So many things I still have to tell them, so many things I never had time to tell Angel before she died.

By the time I realized what I had to say, it was too late.

It's funny how that happens. The things you would have said if you'd known they would have been gone so soon. The important little things that would have been done if you knew you'd never see them again.

She was so important to all of us. She was what kept us going sometimes, that she could still be so cheerful in the face of all this, when the rest of us only had our little problems to gripe about.

She was what held us together for so long, and then all of a sudden, she was gone.

Then Roger moved to Santa Fe, and Collins got another job, and Maureen and Joanne kept to themselves, and Benny got even more distant, and Mimi went into rehab then quit and lived in the streets.

And me?

I was in the same place I'd always been, the observer, as my friends went on with their lives without me.

Then Benny really moved away, for good, which none of us really minded, and Roger and Collins came home, and Maureen and Joanne showed up at our place, carrying Mimi, and all of a sudden we were a family again.

But Mimi was dying.

Then Angel, our Angel, sent her back to us.

Even after death, it was still Angel who kept our family together.