“See now, there’s an angel.” Horace pointed to a cluster of lazily drifting clouds overhead.

We’d hiked into the hills that long ago summer morning, and found a grassy hilltop to stop and eat our lunch. Afterwards, we  lay on our backs to stare at the clouds. “Looks like a frog to me,” I laughed.

“You need new glasses.” He laughed and rolled to kiss the end of my nose. “That is for sure an angel watching over us.”

“Well, all right,” I said, “but what makes you so sure it’s watching over us? Maybe it doesn’t even see us.”

“Because that’s what angels do,” he’d answered, his voice taking on the distant tone that had become familiar in the few months we’d been seeing each other. “They watch over you.”

“What about arch angels?” I interjected with one of my ill-timed jokes. I never did have a great sense of timing.

“Oh, come on now,” he said. “You know what I mean.”