Although Roxy occasionally exchanged a quip with Sonny, she was quiet for the most part, hardly speaking to Nick at all. Her silence added another level of tension to the already charged atmosphere, and Nick could clearly see that she was alienated not just from him but from Brooke as well. Near lunchtime, when Brooke had gone to retrieve something from Nick’s office and Sonny was out running an errand, Nick found himself alone with Roxy.
“You’re doing great,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the drawing she’d just finished tracing. “I’m glad you decided to help us out.”
“Thanks.”
Undaunted by the monosyllable, Nick pulled up a stool and sat down next to her. “Are you interested in art too?” he asked.
Roxy’s face turned pink, but she didn’t look at him. “No. The art teachers at school now aren’t nearly as interesting as they were when Brooke was there.”
Nick accepted the verbal dart with a lift of his brows. “Ouch.”
Still not looking at him and clearly not amused by his response, Roxy continued to work.
Nick heard footsteps approaching. He studied Roxy for a moment longer, searching for a clue to unlock her bitter resentment. But she was too tightly barricaded.
Brooke came back into the room, carrying a stack of fresh paper. “It’s getting late,” she said, putting the paper on the table and surveying both their faces for a hint as to what had transpired while she was gone. “I think I’ll take Roxy to lunch. We don’t want her to starve to death on her first day here.”
Roxy pretended to be too engrossed in her work to eat. “That’s okay,” she mumbled.
“I want to,” Brooke said, feigning brightness, despite the clouds hanging over the room. She turned back to Nick. “Can you do without us for an hour?”
“I’ll manage,” he said. “You go ahead.”
Nick watched as Roxy reluctantly put up her tools and followed Brooke from the room.
Sonny seems to like you,” Brooke told Roxy as they sat in the popular little cafe, Back Street Deli, which drew people from miles around for its savory cheeseburgers. “What do you think?”
Roxy moved the uneaten potato chips around her plate with an idle finger. “I hope you don’t plan to try to push us together,” she said. “The last thing I need right now is another man in my life.”
The weary way she spoke, as if she were a forty-five-year-old divorcee, disturbed Brooke. Roxy was too young to be so bitter. “I don’t plan to do anything like that,” she said. “But you’ve got to admit he’s cute.”
“If you like his type,” Roxy said, indifferently. She pushed her half-eaten burger away and set down her wadded napkin.
Brooke cleared her throat and tried again to find a subject they could share. “So, do you like the work?”
Roxy nodded. “It beats filing at City Hall. All the hassles…”
“You could quit and work more hours for us,” Brooke said. “You said you were leaving town after you graduated, anyway. It isn’t like you’d be giving up anything long term.”
Roxy studied the wood grain on the table. “I can’t really count on your budget, can I?” she asked. “What happens if I quit my job, and then Abby Hemphill pulls the rug out from under you?”
Brooke didn’t have an argument for that. “Well, maybe you can think about it after the budget’s secure.”
Roxy nodded noncommittally.
Brooke broke a French fry in half and nibbled on it absently. “It hasn’t been so hard today, has it?” she went on. “Working with Nick, I mean?”
Roxy scanned the room idly, as if bored by the conversation. “It’s okay. There’s no law that says I have to like him.”
Brooke set her French fry down and knitted her brows together. “You don’t like him?”
“No,” Roxy said, bringing her jaded gold eyes back to her sister.
“Well,” Brooke said. “I guess that’s your right.” She laced her hands together on the table, wondering what had happened when she left Nick and Roxy alone today. Had Roxy sniped at Nick when she’d left the room? Had Nick made Roxy angry? A heaviness settled over her at the idea that her two favorite people might have the capacity to hurt each other.
She watched her sister, desperate to find the words that could break the ice between them. Last night she had almost felt close to Roxy. They had met each other halfway, both of them trying to bridge the gap between them, and when Roxy had accepted the job Brooke offered, Brooke had embraced a hope that their relationship was healing. But now Roxy’s exposure to Nick seemed to have made her shut down again.
“Are you—?”
“Do you—?”
Their words came out simultaneously, and they each stopped, yielding to the other.
Feeling the renewed awkwardness between them, Brooke tried again. “Are you ready to go back?” she asked quietly.
Roxy stood up. “I was going to ask the same.”
Brooke left a tip on the table and followed her sister to the cash register near the door. She was busy digging through her bag for her credit card when she heard, “Hi, Rox. How’s it going?”
Brooke looked up to see the man she had seen with her sister in the dark office at City Hall last week, standing with a woman who looked to be at least five months pregnant.
Roxy’s face turned a startling shade of crimson as she shot a guilty look Brooke’s way. “I’m…I’m fine…”
Knowing that her thoughts flashed across her face like the messages of a neon sign, Brooke kept her jaw from going slack.
She glanced too conspicuously at the woman’s left hand and saw a wedding ring sparkling there. On his hand was a matching band, confirming that the two were married to each other.
“Bill, the hostess is waiting at our table,” the woman said, tugging on his sleeve.
A wave of dizziness swept over Brooke, and she gaped at them as they moved past her and Roxy. Her eyes clashed with Roxy’s in harsh reprobation. Incipient tears glistened in her sister’s eyes, and Brooke wondered if they were tears of shame or heartbreak.
Mechanically, she paid the bill with her credit card. The cashier could have charged her three hundred dollars for a cheeseburger, and she would have signed for it without a thought. All that mattered was that her little sister was involved with a married man. Roxy was straddling the edge of a scandal, one that would ruin her life just as Brooke’s had been ruined.
Neither said a word as they got into the car. Quietly, but on the verge of tears, Brooke pulled the car out of its parking space, waited for a break in traffic, then headed for the church a few miles away.
“It’s not what you think.” Roxy’s voice was weak.
“Oh?” Brooke asked, her voice restrained. “What do I think?”
One tear spilled over Roxy’s lashes and she lifted a shaky hand to wipe it away. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Brooke said, unable to stop herself. “I think you’re having an affair with a married man. And despite how that infuriates and upsets me, it does explain a few things. Like why you have to meet in dark offices at night, and why he has sudden ‘emergencies’ come up that force him to leave you stranded in sleazy bars.” She slammed to a stop at a red light, and sat seething until it changed color.
Roxy sat like a cold, rigid statue in the seat next to her, holding in whatever feelings she had.
“His wife is pregnant!” Brooke railed on, growing angrier the longer Roxy sat quiet. “Don’t you even care about that? Doesn’t that bother you at all?”
“Don’t you dare judge me!” Roxy said through her teeth, the pitch of her voice rising with every word. “You had a fling with your art teacher at my age! Maybe it runs in the family, Brooke. Maybe those promiscuous genes are hereditary!”
Brooke screeched into the parking lot, killed the engine, and sat smoldering. “You can’t blame this on me or your stupid genes,” she said. “This is something that you are doing, Roxy. I want you to think about that.”
“Think about it?” Roxy cried. “Do you think I’ve thought about anything else in the past few weeks?”
Brooke pressed her face into her hands. “You’re going to get hurt, Roxy,” she said. “It isn’t worth it.”
Roxy shook her head and opened her car door. “I can’t talk to you about this,” she said. “There is no way you would ever understand.”
And before Brooke could stop her, Roxy had bolted out of Brooke’s car and around the building, undoubtedly intending to walk home.
Nick was just leaving to get his own lunch when he found Brooke still sitting in her car, slumped over her steering wheel, weeping into the square of her arms. Opening her passenger door, he got in beside her. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Tell me.”
Brooke shook her head. “I…can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he whispered.
“I met Roxy’s boyfriend,” she said. “Her married boyfriend…and his pregnant wife.”
Nick moaned, sat back, and closed his eyes.
“What is she trying to do?” Brooke went on. “Follow in my footsteps?”
Nick looked up at her, struggling for the answers she so sorely needed. “Maybe it’s not what you think,” he ventured. “Maybe there’s not really anything going on. I’ve been watching her today, and she doesn’t seem like the home-wrecker type. She’s withdrawn, and…almost shy. Sonny keeps trying to flirt with her, and she honestly doesn’t seem to know how to respond to it. Not like someone who’s had all that much experience with men.”
“Oh, Nick,” Brooke cried. “She practically admitted it. Said we both had promiscuity in our genes!”
“Ah, so that’s it,” Nick said. “So it’s time to turn the tables and make you out to be the one who has to defend herself, huh? Sort of takes the focus off her, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not what she’s doing!” Brooke said. “She really sees me that way!”
“Then she doesn’t see you at all,” he returned.
She dug for a tissue in her purse, blew her nose, and wiped at her tears. “We’ve got to go back in there,” she whispered. “We have work to do.” She got out of the car, and Nick followed.
“Brooke, when are you going to realize that I was the teacher? It was me they blamed most. I was the villain.”
“Neither of us should have been the villain. We didn’t do anything.”
He let her get a few steps ahead of him, then finally said, “Maybe I did.”
She turned around, stricken by the confession. “What, Nick? What did you do wrong?”
“I let myself fall for a student.”
Brooke caught her breath, and turned to face him fully. It was then that she saw Roxy from the corner of her eye, standing motionless at the corner of the building.
And she knew that her sister had heard the confession, as well.
CHAPTER
BROOKE TRIED TO KEEP HER FRAYED emotions in check for the rest of the day, but they were too sharp and jagged, too fresh, too extreme. Pain and anger swirled through her head like a drug as she worked in a solitary corner of the room, but in its wake came the sweet, burning sting of Nick’s words. He had fallen for her when she was in high school. Somehow, in ways Brooke didn’t begin to understand, that made everything look different.
Roxy had ended up walking home, after all. When Brooke got home, she went straight to Roxy’s room. “Look, Roxy, I know you heard what Nick said today.” The speech she’d mentally worked on all day rolled off her tongue, her tone quiet, hesitant. “I want you to know that it’s the first I’ve heard of it too. But it doesn’t change anything. No matter how I felt about him or he felt about me, we didn’t do anything wrong back then.”
“And I haven’t done anything wrong, either,” Roxy whispered, staring dully out the window.
Brooke wet her lips and tried to keep her voice even, despite the anger reviving inside her. “You’ve gotten involved with a married man.”
She saw Roxy’s bottom lip quivering and knew she was about to cry again. “You don’t know anything about it.”
Brooke dropped wearily into a chair, counting out her breaths until she could speak without reproach. “Then tell me,” Brooke pleaded. “Don’t make me guess. Do you love him? Is that it?”
Roxy uttered a harsh, cold laugh that only made her seem more distraught. “Love has nothing to do with it.”
Brooke focused her astonished eyes on her sister, desperate to view the world as Roxy did, just long enough to understand. “Then what is it?”
“It’s power,” Roxy said, meeting Brooke’s eyes directly, injecting all her energy into every word she uttered. “That’s what it’s all about. And if you can feel better about what happened to you in high school by believing that Nick Marcello was in love with you, fine. But the plain simple truth is that he had power over you, and he used it. That’s what men do.”
Brooke gaped at her sister, fresh, futile tears in her eyes. “How did you get so bitter?” she asked on an incredulous whisper. “Where did you get such a distorted view of things?”
“From watching my big sister,” Roxy said simply. Then, leaving Brooke to deal with that pronouncement alone, Roxy went into the bathroom.
Paralyzed, Brooke sat in Roxy’s room for a moment, staring at the air. Her parents were in the kitchen, no doubt, brimming with a million questions about Roxy’s first day at St. Mary’s, full of a million unspoken reservations about both of their daughters working with Nick. Brooke couldn’t face that tonight, not when Roxy’s words had scraped deeper into already bleeding wounds.
Brooke slipped out the back door and got into her car, not certain where she would go. After a while, she found herself cutting back through town, toward St. Mary’s, the only place she was sure she could be alone.
Since the side door could only be unlocked with Nick’s key, she parked on the street and went to the front door to use her own. The door opened and closed with an echoing thud, and she smelled the familiar scent of sawdust and paint, of dust and mortar.
Brooke made her way to the middle of the large, dark room and sat on a drop cloth crumpled there, crossing her legs and peering up at the boarded places where her windows would go when they were finished. Would she and Nick really be able to impart truth in colored windows?
But truth was such an abstract term, she thought miserably, rubbing her eyes. Roxy’s truth was that there was no such thing as love—only power. But love was what gave one power. And that was Brooke’s own truth.
She looked up at the front of the building, where the pulpit had once been. Is there another truth, God? Is there truth in those windows we’re doing? Does it make any difference?
Her heart swelled within her, as if trying to give an answer. But still the questions came.
“I don’t know if I believe in you,” she said out loud as tears ran down her cheeks. “I don’t know if you’re really even there. But if you are, I could sure use some peace. You must be big enough to help me with some of these problems, God. If you’re real, then surely you’re powerful enough for that.”
The front door opened, and she jumped. Swinging around, she saw Nick standing in the doorway, enshrouded in shadows. “Brooke?” His voice was tender.
“Nick. You scared me.”
“I decided to come back and get some more work done. I saw your car.” He let the door close behind him. “Are you okay?”
Brooke looked down at the drop cloth beneath her. “I had another round with Roxy,” she said. “I just needed to think.”
Nick went to the wall and turned on one dim light near Brooke. She found herself in a soft yellow circle, surrounded by darkness. Slowly, he stooped down in front of her. “So, you’re not okay.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m just a little…depressed…about my sister, and my parents, and your family, and Abby Hemphill…” She looked up at him. “Roxy heard what you said today…”
“I know she did. I’m sorry. But it was true, Brooke.”
Her heart swelled and shifted as it had when he’d said it earlier. “And I had a fierce crush on you,” she whispered tragically. “When do we stop paying for that?”
Nick sat down on the floor next to her and draped his wrists over his knees. Slowly, he drew in a deep breath. “I was twenty-four years old. You were eighteen. I never made one inappropriate move toward you.”
“If I had only known,” she whispered. “I thought you would never forgive me for making you lose your job.”
“Forgive you?” he repeated. “Brooke, there was nothing to forgive. Getting fired from that nice, safe teaching job was probably the best thing that could have happened to me, because it forced me to use my talents. If I were still teaching, I may have never taken that plunge.”
She looked at him, marveling at his peace. “How do you do it, Nick? How do you find peace in terrible things? How do you make something good out of something bad?”
“Because I believe that everything that happens is for a reason. I believe that God is running this show. I believe that no matter what happens, He’s going to make it work for good.” His eyes locked with hers. “You could have that kind of peace, Brooke.”
She shook her head. “If I have to get it from God, I don’t think I can. I don’t know God like you do.”
“But He knows you.”
She looked at him, struck by the idea that the Creator of the Universe knew or cared about her. She was so small. And if God was really there, He would have to be so big.
“How do you know that He even gives me a thought?” she asked.
“It’s in the best-known Bible verse. ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son.’“
“That didn’t have anything to do with me,” she said.
“Brooke, it had everything to do with you.”
She looked down and remembered the prayer she had prayed just before Nick came in. She had asked for peace. Now Nick was trying to give it to her.
Was this an answer from God, or just a coincidence? After all, she had been the one to bring up the idea of peace to begin with.
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