The evening was quiet; they shared the soup and the cheese soufflé Lucy had cooked, and the salad. She apologized for not having made desert. "Tch… not even a desert," teased Gabriel, as he checked in the freezer for ice cream. He found some. Lucy never forgot to buy ice cream.

They had dinner in the kitchen, as they always did when Lucy shared his meals – which was most of the time these days – then they hung out in the lounge, watched a bit of television and spent another 30 minutes on the phone with Julia, Lucy doing most of the talking.

"Do you mind if I put on one of these films I bought?" Gabriel asked a bit later, as Lucy was curled up at one end of the couch, reading a sci-fi novel.

She looked up from her book. "Hmm?" She obviously had not been paying much attention to the broadcast news on television.

Gabriel was lying on the rug, near the fireplace, just a foot away from the cat and dog who had merely been to the kitchen once during the whole evening for a short food break. He waved one of the tapes he bought. "Do you mind?" he asked again.

Lucy shrugged. "No, go ahead. I’m ok with my book, don’t worry about me."

Gabriel popped the videotape in the VCR under the television set and the movie started automatically. He had bought the previous year a very expensive multi-standard system that allowed him to play imported tapes. He was very proud of it. The local art house did not show a lot of French films and he had gotten the habit of ordering tapes from the Internet.

He fast-forwarded the previews then put down the remote and settled on the rug, stretching his long legs in front of him and leaning back on his hands. Out of curiosity, Lucy watched the first couple of minutes. "Black and white!" she said with incredulity as the film started. "You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?"

He chuckled. "It’s called La Haine. It’s not old, I swear."

She snorted. "What is it then? Haven’t found the color button in France yet?"

He shook his head and did not turn to her to answer. "Ah. Ah… don’t worry, Luce, I think they have a few explosions in it… just for you," he snickered.

"Up yours, Angel," she said, in a tone that was so like Emma’s that he glanced back at her, a little startled. But she already returned her attention to her book, ignoring him. The swearword did not bother him. He had known Lucy since they were kids and the fact that she had later become his employee had never changed their close relationship. She rarely called him Angel, though. And Emma would have no doubt added a raised finger to that statement.

The film was good but not easy to understand, the slang the actors used not familiar to Gabriel. He had picked up some expressions from his friends in France, but he soon wished the movie was subtitled. After about an hour of watching, he decided to call it a night. He grabbed the remote and pressed the stop button, and the television screen automatically displayed the regular TV program; a Star Trek rerun for that matter.

Noticing he hadn’t heard the sound of book pages being flipped for while, he turned around and saw that Lucy had fallen asleep on the couch, her book open and very still in her hands. Gabriel smiled and got up, which caught the immediate attention of cat and dog alike. In a second, they were both on their paws, in a more or less wobbly fashion, and headed towards the kitchen – Pillow leading the way and Trip dragging himself behind her. Gabriel sighed. He knew what that meant. He glanced to Lucy again, and stepped closer. He leaned over her, checking if she wasn’t faking it. He stood there a few seconds, studying her still face: her eyelashes did not flicker, her breath remained steady. Convinced, he straightened up and followed the pets.

Pillow the cat went to her business in a corner of the large kitchen that had been assigned to her, but old Trip stopped in front of the back door and waited. Gabriel stepped into the room and sighed. "Great," he mumbled, peeking at the window. It was still snowing outside.

He sighed again and grabbed his snow boots he had left near the door. He sat down at the kitchen table and put them on. Trip turned his head toward Gabriel, waiting, with a short snort the young man chose to ignore. He got up again and quickly stepped into the hallway to grab his coat. He slipped it on, then opened the back door and Trip slipped in between his legs, waiting for him to push the storm screen.

A gust of strong, cool wind hit him in the face and made him gasp. The outside stairs were buried under the snow, and there was about a good foot on the ground. Trip stopped on the doorstep and looked up to his mistress’ friend with a high pitched whine. "I know, I know," Gabriel answered in an annoyed tone. "I’m coming, keep you pants on, boy." He switched the outside spotlight and stepped into the thick fluffy snow and climbed down the stairs, then crossed the short way to the garage back door. It was unlocked and he walked in, feeling the wall with his hand to find the power switch.

On the doorstep, keeping his paws out of the snow, old Trip watched the young man soon come out of the garage, holding a huge snow shovel in his hands. The flakes were still falling from the dark skies and it was cold. Trip whined again, impatiently, a little bit desperate. Gabriel glared at him and started digging.

It took him almost five minutes to clear a passage for the dog, to a spot where he could relief himself – he had to clear that spot too. Then he turned to Trip. "Come on now, Trip!" he called the dog. "It’s all shoveled out! Nothing more I can do apart from carrying you up there and pee for you." Trip stared at him, not moving. Gabriel frowned. "I am NOT carrying you!"

So Trip gave in and finally stepped hesitantly on the snow. Gabriel watched him dragged himself with difficulty to the said spot and stepped back to leave him to his business. "Man, Trip," he sighed, walking back to the garage door with the shovel. "For someone born in New England, you sure don’t like snow too much." He was right. Trip hated snow, and his age and the arthritis that plagued his limbs had made it very hard for him to move in it. Lucy had taken the habit of carrying him from the car to the house, but Gabriel thought a bit of exercise was not that bad for him. He suspected Trip to overdo it and take advantage of his mistress’ good heart.

Gabriel climbed up the back stairs steps again and went back into the house, leaving the light on for now, until Trip was done. Once inside, his gaze fell upon Miss Pillow, who greeted him with a dance of her own. "Mee," she whined, rubbing on his legs. She did this two or three times, as he was shutting the door behind him, then sat down on the floor tiles in front of him and looked up, a little annoyed. "Mee!"

He looked down and sighed. "Jeez! Mind if I take my shoes off?"

She did mind and, to avoid further aggravation, he opened the refrigerator, grabbed a carton of milk and poured the white liquid in her bowl, near the kitchen sink. The cat rushed to the dish even before he started filling it and he had to fight her off not to pour the milk over her head. Then he straightened up, petting her gently. His eyes fell on the litter tray. He sighed again. "This is non-stop fun," he mumbled.

He cleaned the tray, so that Lucy wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. "I swear," he groaned to Pillow as she lifted her head quickly from her bowl, purring very loudly, "If baby poop smells half as bad as this, I’m never having children." The cat went back to her milk.

He cleaned his hands afterwards, and soon heard Trip whining outside, at the door. Gabriel went to open the door and the dog came back inside, slowly. The young man waited patiently for him to come in, then he shut and locked the door for the night. He saw something move from the corner of his eye and turned to see Lucy standing on the doorstep, a sleepy expression on her face, rubbing her eyes.

He was still wearing his boots and his heavy coat, standing in the middle of the kitchen, a very contented cat and dog sitting on the floor next to him. He glared at Lucy. "I’m warning you… you’d better be toilet-trained, because I’m done for the night."

She couldn’t help a chuckle. "Ah. Ah," she said, sarcastically, then poked her tongue at him.

After a second, Pillow and Trip headed back to the lounge where the air was warmer. "Thanks… for Trip," Lucy said. Then she yawned. "I’m going to bed." And he soon heard her footsteps in the stairs.

"’Night, Luce," he said gently, before sitting down to take off his boots. A few instants later, he hung his coat back in the hallway and quickly checked the lounge. Lucy had made sure the glowing embers were safely tucked behind the fireguard, and she had switched the television and all the lights off in the room. Trip had regain his favorite spot in front of the fireplace, and Pillow chose to curl up on the couch. She was already grooming herself and getting ready for bed again.

Gabriel left the room, switched off the light in the hallway and headed for his room upstairs.

He was aroused in the dark by the phone ringing. Startled, his heart pounding in his chest, he launched his hand toward the night table to switch the lamp on, but no light came on. "Shit." The phone rang again. He felt around in search of the receiver, knocking a couple of unidentified objects on the table doing so, then finally grabbed the cordless receiver and flipped the switch on.

"Paradise," he said, a bit breathless. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he had been having a nightmare just before he was awakened. He sat up and somehow managed to bang his head violently against the headboard. "Fuck!" he yelled, instinctively reaching for his head in the dark.

"Well, hello to you too, Angel," purred the voice on the other end of the line.

"Emma?" he asked, widening his eyes, as if it would make him see better in the dark. "’s that you?... the power is out, can't see a damned thing!"

"Still snowing up there?" she asked, her speech a little slurred.

"Dunno. What time… Aaah!" He was interrupted and scared senseless, his mind still a little fuzzy, when he felt something jump onto the bed and land between his legs. "Jesus, Pillow…" he breathed a second later, recognizing the familiar purring of his cat.

"Three thirty… or so," Emma answered as if nothing had happened. "Hello, Pillow," she added with a slight giggle.

"Em," Gabriel sighed. "Are you drunk?"

"Yeeeah…pretty much. I went to that party with Toby in Soho… you would have hated it… the nicest bunch of pretentious smartasses you’ve ever seen… Anyway, there was this really cool Brazilian woman who made the most wicked drinks… vodka and kiwi and ice and sugar… and more vodka, I think. Killer drink. Forgot the name," she added pensively as the sound of shoes being thrown on the flooring came to Gabriel’s ears.

He sighed. "Emma… why didn’t you call?"

She snorted. "What do you think I’m doin’ now?" she shot back, annoyed. "Anyway, are you referring to the fifty messages you left on my machine, Angel?"

"Emma, don’t." He pushed back the covers, shivering in the cool air of the bedroom, and got up, only dressed in his boxers and tee shirt, ignoring the protest ‘Mee’ he got from Pillow. His eyes were getting used to the darkness, and he walked around the bed and to the window, the flooring squeaking under his weight. "What happened?" he asked more gently on the phone.

At the other end of the line, Emma snorted. "You mean after he told me he was a fruit?" she spat.

Gabriel closed his eyes and sighed. "Emma…" His voice was low, his tone almost a warning. But he recognized her anger for what it really was and his friend’s pain touched him deeply. "I’m sorry, Emma", he said, softly. He lifted his arm and pulled the window’s venetian blinds. Outside, the snow had stopped, but the whole landscape has disappeared under a thick white blanket of glowing snow that reflected the moonlight into the darkened bedroom.

She was still silent and he sat down into a large and comfortable chair near the window. On the bed, Pillow had stopped purring and was now staring at him, her head poking out of the thick comforter, wondering why her warming device had escape the bed and if she should join him on the chair. "Emma… you still there?" Gabriel asked after a few more seconds of silence.

He heard her sniff. "Yeah," she breathed.

"Are you ok?"

Silence. He counted to ten. Then her voice again, almost a whisper: "You knew?"

He sighed. "I… I had suspicions… Yes."

"Why didn’t you tell me?" she asked, a little more lively.

"Would you have believed me?" he answered reasonably.

There was another silence and then: "I gotta go. It’s late and I have a meeting tomorrow…"

"Em, wait, please! I want to know if you’re ok… why don’t you come over here for a few days… or I could drive down… or even better, we could go and visit Mom in the Keys, what do you think?"

"I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!"

He sighed heavily. "That wasn’t of my god damned business, Emma!"

She snorted again. "Right." He heard her sigh. "Gotta go. Talk to you later."

And she hung up before he could say another word. He switched off the phone and threw it onto the bed where it landed next to a worried Pillow. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, sighing. He shook his head, then got up and padded to the en-suite bathroom, passing his hand in his short dark locks.

Used to the darkness in the room and using the moonlight as a guide, he drank a glass of water from the sink, then turned around to find Miss Pillow between his legs, rubbing herself against his ankles. He picked her up in one hand and went back to bed, letting the cat curl up satisfyingly under his arm.

Gabriel did not really go back to sleep after that. He turned and tossed in his bed for the most part of the remaining night, deeply annoying Pillow in the process. About an hour after Emma’s call, he sat up in bed again and called the local Power Company to check on the power status. The storm had been pretty bad on the coastal area and the power would not be back before at least 8.00 a.m. That left him nothing to do apart from lying in bed and beat himself up over the conversation he just had with his best friend.

He wished she had been closer so that he could just show up at her apartment in the middle of the night and comfort her – although she was probably mad at him right now. But he suspected her pain and humiliation were greater than her anger at her Angel.

A little after five, and he knew the time because he took the time to read his watch next to the window, he decided to get up. The sun would soon come up and he had had just about enough of thinking of what he should have said and could have done if he had been in New York.

Pillow lifted her sleepy head from the bed and looked at him expectantly, blinking a bit, waiting to know if he was really getting up. He was. Which meant, in a cat’s brain, that it was food time.

Gabriel had been clearing branches and shoveling snow in the garden for the past two hours when Lucy woke up. She had spent the night in one of the front rooms, a guest bedroom Gabriel’s father had decorated in warm shades of orange and yellow a few weeks before he passed away. It was not a big room but she liked it and had always felt good and safe in it. This was the room she slept in when she stayed over, because of the snow, the rain, or too much booze.

She sat up in bed and passed her hand in her dark locks, looking around the room, still waking up. Trip was gone, and she noticed the door was wide open, which meant her dog probably pleaded for food with Gabriel, after having searched for warmth with her in the middle of the night.

She realized the rhythmic thumping noise that was coming from outside was probably what had woken her up in the first place. Frowning, she pushed the covers back and got up, wincing a bit when her bare feet brushed against the cool wooden floor. She had gone to bed the night before with a pair of flannel shorts and an oversized sweatshirt she had borrowed from Gabriel. She walked around the large bed and went to the window. She peered outside and saw the Angel’s tall frame near the path that led to the house, busy cutting large branches fallen from the tall trees at the edge of the garden. He had cleared a path to the trees and was working there, his two feet in the snow, only wearing a thick red fleece pullover and no hat. It was sunny outside, and the snow made everything even brighter.

Lucy shuddered and instinctively put her hand on the radiator underneath the window. It was cold. She walked back to the bed and took her watch from the night table. 7:15. But judging by the amount of work Gabriel had already accomplished, she assumed he had been up for a while. She had heard the phone rang last night and a brief commotion coming from the room next door, but had gone back to sleep right away. She could guess however who was calling in the middle of the night. And she doubted the news were good.

She shook her head and walked out of her room, taking a left in the hallway to the bathroom. She flicked the power switch on and was not really surprised when no light came out. The power was out, which means that there was a good chance hot water was out too. Sighing, she opened the closet door in the bathroom where she stored the clean towels and some bed sheets, and took the first towel on the pile. The tiles under her bare feet were freezing cold and she hopped to the shower mat in front of the bathtub and dragged it with her toward the sink.

She turned the hot tap on and waited a good ten seconds before sticking tentatively her finger under the spray. Cold. Very cold. She waited a few more seconds but the water did not get any warmer. The perspective of a cold shower when the house was freezing and the temperature outside probably below zero was not that appealing.

She was nevertheless brave enough to splash some cold water on her face, which made her gasp, and rub it energetically to try and warm herself up a little bit. She dried her face off with the towel, then grabbed the red toothbrush that rested together with a white one in a blue transparent glass on the sink.

A couple of minutes later, she padded back to her room. Discarding her sweatshirt, she slipped back on the turtleneck sweater she was wearing the day before, then removed her shorts, before quickly donning on her overalls, deciding she could wait a little for a shower. Maybe the power would be back by the time she finished cooking breakfast. She put back her socks and her shoes on, and headed downstairs, but not before slipping back Gabriel’s thick sweatshirt back on for extra warmth.

He had started to work a good sweat and he felt his sunglasses slip down a bit on his nose. Gabriel finished putting away some fallen branches he had chopped down for firewood into the wheelbarrow, and straightened up. He reached up and pushed back the shades on his nose with one gloved finger, breathing hard. He was hot now. He had been working in the garden for a while, first shoveling out the path from the house to the road and then clearing all the branches that had fallen during the night because of the wind and the snow. He had thought that working outside would clear his mind, but he had been wrong. He had no one to talk to out here, none of Danny’s stupid comments and even stupidest jokes to listen to, and all he could do while shoveling and chopping was to think. Mostly about Emma’s phone call last night, about what had happened in Paris, about his own responsibility in the whole mess.

By the time he heard Lucy call his name from the house, he had made a decision. He turned around, away from the sunlight that came from above the ocean. Lucy was standing on the front porch, wrapped up in her big coat, her two hands dug in the large pockets.

He picked up the wheelbarrow and pushed it towards the house where Lucy was waiting. The door behind her was slightly ajar and Pillow’s fluffy head soon appeared. She walked pass Lucy and stopped on the edge of the porch, right before the three steps that led to the garden. She sat down and licked a paw for a second or two then seemed to be waiting. Surely, a moment after, old Trip showed up as well and, after a brief hesitation, followed her on wobbly feet. He stopped next to the young cat and sat down. Satisfied, Pillow got up and tentatively reached down with her left paw toward the first step that was covered in a thick layer of snow. She touched the cold surface and she immediately pulled back, shaking her paw in a disgusted manner.

Gabriel had reached the porch. He put the wheelbarrow down and sighed.

"Good morning," Lucy said, a white steam coming out of her mouth.

He looked up to her. "Hey, Luce. Power still out?" he asked, stepping next to the stairs where he had left his shovel a bit earlier.

"Yep. You can thank your daddy for insisting on having a gas stove in the kitchen, Angel."

Gabriel smiled and picked up the shovel. He glanced back toward the sun and winked behind his sunglasses. "Thanks, daddy," he said before turning back towards Lucy. "Does that mean I’m having breakfast after all?" he asked, starting to clear the snow from the steps with the shovel.

"Could be…" drawled Lucy with a little grin.

He glanced at her, finishing the first step. "Bacon sandwich?" he asked, hopeful.

She shook her head. "Egg sandwich. There’s no bacon."

He shrugged, trying not to show his disappointment. "OK…" He was now clearing the second step and Miss Pillow was watching very closely.

"It’ll be ready in a minute. I also dug out the old Italian coffee maker… Did you call the Power Company?"

"Yeah, last night. They said it wouldn’t be back by eight… shouldn’t be long now."

"Hmm… I hope so," she said. "Or we’re gonna have to start eating a lot of ice cream. Not mentioning all the chicken in the freezer."

He straightened up, the stairs now cleared of the snow. "We could always stick it outside… it’s not like anything is gonna melt anytime soon, anyway."

She nodded and glanced down towards the pets. Miss Pillow had dropped down onto the first step that her beloved master has cleared for her. She was about to go on onto the garden when she turned around towards Trip and looked at him, as if waiting for him. Trip gazed back at her, then cocked his old dark furry head to one side and emitted a high pitched whine. Pillow was still staring, her tail up in a question mark shape.

"Trip," said Lucy in a low warning. "If you follow her, don’t expect me to go and get you when you’re stuck in a pile of snow…"

As if recognizing the feared word, Trip turned his head toward his mistress and gazed at her with round brown eyes. "Yeah, you heard me," the young woman said. "Now come back inside before you freeze to death, you dumb old thing." And she opened the door to show him the way. With a last glance towards the young cat, Trip got up and dragged himself back in the house. Pillow hopped down the stairs and walked away in the garden, following the path Gabriel had cleared earlier.

Lucy was about to follow her dog back inside, when Gabriel called her back. "Hey, Luce… would you mind staying over this weekend and keep an eye on the house for me?" he asked, putting the shovel on top of the wood in the wheelbarrow.

She shrugged. "Sure. Where are you going?"

He sighed and took off his glasses, wiping his brow with the back of his gloved hand. "I think I’m gonna drive down to New York," he said. "I’m going to call Dan and ask him to take care of things while I’m away. We might have a few jobs because of the storm… he can use his brother to give him a hand… I’ll take a shower as soon as the power is back and the water has heated up and then I’ll head down there."

Lucy nodded, putting the pieces together. "You’re going to see Emma?"

He sighed again. "Yeah… she’s not doing too good."

"We were right then?"

"Yeah – looks like it."

She nodded again, looking down. Emma and Lucy had never been really close, but she did feel a little sorry for her. At least she was trying hard to. "OK, no problem," she said after a while, looking up to Gabriel. "I’ll stick around. And if the power stays out, I’ll camp in the lounge in front of the fireplace."

Gabriel chuckled. "If you don’t mind fighting the rats for the best spot," he said, with a nod toward the door where Trip had disappeared.

Lucy smiled and shook her head. "All right. Get your butt back in, breakfast is getting cold. And put your hat on, your ears are about to fall off."

"I took it off because I was getting too hot," he protested, pulling a black woolen hat from his fleece pocket. "You see… Mom?"

She shrugged, and went back inside, mumbling something he did not quite catch but was convinced was not very nice.

Continued in Part 4.