Beth was a tall woman, exotic and English-bred, but she had the style of a flower child. She smoked cigarettes, she joked around like a child would, and she loved to cook. She liked rhymes. I was six years old when she came to stay with me and my mom. She was here for a few weeks while her husband was in LA, looking for a house. That's what my mother said. She and Beth were best friends in high school.

Beth was prolific. She liked to sing and write and paint, and her voice moved like warm honey down your spine. It was soothing. Her hair was in an angled cut; auburn locks framed her long, freckled face. Her nose was straight and sunkissed, and her mouth was open and smiling, most of the time. She was so tall, so willowy. Just gorgeous.

During the day, Beth stood at the big window near my bedroom and painted and painted. She would wear old bright red Converse sneakers, blue jeans, and a striped blue and white man's shirt. That shirt reminded me of my dad. I saw him every weekend, since the divorce. During the day, Beth was everything that I wanted to be when I grew up.

The nights were different. After my mom put me to sleep every night, I heard the soft sounds of crying coming from Beth's guest room next door. Sometimes they were stifled, as if a snake was wrapped around her throat, as if she could barely breathe. Sometimes I heard her sob; she sounded like a hurt animal, small and vulnerable. Other nights I heard my mom there, too, whispering softly, making the soft "shhh" sound she would make whenever I cried. I could picture my mother with Beth, holding her hand, smoothing back her hair, and drying her tears. I didn't understand why she cried. I only knew that her sadness was real enough to make me, as a child, fall asleep in tears without wondering why.

Beth was Ophelia; she was Esperanza, Estella, and Cinderella. She was every great character, every goddess. She was a living Circe. She loved cars and drove a Volkswagen Beetle the color of the Pacific Ocean. Every day at noon, she drove to a café on Haight and Ashbury to buy a cup of specialty coffee that she said she couldn't live without. She let me play with her paints while she was gone, making me a little child-sized palette to use. I drew the sunshine. I drew Beth. But I didn't tell her my drawings were of her. She thought they were angels and she smiled. So did I.

One cloudy Tuesday, Beth came home shaking, clutching a piece of paper. She stared at my mother with doe eyes, wide open in shock. My mother ushered me next door to Clover's house, patting my back as Clover's mom led me to her room and gave me a glass of lemonade. Clover was my best friend. Beth used to draw us together, as two flowers; yellow and pink. Clover and Rose. That day I went to Clover's was the last I saw of Beth, trembling and grey, tear-streaked and afraid. I didn't understand, then.

I watched her through Clover's bedroom window as she went out of the house, slinging duffel bags and suitcases, sketchbooks and canvases, shoving them into her tiny car. In my confused child mind, I thought it was my fault that she was leaving, I suppose, although my mother assured me that it wasn't. A week later, my mother said she was going to see Beth. It was freezing that day, but full of sun. It reminded me of her. My mother came back three days later, and I never heard from Beth again.

It's been years since that day, and after so long, the day Beth left still seemed like yesterday. Last year, I asked my mother what had happened. It was another cold, sunny morning, and the memories were still fresh in my mind. Beth's husband hadn't been in Los Angeles. He wasn't looking for a new house. It was Beth's little game to make up stories to forget reality. Her husband had been in Vietnam. Her husband had been in a war. The day Beth came home with her eyes wide and shaking, she had picked up her mail and found a letter. The letter. The one no war wife wants to receive. Mom left on that freezing day for the funeral. After it was over, Beth broke down. My mother went down to her parents' house and to the hospital often to see her while I was in school, but there was nothing. Beth was gone. She still paints though, my mother commented. Only now, darker images and fallen angels overshadow her once-beautiful roses and clovers.

It took me a long time before I decided to visit Beth, and a week ago, I went to see her for the first time in fifteen years. She had a tiny apartment in the hills, and her paintings filled the rooms. I brought her something, a yellowing piece of watercolor paper holding an image I had painted as a child, one of the "angels" that she inspired in me. We talked for a long time that day, and I finally had the chance to tell her that always, she had been my own angel. She placed my painting in a frame and hung it on the wall next to her own works.

Yesterday, I drove back to bring her some of the coffee she used to love when she stayed with us. She had started a new painting, a self-portrait of her youth, but with her mature face. It was haunting, but it filled me with happiness. Beyond the hills, through the window, sat a sharp, shining sun. Beth smiled at me shyly, almost. Then she began to sing...one of the old songs. I just closed my eyes and let her live again...