““A half-empty bottle of vodka sat on the bedside table, and his sketchbook was open on the king-size bed. Several sketches, only three of which looked finished, were scattered across the bedspread. Clearly he hadn’t been sleeping either. Swallowing, I picked up the nearest one. A dark-skinned, pale-haired child with an angel’s wings—too old to be a cherub, more like a small boy—stood in the middle of a dark forest, looking around in terror. His hand was outstretched, reaching for a shadow disappearing off the edge of the page, the unknown figure walking away from him, leaving him behind. I drew a shuddering breath and picked up the next one. In this one, that same angel—now a willowy adolescent, his thin, maturing body draped in the ubiquitous short toga with strapped sandals wound around his ankles—stood with his shoulders hunched in the midst of a crowd of jeering figures. He held an ornate harp cradled protectively against his body, trying to shield it from further harm. Its strings were sprung and its frame cracked and bent. In the last one, an even more mature version of the angel—now a young man—knelt on one knee in another clearing in the woods. He was bruised and bleeding, his toga torn and stained. He held the bloody, tattered remnants of one of his wings, trying futilely to piece it back together.””
