face when he pushed the door open. Home made fresh vegetable soup, he thought with a grin. He closed the door behind him and turned around, immediately spotting Lucy’s silhouette in the room. In spite of the music playing from the CD player on top of the refrigerator, he knew she had heard him.

Standing in front of the stove, she was stirring the soup with a large wooden spoon. She was wearing a thick pair of denim overalls on top of a tight burgundy turtleneck sweater, and only had a pair of brown Birkenstocks sandals on her feet, that she was wearing with a thick pair of socks. She usually hung around in the house in them, leaving her heavy snow boots in the kitchen to dry in the winter. In summer she was bare foot most of the time.

Lucy Collins was a middle height 30-year-old young woman, with dark shoulder length hair and round features that did not take anything out of her good looks. Energetically stirring something in a small saucepan, leaning over the stove, she smiled a crooked smile but did not turn to greet the newcomer. "I see someone was afraid not to get his cheese soufflé," she said quietly.

Gabriel was taking off his boots according to the winter ritual and looked up towards his housekeeper. He spent a few seconds looking at the way the stirring made her hips move slightly, until she turned her head to him and lifted her eyebrows, her dark eyes staring in wonder.

He smiled, taking off his second boot. "I’ve decided to be a good boy and thankful for the food I get," he said, straightening up. He put down the package he had picked up at the post office and started to take his coat off. "Besides, I wanted to get back here before I got stuck on the road. It’s snowing even harder…. Can’t see a damn thing out there."

Lucy lifted her head up and peeked through the window at the falling snow. "How bad is it? Will I be able to get back home?"

"You should leave now… or spend the night," Gabriel answered.

She turned back to him. "What do you think?" she asked, frowning.

He shrugged then gave her a sheepish look. "Which option gives me to eat cheese soufflé tonight?"

She laughed and watched him retreat in the hallway where he hung his coat. From the lounge on the other side, he could hear the television that Lucy only turned on and off once a day. "Do I have time for a shower?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Huh… yeaaah," Lucy answered, speaking loudly to cover the music and the TV sound. "I’m not quite done here."

"Huh huh," Gabriel acknowledged, popping his head back into the kitchen. "Any phone calls?"

Lucy dipped her finger into the saucepan and brought it to her mouth. "Yes," she said, reaching for the salt and pepper grinder. "Julia called earlier."

He grinned, leaning on the doorframe, and crossed his arms on his large chest. "I see…" he drawled. "Is that why I got off so easily with my relative tardiness tonight?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

She looked back to her saucepan and mumbled something unintelligible.

"What’s that?" Gabriel asked, leaning forward. When Lucy did not answer, he laughed, shaking his head slowly. "I don’t know what my mother’s thinking… calling me in the middle of the afternoon… doesn’t she know I work all day?" Then he turned back to the hallway.

"She didn’t wanna talk to you!" Lucy called from the stove. "She wanted to talk to me!"

"Yeah, I figured that much!" Gabriel shouted back, still laughing, strolling back into the lounge. The room was large and warm (longer description here). Against the bigger outside wall, a large fire roamed into a large fireplace and, right in front of it, on the thick rug that covered the wooden flooring, lay a black dog that lifted slowly his head as Gabriel entered. Under his chin, something stirred but not enough to awake completely. Gabriel’s young cat Pillow was curled up in between the old dog’s paws, and because of her own dark gray fur, she was almost invisible. In a swift but somehow lazy motion, the cat turned her head upside down, as cats love to do, exposing her silky white throat.

"Well, Trip," Gabriel said looking down at Lucy’s dog. "Looks like you got her wrapped around your little… paw." He bent down and scratched the old dog’s head then proceeded to do the same favor to Miss Pillow who immediately started purring loudly. Gabriel straightened up and shook his head. "You guys are spending way too much time here… you’re gonna roast," he said, noticing how hot their fur was. "Try not to set the goddamn house on fire when you do, all right?"

He was of course ignored. He looked around and reached for the television remote control on the coffee table, near the spot where the animals were spread out. He pointed the remote at the TV screen and muted the sound, then grabbed the cordless digital phone sitting on the table near the couch, pressed one of the memory numbers, then brought the receiver to his ear and waited. He moved next to the fireplace, and lifted his right foot towards the flames, enjoying the heat on his cold toes. He was grateful his father always refused to have a gas chimney installed and insisted on keeping the old fashion system. The gas ramps just didn’t warm your feet that well.

No answer on the other end of the line. He put his feet back on the rug and sighed, counting the rings. He stepped back to the coffee table to grab the remote and flicked through the channels on the muted television. From the kitchen he could hear the sound of the music Lucy was listening to… I’ve got a plastic Jesus and a cordless telephone for every corner of my room, Got everybody but you telling me what to do, Jewel drawled, and he found himself humming along as he was waiting.

At the fifth ring, he heard the answering machine switch on, and sighed loudly. He stopped on the weather channel and waited for the message to end, then heard the tone that he disliked so much. "Hi," he said out loud in the speaker, sighing a little. "It’s me." He reached out and put the television remote control onto the fireplace mantelpiece. "I know it’s the fourth time I’m calling but I wish you’d answer, Emma… I… I just want to know if you’re okay, and since you’re not answering your phone, I can only suspect that you’re not…" He sighed again. "Emma, don’t be silly, pick up… Please?" But there was still no answer. "I know you’re back from Paris, because I’ve just seen your mother in town and she grilled me for about thirty minutes, thinking I’ve been speaking to you, and she told me she called you at work three times already and she was told you were in meetings…" A pause. "Meetings, Emma, is that the best you can do for your own mother?… well, I’m warning you, you’re gonna have to do better than that with me." He realized his tone has become and bit harsh and he sighed again. "Man, now I sound like your mother… Em, give me a call, okay?…Take care," he said in a much softer voice, then hung up.

From the corner of his eye, he saw movement and turned around. Lucy was standing on the doorway, drying her hand with a tea towel and looking a little guilty. She cleared her throat and avoided his eyes. "Sorry," she said quickly. "I thought you were calling your Mom. She said… she said she would call back later."

"No," he said. "I was trying to reach Emma."

She nodded. "Yeah, sure." She hesitated a second, then turned around and headed back to the kitchen.

Gabriel stood there, thinking. About the phone call he just made, about Lucy’s strange behavior. He looked down and watched the cat and the dog sprawled on the rug. Miss Pillow, still tucked in between old Trip’s paws, had rolled over on her back and was now exposing her white soft tummy for the world to see. Gabriel smiled and lifted his foot before tickling the cat’s stomach with his toes. Miss Pillow purred even louder.

He stopped scratching her and looked up to the mantelpiece. There was a nice silver frame there with a picture that had been taken the winter before, in Key West, where Dr. Julia Paradise, Gabriel’s mother, had bought a house shortly after her husband died of a heart attack, three years earlier. The house was on the sea front, and a wooden deck led from the back door to a small marina and a small beach. The house was simple but nice and friendly. Gabriel had loved it at once. He had gone the previous year on a 10 day visit with Emma and they had just spent their time swimming, snorkeling and fishing, waiting for lunch, dinner and the evening drinks. A friend of Julia Paradise’s, Andy Baits, who had taken them fishing and dolphin watching on his boat, had taken the picture. Gabriel was sitting on the few wooden steps leading to the front porch of the house, only dressed in a pair of old denim short. His chest and his feet were bare, his arm loosely crossed on his knees. The weather had been really warm – actually hot when you were coming from New England in February – and his skin had taken a nice tan that suited him. His hair was a little longer than he usually wore it and his mother, standing right behind him on the picture, was passing her hand in his short locks, with a look of utter pride on her face.

She was a beautiful woman in her mid-fifties, with short dark hair, regular soft feature and her son’s caramel eyes. On the picture, she was wearing a pair of short overalls on a white man’s cotton shirt whose sleeves she had rolled up and that looked even brighter in the sunshine on her tanned skin. Six months after her husband unexpected death, she quit her practice and packed her suitcase and moved South. Gabriel had never questioned her decision. He knew too much of her pain and her need to leave behind the house she had been so happy in, the house Peter Paradise loved to paint every other summer, whose garden was always the most beautiful in town. The house he had collapsed in, one morning, after coming back from the garden where he had picked up a beautiful red rose to go along the coffee he had just made for her, while she was still in bed. The house only Lucy would take real good care of, these days.

A few paces behind Gabriel and his mother, in the background, stood Emma, wearing a pair of sunglasses and a dark blue bathing suit, and a pair of large Moroccan pants called ‘sarouel’ that Julia had brought back for her from a trip a few months earlier. After trying them on in the heat of the Florida Keys, the young woman had nicknamed them "the AC pants". She had braided her hair behind her neck and stuck a huge straw hat – that Gabriel had nicknamed the "Sofia Loren Hat" – on her head to protect her pale skin from the sun.

Gabriel held out his hand and instinctively touched the cold surface of the picture. He remembered the freckles that covered Emma’s skin, especially her face and her shoulders, and that he could see even on the picture. He smiled, remembering how silly that hat was and how he had taken every opportunity to let Emma know. He remembered how hard he had laughed when Emma finally confessed that she didn’t know who Sofia Loren was. She had poked him hard in the ribs for that laugh.

He looked at the photo a few more instants, lost in his thoughts, thinking how much he liked that picture. Not only because it showed the two people he loved the most on this earth, but also because they all looked so damn good on it. Gabriel was not a vane person, and not one to look at his reflection in the mirror very often, but he thought that even he looked pretty good on that photo. He knew he looked a lot like his dad did on the old pictures taken in his late twenties, early thirties. And that made him feel better about the fact that someone was so desperately missing from this photo.

He sighed slightly and tore his gaze from the frame. He reached out and put back the cordless phone on the charger, then padded back to the kitchen where Lucy was washing the lettuce above the sink. He stood there for a moment, watching her, then stepped in and opened the refrigerator, peeking inside. "If you’re staying over, how about a glass of wine?" he asked, pulling a bottle of Californian white wine from the fridge. He put it on the table.

Lucy turned around slightly and glanced above her right shoulder. "Sure."

He opened a drawer hidden in the large wooden table and pulled out a corkscrew, then proceeded to open the bottle.

"What’s in the package?" Lucy asked, still busy with the lettuce.

Gabriel pulled the cork in one go and sniffed the wine instinctively. "Mmm?" He glanced to the package he had put on the table when he first came in. "Some videos. French films I ordered. I picked them up at the post office on my way here."

She nodded and turned off the cold water tap, then turned around and dried her hands in a tea towel. "Subtitles?" she asked, watching him pour the clear colored liquid into the wineglasses.

He looked up and smiled in apology. "Sorry… no."

She shrugged and stepped next to him. "See if I care…" she said, picking up a glass and taking a sip. "Silly French movies… no explosions…"

He looked at her and saw the mischief glow in her dark eyes, as she glanced at him, her nose stuck in the wineglass. He chuckled and lifted his glass before taking a sip.

"Not bad," he said, putting his glass down on the table. Then he got up again. "I’m gonna have a shower. Won’t be long." And he was off.

She had a couple more sips of wine, quietly sitting at the kitchen table, before going back to her dinner preparations.

Continued in Part 3.