By the time they called it a day, the construction crews had left, and all of the women of the Historical Society were safely at home, no doubt lighting up half the telephone lines in Hayden. Still, Brooke felt a sense of accomplishment, a tingling pride that they were on the verge of creating something wonderful.
But when she drove home, that sense of pride sank as she realized that she had yet to face her family. She was certain they’d heard—from someone, if not Roxy—how she had told off Mrs. Hemphill and defied all the town gossips by staying and working with Nick on the windows. And she was right. When she walked in, she saw them all sitting soberly in the living room, still as statues, staring at her as if their silence automatically demanded explanation. Her mother faced her with a hurt, how-could-you-do-this-to-me look, her father wore his stoic that’s-gratitude-for-you visage, and Roxy regarded her with a martyred why-don’t-you-just-shoot-me-and-put-me-out-of-my-misery expression.
Brooke ignored her emotional pain and told herself to make her explanation cut and dried, hoping to avoid the tears and yelling and scars that never quite healed. She remembered the time her grandmother had died, and her parents had gathered her and Roxy into the living room to break the solemn news. Would her family view this moment as seriously as a death in the family?
“I thought of going straight to a hotel, since I had my suitcase with me,” Brooke said, her voice raspy with emotion. “But I decided that I should at least come by and let you hear from my mouth that I’m staying—and I am going to be working with Nick on the windows. My work here shouldn’t affect any of you. I’ll find my own apartment tomorrow, and you won’t even have to know I’m in town.”
She swallowed and saw that none of them, neither her mother, nor her father, nor Roxy, was about to speak. Their expressions remained unchanged. Heartsick, she started slowly toward the door. Just before opening it, she turned back to them. Tears blurred her vision, and her mouth quivered. The words wobbled with emotion. “I’m truly sorry that my being here embarrasses all of you. But this town has taken enough from me. It owes me this chance to make my mark. And I’m going to do it.”
She opened the door and started to walk out.
“Are you going to move in with that man?” Her mother’s question stopped her before she’d crossed the threshold.
Brooke turned back to her mother, hardly believing what she’d heard. “No, I am not moving in with Nick. I told you, there is nothing going on between us.”
“Then why would you sacrifice all of your dignity, all of the integrity you’ve worked so hard to rebuild in the last seven years, if he doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“Because I’m an artist!” Brooke cried. “A good one. I’ve never had the opportunity to create anything of this magnitude!”
“Oh, you created something of this magnitude,” her mother said. “About seven years ago.”
Frustrated beyond control, Brooke pressed her forehead against the edge of the open door and wiped the tears roughly from her face. After a moment she looked at Roxy but found that her sister wasn’t glaring at her any longer. Instead she stared despondently at the floor, as if Brooke’s very presence exhausted her.
“Look, there’s really no point in this,” Brooke said as new tears rolled down her face. “I’ll never be able to make you believe me. You didn’t believe that nothing happened the first time, so why should you believe me now?”
“Because both of you are single and attractive,” her father blurted. “And you have a history.”
“So what?” she asked. “We’re two adults who have made a business decision. It isn’t hurting anyone. It isn’t betraying anyone.”
Her voice broke off, and she felt like a kid again, begging her daddy to let her stay out past ten o’clock. It was ludicrous, and she wasn’t going to play the game any longer.
“I’ll be at the Bluejay Inn,” she said. And then she closed the door and left without looking back.
It was almost eight when Brooke checked in at the Bluejay Inn, the only motel in town. The dirty building stood in a seedy section of town across from a bar where arrests were made nightly. In the neighborhood adjoining the motel, domestic squabbles provided night-time entertainment. At least, that had been the case seven years ago, and it didn’t look as if things had changed. The class structure in Hayden was rigid and unforgiving. “Once trapped, always trapped,” Brooke’s father used to say.
She checked in, then hurried to her room, which was hot and had a musty odor from age and traffic. She realized vaguely that she hadn’t eaten, but the motel had no room service and she didn’t want to go out.
She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Even the quiet of her room seemed hostile. It wasn’t fair. Nothing that had happened concerning Nick was fair. She was tired of being alone, tired of expecting the worst of people and being right.
The most intense loneliness she had ever experienced coiled in her heart, and she longed for a friend. But Nick was the only friend she had in town.
She sat up on the bed, wiped her eyes, and reached for the telephone book. She found his number and stared at it. She needed to tell him how to reach her. She didn’t want him to think she had run again.
With a trembling hand, she picked up the phone and punched out his number.
Nick had just finished eating when the phone began to ring. He picked it up mid-ring.
“Hello?”
“Nick?” Brooke’s voice sounded hollow.
Nick changed ears and propped one foot on the edge of his bed. “Brooke? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, her tone a little too bright. “I just thought you should know, in case you had to reach me, that I’ve checked into the Bluejay Inn for the night. I’ll look for an apartment, but…”
Her voice trailed off, and Nick planted his elbow on his knee and leaned forward. “Why? I thought you were staying with your parents. Did—?” He took a deep breath and raked his hand through his hair. “Aw, no. Did you have a fight with them about working with me?”
He heard her sniff and knew she’d been crying.
“I just…felt it was better for all of us if I didn’t stay at home.”
Nick stood. “What room are you in?” he asked. “I’m coming over.”
“No, you can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“Think about it,” she said.
He could sense the pain in her ragged breath, and he braced a hand on his windowsill and gazed out at the moonlight glittering on the canal. Instead, he saw her face, twisted in pain and distress, her soft cheeks shining with tears.
“Remember that time you got a C on your English paper?” he asked. “Remember how upset you were when you came to my class…the overachiever who hadn’t achieved? I was a good listener then, wasn’t I?”
Brooke was quiet, but he knew that she remembered the way he had set her down in the art room that day he’d caught her crying, pushed her hair back from her damp cheek, and insisted that she tell him what was bothering her. “Yes, you were,” she whispered. “And you fixed everything. You talked to Mrs. Deere and got me another chance to do the paper.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “That’s me. The fixer.”
“I’ve always wondered what you said to her.”
Nick dropped back to his bed. “Oh, not much,” he said. “Just that you were an overachiever who saw anything less than an A as absolute failure and that I had really been working you hard in art because of your unique talent. I told her it was all my fault and that I’d let up a little.”
She laughed softly then. “Let up? You never let up on me. You demanded perfection.”
“And I got it,” he said.
Her silence sent a warm feeling rushing up inside him, untangling the confusion in his heart. He could tell she had stopped crying. “I just need a good night’s sleep,” she said finally. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
He hesitated. “Brooke, you’re not going to skip to
wn on me again, are you?”
“No,” she said wearily. “I’ll be there.”
The line went dead, and Nick held the phone clutched in his hand and wondered why the thought of her created such loneliness in his soul. He went to his dresser and picked up his Bible, opened it, and sat back down on the bed. But even as he read, his heart ached for the pain he’d heard in her voice. Was this how it worked? Did God point people to that special person with an ache in their heart that wouldn’t subside?
But God wouldn’t point him to her. She wasn’t a believer.
The memory of their words yesterday flashed like lightning through his mind. “You’ll never find peace as long as you keep running away,” he’d told her. But he had a feeling that Brooke didn’t consider herself a candidate for peace at all.
He tried to concentrate on the book in his hand, but their conversation kept playing through his mind: “We can show them all what we’re made of,” he’d said.
“What is that, exactly?” she’d asked. “I’m not sure what I’m made of. That’s part of the problem.”
There was life right here, in this book, that could give her peace, confidence, and identity. Somehow, he had to find a way to show her.
Brooke leaned over the hotel’s bathroom sink and washed her face, then looked in the mirror and saw a pale rendition of herself. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her hair fell around her face. She really should do something with it.
She heard a knock on the door and went to the window to peer out. Her mother stood at the door in the blue-white overhead light, and she saw her father waiting a few steps behind. Her heart tripped, and she felt the misery that Nick had so effectively calmed rising back to threaten her again. Swallowing, she opened the door.
Her mother looked almost as battle-fatigued as Brooke herself when she stepped inside. “We didn’t want you to stay in a motel tonight,” Alice Martin whispered, her lips trembling at the corners. “We love you, honey, and we want you to come home.”
Brooke sighed and stepped back from the door, letting her parents into the room. They came in, looked around awkwardly and continued to stand as she lowered herself to the bed. “It’s all right, Mom. I’m comfortable here.”
“You can be comfortable at home,” her father said, his gruff voice softened by his intention to make peace.
“No, not really,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no comfort in hostility and accusations. I’m not used to it. I’ve lived alone for a long time. I just think it’s best—”
“We won’t accuse you anymore,” her mother interrupted. “Will we, George?”
“No, we won’t,” her father agreed, setting his arm around his wife’s narrow shoulders. “We just want you with us. If we promise to keep our opinions to ourselves, will you come home?”
Brooke looked critically at the floor, as if studying the worn-out carpet that clashed with the bedspread. She wondered if they could all really share a home together again, without judging or condemning each other. After all this time, she doubted it. “I don’t know.”
Her mother dropped into a chair and leaned toward her with her plea. “Do it for Roxy,” her mother said, and Brooke looked up. “She needs you, Brooke. I’m worried about her. She’s not happy, and I’m afraid we’re losing her too. Maybe having you there will help her some.”
Brooke stood up and went to the window, peered out over the dark parking lot lit only with two blaring lights. From her window she could see the neon sign of the After Hours Bar flashing its tacky glory. Tonight the parking lot was full of cars. “I don’t see how I could help,” she said, turning back to her parents. “She barely tolerates me.”
“It isn’t just you,” her mother said. “She’s quiet like that with everybody. She just needs to get to know you again. It would do her good.”
Brooke tried to see them without reproach, without the pain that fogged her vision. Too much time had passed to really go home and pick up where she’d left off. But as Nick had reminded her tonight, it was never too late for a second chance. And if Roxy really needed her…
“All right,” she whispered wearily. “I’ll come home.”
Her parents offered faint smiles, but there wasn’t a great deal of victory in their expressions. Too much had been lost between them. “I’ll have supper waiting,” her mother said, and kissed her on the cheek. “I know you haven’t eaten.”
Brooke nodded. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” she said. “I just have to get my things together and check out.”
“Okay,” her mother said awkwardly. She attempted a smile, and took a deep, uneven breath. “We’ll see you at home, then.”
“Yeah.”
Brooke watched her parents walk toward the door, stiff with the emotion they both held trapped inside. “Mom? Dad?” she said just before they stepped outside.
They turned back to her, and she saw the naked love in both their faces. Suddenly she forgave them for all the mistrust, and all the pain. “I’ll make you proud of me one of these days. I promise I will.”
Her parents only smiled sadly and left her alone.
CHAPTER
SHADOWS SLID LIKE DANCING VISIONS along the moonlit wall of Nick’s bedroom. It was almost midnight, but he felt about as sleepy as a hungry leopard. Wearily, he slung his feet to the ivory carpet and rubbed his eyes, then let his fingers slide down his face. His gaze drifted out the window, where a weeping willow blew and danced in the breeze with the same cadence as the shadows.
He got up and walked in darkness through the living room into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, letting its light spill out to illuminate the room. He propped his elbow on the door and peered inside, at the leftover pasta and a lone apple.
He stared vacantly at the food and thought of the sound of despair in Brooke’s voice tonight. He wondered if she was, indeed, all right. Of course she wasn’t, he decided, shutting the refrigerator and letting the darkness swallow him again. Because of him, there was a rift again between Brooke and her parents. He must have been crazy asking her to come back here.
He went to the telephone on the kitchen wall, braced his elbows on the counter, and closed his hand around the cool receiver. If he called her just to see how she was and woke her, would it be such a crime?
There were worse things he could do—like getting dressed and showing up at her door. He looked up the number for the Bluejay Inn and dialed it.
It rang four times before the desk clerk answered.
“Would you please connect me to Brooke Martin’s room?” he asked.
“Miss Martin checked out over two hours ago,” the man said.
“She did? Why? Didn’t she just check in?”
“All I know is what’s on my books,” the man said impatiently.
“Yes, thank you.” Nick hung up the phone, running a hand through his hair. His heartbeat accelerated to a threatening speed as thoughts spun wildly in his mind, all leading to the same conclusion. She’s gone, he thought. She’s left again.
Before he’d consciously decided to do so, Nick snatched up the phone again and dialed information to get her number in Columbia.
“Hello.” She answered on the first ring, and he caught his breath, though his heart fell miles to his feet. “Brooke, why did you—”
“This is Brooke Martin,” her voice continued. “I’m not home right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number I’ll get back to you.”
A recording! Nick realized with some relief. He heard the beep and hesitated a moment. “Uh…it’s Nick,” he said. “I called the motel and you’d checked out. I hope you haven’t gone home, Brooke. This is too important to give up on that easily. The windows, I mean. Don’t give up, Brooke. It’s worth whatever it takes to see it through. I really hope you haven’t gone home.”
Then, unable to think of anything else to say, he dropped the phone back into its cradle and rested his forehead on his palm.
He’d said too much. He hadn’t said enough.
Well, there was no way to know for sure if she’d gone home until tomorrow.
The trick, he thought, would be getting through the rest of the night.
His question answered itself the next morning when Nick looked up to see Brooke standing in his office doorway, shining like a ray of sunlight on a stormy day.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, falling back against his chair with relief. “You’re here.”
Brooke smiled. “Well, that’s some greeting.”
He came to his feet and leaned haggardly over his desk. He imagined that the dark circles he’d seen beneath his eyes in the mirror that morning were still there and that his anxieties were written in every gesture he made. “Where were you?” he asked, schooling his voice to sound calm. “I called you last night. They said you’d checked out.”
Brooke dropped her portfolio onto a chair. “My parents came by after I talked to you,” she said. “We sort of made peace, so I decided to go back.”
He stared at her for a moment longer, but as the simple truth registered, a slow grin spread across his face. “I thought you’d gone home to Columbia,” he said. “I thought you’d given up again.”
A poignant expression softened Brooke’s features, and she shook her head. “I wouldn’t abandon my partner without telling him.”
“Good,” he said finally. “We’d better get to work before the Hysterical Society gets here.”
Brooke’s smile died a little. “Too late. A few of them were driving up when I got here.”
“Terrific,” he said, coming around the desk.
He glanced out the door, shrugging. “Well, at least it can’t go on forever. They’re bound to run out of things to do soon.”
A few of the women walked by and tried to look as if they weren’t intentionally staring into the office as they passed.
“Morning, ladies,” Nick called in a pseudo-cheerful voice.
The women mumbled various greetings that their tones negated and walked on, looking for work to be done.
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