Angela Haines had a beautiful soul.

            The last time I saw her she stood next to a flowerbox outside a newspaper stand at Lilac Festival. Nylon banners strung from lampposts flapped in a May breeze. The smell of lilac and outdoor grills filled the morning air and happy music drifted down the street.

            I'd slipped out on my bicycle early to taste morning's dewy light dripping from poplar leaves and spruce needles. Red light danced across the river's surface as it ran below the Mission Bridge, where traffic curled away near a stand of ancient elms.

            Upon my return the festival drew me down Fourth Street, where I pushed my bicycle through the crowd that spilled up and down the street. Next to a torn up block where a flower shop and a Greek restaurant once stood, ploughed under to make way for a new crop of condos, I sipped water from my bottle and wiped sweat from my brow.

            A makeshift palisade of bodies encircled a juggler in the middle of the street. My eyes darted from face to face until they stopped on Angela about twenty feet away. Angela looked out of place, nervously pacing and clutching at the strap of a navy day pack. Her blond hair cascaded in waves down her back, a strand teasing her cheek, exactly as I remembered it on that October day when we said our goodbyes over cold coffee at the end of the Mission Bridge. I wondered what brought her down here alone. I wondered what might have happened had I not left her there-her tears raining down her cheeks to glance off the lip of her coffee cup. For a second I thought she recognized me, and I raised my hand, until I saw a man with two young children in tow pass me by.

            "Mommy!" squealed a small blond boy of about five, a balloon balled up in his fist. He ran toward her. She swept him up in her arms, pulling him close to her chest and kissing the top of his head. The man wore a polo shirt, golf shorts, and sandals, and seemed nice in a domestic sort of way; he probably never forgot her birthday or to get milk on the way home from work. When he shoved a coffee cup at her, she waved him off, but she said something to him. When they laughed, I felt a pang of jealousy I shoved down. As he lifted the pack from her shoulder, the gentle curl of a smile broke over her face. At their feet a young girl in a blue dress tugged on the man's pant leg, and looking up, she pointed just as the juggler threw flaming torches high into the air. The crowd whooped and applauded. As the spinning torches arced against the sky-red, blue-I pondered all that I'd lost or perhaps never had.

            Angela didn't recognize me that day, but then again, she was probably no longer Angela Haines either. Twenty feet and twenty years had cut a river between us that I could find no way to ford. I'd crossed that bridge years ago, never once looking back.

            I envied Angela's life, the one I wasn't a part of. I knew I didn't deserve to be that man with those beautiful children. She'd earned it for all those years she suffered waiting for me to say, "I do", when I didn't.

            As they shuffled off down the street, I smiled and wished her all the luck in the world. It was easier to let go of that part of my life this time around. Of course, this time she hadn't told me to fuck off either. Twenty years ago she'd wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, her blue eyes wet, and told me if it didn't mean anything and it was over to just go. Like a coward I turned without saying another word and walked away, knowing that if I'd stayed I would've never had the courage again. I wasn't ready then. I would've destroyed her. This time it was me watching as she walked away.

            We all make choices.

***

            Six months later I slumped in a padded chair at a café beside a stone fireplace, trying to warm cold fingers against my coffee cup. A November chill settled over the city, and cold rain put a slick sheen on the black roads where commuters queued at red lights. Six weeks of long days huddled over my laptop had ground down the crease of my lips so I went about the abbreviated daylight hours with a perpetual scowl. I hadn't meant to be a grump, but work had reached a frenzied pace that I couldn't keep up with. In those early hours when words blurred on the page and pink dawn splashed the windows of office towers, I circled the letters of Angela's name in my factums like I was correcting typos, finding evidence of her existence in Justice Sopinka's well-reasoned decisions. As I tossed my paperwork aside and stared out the window, the thought of Angela's laughter pushed a smile on my face.

            If I lived to be a hundred I don't think I'll ever meet a kinder, gentler soul than Angela. Her eyes sparkled when she laughed. I remembered her smiling at kids in the park, chatting with expectant mothers, and turning, she'd grin back to me. In the company of pregnant women and young mothers, they laughed and nodded, conspiratorially, before she took off her sandals and slipped into the calm, shallow river near a rocky beach. I watched her gentle hips sway as she waded through ankle deep water, scaring off the ducks that stood in her path.

            "Come on in, Paul!" she said, holding the hem of her dress up and kicking water at me. "The water's fine." Sunlight reflecting off the water danced in the ruffles of her dress.

            "No, I think I'm fine right over here," I said, taking a seat on the cool green grass where a natural bench was carved along the river's edge.

            "Coward!" she taunted.

            "Hardly."

            "See," she said, pointing at the ducks as they scurried away, "even the ducks are laughing."

            She ran up to me and tossed her head across my lap, smiling up at me. Her face shone. I lifted my sunglasses, brushed her hair from her face, and kissed her on the forehead.

            That evening we sat cross-legged in the middle of our floor, sipping red wine and listening to her Billy Joel record on my stereo. Sunlight cast bars of shadow on the wall behind us, creeping across a framed print of Van Gogh's "Starry, Starry Night". I serenaded her with my rendition of "Rubber Ducky," which always made her laugh, and we made love to the throaty rise and fall of traffic rumbling outside our bedroom window. Our sweaty bodies stuck together, form fitted, locked as one, as we lay snuggled tight with our hands interlocked just below her breasts. My breath ruffled gold strands of her hair near her ear like piano wires, and she pulled me tighter into her back and sighed.

            It was then that I noticed the crack in the wall next to the window sill that would eventually breach the wall of our apartment. Barely a hairline running from the sill to the floor, the crack grew deeper and wider as the months passed. By the following summer ants began crawling through the crack where a breeze blew cold every night. Angela curled herself in the cocoon of the sheets. I lay naked and shivering, staring up at the full moon that pored down like a spotlight in the middle of our bed.

            We were fighting.

            If she hadn't sold herself short our lives might've been different. I loved her, but I could never respect the way she floated through life like driftwood tossed on the shore, without ambition or direction. I needed to be inspired. Selfish bastard that I was-am-I wanted more than she could give me. While our relationship went critical and limped along for months, I seethed in fetid pools formed from my own unhappiness, and I selfishly pulled her in. I would've drowned her, chilled her soul, and erased her smile for good.

While I sipped on scalding coffee and opened the newspaper, I saw Angela's smile splashed across the page opposite the weather section, the same grey as the sky. I read every word of her obituary twice:

LARSEN, Angela Marie Lynne-passed away after a sudden illness on November 5 at Foothills General Hospital at the age of 41. Beloved wife of Glenn Larsen and mother to Brett, Kyla and Dawson, daughter of Gerald and Jennifer Haines, and sister to James and his wife, Susan, to Gwen and her husband, Samuel, and to her little brother, Peter, and their families, she will be missed and always fondly remembered. A memorial service will be held on Thursday at 2 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations in Angela's memory can be made to the Cancer Society.

            When I walked through the front door at the end of the day Sarah was sitting on the couch with her feet propped up on the coffee table watching a cooking show on the television. In that instinctive way of wise women Sarah knew something was wrong the moment I sat down beside her. She sat up, brushed her chestnut hair to the side, and peered into my soul with her green eyes. After ten years of marriage there was nothing I couldn't tell Sarah. I'd never talked about Angela with her before, not in a real way. I told her about Angela, and as I unravelled feelings I thought I'd shed long ago, she pulled me close and ran her fingers along the back of my head.

            "Are you going to the funeral?" she said, trying her best to be supportive.

            "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it."

            "You'll never forgive yourself if you don't, Paul."

            That night we made love between the folds of white linen sheets, the comforter forming a blue mound of sadness at the end of the bed. I knew Sarah's green eyes and the freckle on her stomach intimately, but imagined Angela's soft blues and the perfume of her body pressed up against my nose. Sarah looked into my eyes, and I could tell she knew my mind; for indulging me this once I loved her all the more.

            After our love making, Sarah leaned over on her side and ran her index finger along my sternum, feeling out the place where my heart lay. "Go," she whispered, then she rolled over on her back and closed her eyes.

***