Gray is a phantom color. It's neither black nor white, neither dark nor light. It's the color of between times, between night and day; between asleep and awake. Gray is a ghost color, but Gracia doesn't believe in ghosts.
Smoothing down Elysia's hair, Gracia holds her daughter close. After a moment she'll offer to take her back to her room, to turn on all the lights and make a search for the spook from the girl's nightmare. Elysia will hold tighter, will want to stay with mommy, but Gracia knows that there's no such thing as ghosts, and eventually the girl will take comfort in that gentle but firm belief.
Gracia wonders what kind of show Maes would have made of the monster hunt. He'd probably have had the girl squealing with giggles instead of sleeping, and then she'd have to go in there half an hour later and break up the fun. Or maybe he'd immediately throw back the covers for Elysia to climb in with them, even though she should be growing out of that soon. If Gracia protested, he'd have just given her that look that he knows she can't say no to—the one that his daughter was so quick to pick up.
Gracia often wonders what Maes would have done, what Elysia would have learned from him.
So the lights are turned on, the drawers opened and peered into, the closet thoroughly examined, and finally, the bed approached without fear. Gracia tucks her daughter in again, waits with her until she has drifted off into sleep again, and turns off the light before returning to her own bed.
It's sometime later, in the gray before dawn, that she finds herself in that gray state between dream and reality. She used to wake up like this, when Maes would leave the bed, to head quietly off to work so early in the morning. It was something she had never minded. So, like she always had done, she reaches a bare arm out to his side of the bed, into the pool of warmth that he's left.
Gracia doesn't believe in ghosts, but she does believe in angels.