“So…you don’t want to work with me? You want to get someone else?”
“No,” he said too quickly. “No, that’s not it. I want to work with you. But it needs to just be about work. About God.”
She stood there, stunned for a long moment, not knowing what to say. Finally, as if the silence was too stifling to endure, he grabbed the box he had brought in with him and opened it. Gently, he pulled out the sculpture, held it up to her.
She caught her breath in staggering relief. “You bought it back! You were the one who bought it! How?” she asked. “Where did the money come from?”
When he brought his eyes back to hers, all the anger was gone. “It came out of the offering I was going to give to the Lord. That’s when I started to realize how upside-down this whole thing is. Brooke, I sold my car to get the money for the windows, and then I used part of that to buy back the sculpture. What’s wrong with this picture?”
“You sold your car?” Her words wobbled on a faint wisp of breath, and she dropped her hands to her sides. “Oh, Nick. Why?”
“For all the reasons we talked about when we agreed we’d do the windows for free,” he said wearily. “For the calling that I feel to do those windows. For the sacrifice I want to offer the Lord. But I ruined it.”
She took a step toward him, but he backed away. “Nick, you didn’t have to sell the car. We could have gotten the money some other way. We could have—”
“I wanted to do it,” he told her. “It was my choice. My offering.”
“And I wanted to sell the sculpture for the same reason. For the calling…and the sacrifice.”
His face twisted in pain as he tried to find the words. “Brooke, what I did was wrong. I shouldn’t have used what I had earmarked for God’s house to buy something that—in my eyes— symbolized our relationship. I got my eyes off God. I’ve repented of that, and He’s forgiven me. But He showed me the reality of our different values.”
“I value the sculpture!” she said, confused. “You think I don’t because I sold it, but I do as much as you valued your car.”
“I’m not talking about the sculpture, Brooke,” he said, turning his back to her. “I’m talking about our deepest beliefs. You said it yourself once. We don’t see things the same.”
She stared at him. “Nick, you should know that something happened tonight, when I was sitting here waiting for you. I prayed and told the Lord…”
He swung around at the words, meeting her eyes, but the heavy stone sculpture slipped out of his hands. He gasped as it fell to the ceramic tile floor with a bone-chilling crash.
Brooke cried out and fell to her knees, but it was too late. The fingers of the woman’s hand had broken off. “Oh, no,” she said, picking up the pieces. “Oh, no.”
He stood motionless, so stunned by his own careless failure that he couldn’t find his voice.
Brooke got to her feet, holding the broken sculpture in her hands like a wounded bird. There was no pleading left in her eyes, only a dull, exhausted glimmer of tears.
“Our relationship is your call, Nick,” she said. “But I’m still committed to the windows.”
Nick watched as Brooke cradled the broken sculpture in her hands and left Nick’s house to walk home.
CHAPTER
ABBY HEMPHILL STOOD IN HER Victorian gown at the front window of her living room, staring out through the vertical blinds and the wrought-iron webbing, to the houses up and down the street. Had they heard yet? Did they know that her son had sexually harassed a minor?
She turned from the window, hands shaking, and went to the sofa to fluff the pillows. Things could never be too neat. Never too ordered. If they were to come here— the police, the photographers—at least they would see that her house was immaculate, that her own life was without reproach, that she had tried to keep things sterile and secure.
Her mind drifted, and she sat down and stared at the portrait of her son on the wall amid those of her daughter before she had ruined her life. That morning, when his name hadn’t appeared in the newspaper, he’d considered himself off the hook. It hadn’t seemed to faze him that Brooke Martin and her sister had reason to press charges, spreading the news all over the front page. Hadn’t she hurt the girl and her family in that exact way more than once? Wasn’t this their perfect opportunity for revenge?
Abby stood up and drifted into the dining room and, with the hem of her gown, polished a smudge off the table. It left a dull spot. Maybe it was time to have it refinished.
Would the news come out in the paper tomorrow? She felt panic rising in her throat. Would that be the day the police snapped cuffs on her son and dragged him to jail in front of the entire town of Hayden? Would that be the day her life was ruined?
She went into the study, to the little drawer where she kept her private things, and sifted through the articles there that she had been particularly proud of. Her son’s valedictory speech. Her husband’s educator’s award. The newspaper article condemning Nick Marcello and Brooke Martin.
She unfolded the yellowed article and re-read the headlines as they had appeared seven years ago: “Teacher Fired for Rumored Affair with Student.”
Pretty cut and dried, Abby mused. Didn’t leave much room for doubt. But she knew now, as she had known then, that it wasn’t exactly the truth. And she had done nothing to correct it.
She found herself back at the window in the living room. Would the papers have a field day with her son? Would they too take the story a little further for drama’s sake and allege that her son was guilty of statutory rape?
The back of her neck prickled with a thin sheen of perspiration, and she released the top button of her gown and tried to take a deep breath. This must be how Brooke Martin felt the night before her story broke. The feeling of being trapped in a steel box with no air and no escape. It was a miserable feeling. Worse than torture.
Vaguely, Abby wondered if she could stop it all by forcing her son to apologize to Roxy…she could even go so far as apologizing to Brooke herself. Maybe she could even reconsider the budget for the church. Maybe she could find a way to bring the matter to a vote again.
Feeling a tiny bit better now that she stood at the brink of decision, Abby went to the phone and dialed her son’s house. His wife answered, her kind, gentle voice oblivious to the turmoil in her marriage, oblivious to the humiliation she might soon suffer. But Bill had been adamant about not warning her…for the sake of the baby, he’d said. Instead, “for the sake of the baby,” he was going to wait and let his wife discover the truth in the paper. The thought sent a jolt of anger through Abby. Bill still didn’t see that there were wages for his sins, consequences for his mistakes that he could be made to pay. He still didn’t believe the Martin girls would expose him.
“Carol, can I speak to Bill, please?” Abby said.
“He’s not here,” her daughter-in-law said. “He had to go back to the office to take care of some things.”
“The office?” Abby repeated. Instantly she knew that Bill had lied, for city employees rarely had to work at night. Where could he have gone? What could he be up to now?
“Yes,” Carol said. “I’ll get him to call you when he gets back. Is everything all right?”
“Yes, fine,” she said. “Do get him to call me.”
Tears came to Abby’s eyes as she turned back to the window and stared out between the flat bars of the vertical blinds into the night again. The waste! Was it too late to change, or had it all been futile? All the years of doing the right thing, the appropriate thing. All the sacrifices of heart and soul to make things neat, to keep them organized. All the loneliness and hollow memories, in the name of propriety.
And now it had come down to a thoughtless son who in one fell swoop could wipe out all the years of work and care, and make her heart ache for that one mistake in her past, the one wrong choice, the other man she should have married. Maybe Bill would leave town before the gossip could get started. Sharon had already fled because of
impending scandal, and it had worked—they had been able to keep her pregnancy a secret. Now Abby had no idea where Sharon lived or how she earned a living—other than what Brooke had blurted out to her. But sacrifices had to be made.
She closed her eyes and cupped her hand over her mouth, trying to muffle the sobs of despair.
Gerald came in, wearing a smoking jacket and holding his pipe. “Did I hear you crying?” he asked.
She looked up at him and dabbed at her eyes. “I was just thinking about Bill. Worrying about it coming out in the paper. Do you think it will happen tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But if that paper prints a scandalous story about my son, so help me, I’ll use every resource I have to close them down. They must know that.”
“Do you think? Is it possible that it won’t come out?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “But then there’s word-of-mouth. And the possibility of arrest. Everybody has a price, even the sheriff. We’ll just have to pay it.”
He ambled to the window and looked out just as she had moments before, then turned his concerned face back to her. She started to cry harder, but he only shook his head. “Pull yourself together, Abby. For heaven’s sake, those tears won’t solve a thing. You should see yourself.”
Puffing on his pipe, he went back to his study.
CHAPTER
NICK STOOD FROZEN IN DISBELIEF. How could he have been so careless as to drop the thing he had loved so much? He replayed the scene in his mind, trying to understand: Brooke’s words had surprised him, he had swung around to face her, the statue had slipped…
And now it was destroyed. He leaned back against the counter, suddenly weak. He realized that he had never heard what she was going to say. Something about praying, asking the Lord something…
The phone rang, and he ignored it. It couldn’t be Brooke; she hadn’t had time to get home yet, and when she did, he’d be the last one she’d want to speak to. Before he could talk to anyone else, he had things to sort out.
But the phone continued to ring, and finally, out of frustration and mounting anger, he answered. “Yeah.”
“Nicky? Is that you?” His mother’s voice came across the line on a sigh of relief.
“Yes, Ma. It’s me.”
“We were worried!” she cried. “What’s the matter with you, disappearing like that without telling nobody? How were we to know that you weren’t lying in a ditch somewhere? Where were you?”
Nick rolled his eyes and wished he hadn’t answered the phone. “I was out of town,” he said. “I took the Duesenberg to a collector and sold it.” There. That ought to give her something to bash him with.
“You did what?” his mother shouted. “You sold the Duesy? Papa’s Duesy?”
Nick gripped the phone tightly and considered throwing it against the wall. “Ma, I really don’t want to talk about this right now. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Well, I should say so,” his mother lectured. “First running out on that sweet girl and now selling the car. Have you gone crazy in the head?”
Nick squinted and shook his head hard, struggling to make some sense of his mother’s words. “What sweet girl? Ma, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Brooke Martin, that’s who. She came over looking for you, and we had a nice little visit. She was crying for you. Now, I’d like for you to tell me what is taking you so long? Why haven’t you snapped her up by now? Why isn’t there a ring on her finger?”
Nick backed against the wall. This was one argument he’d never expected to come out of his mother’s mouth. He closed his eyes and tried to picture Brooke breaking down enough to go to his mother in tears. Hard to reconcile that image with the young girl who had run away without looking back. “I thought you didn’t approve of her, Ma,” he said in a weary, husky voice. “You told me, just the other day, that it was wrong, my relationship with her.”
“Well, maybe I was the one who was wrong,” his mother muttered in a quieter voice, as if she couldn’t let any other family member hear her admit that. “When a girl stands before me with tears in her eyes and defends my boy as the most honorable, gentle man she’s ever known, what else can I do but believe her? That girl is God’s pick for you, Nicky, you mark my word.”
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “You may be wrong about that, Ma.”
“Don’t you say that, Nicky,” his mother shouted, and he could almost see her wagging her finger at him. “You marry that girl and finish those windows. And I’ll tell everybody that my boy, the artist, and the sweet girl God chose for him, was the one who made them. Your grandpa woulda been proud. And he woulda liked that girl too.”
Nick smiled softly. “Thanks, Ma,” he whispered.
He hung up the phone and looked down again at the spot on the floor where he had broken the sculpture, and wondered what Brooke had been about to tell him.
Nick, something happened tonight, when I was sitting here waiting for you. I prayed and told the Lord…
She prayed and told the Lord what? He closed his eyes. Had she given Christ her life? If she had, maybe there was a chance for them. Maybe God wasn’t going to make him give her up after all.
It was all Brooke could do to make it through her parents’ house without breaking down completely, but the moment she reached her bedroom, she fell to her knees and began crying out to God. She had given her life to Him, and He had given her peace. Why had He taken it away so soon? Why had He convinced Nick that they were wrong for each other?
Was it a punishment for the sins she had confessed or a test of her new faith?
She didn’t know, but as she prayed and wept, she felt as if the Lord was lifting her and gathering her onto His lap. She wept into His chest and cried out the desires of her heart. And as she wept, she realized that the peace was still there, even in the company of sadness. She had given her life to the Lord of the universe, after all.
He didn’t condemn her for her grief. After all, He had become a man too, flesh and blood. He understood.
“I’m still yours,” she whispered as she wept. “Whatever you want to do with me. Just change my heart, so I’ll want it too.”
CHAPTER
ROXY SMILED AS SHE TURNED HER headlights on and pulled out of the parking lot at Madame Zouvier’s Dance Studio. She’d just informed her dance coach that she was coming back. The woman had embraced her with absolute joy and asked her if she would dance in the June recital.
Roxy nibbled on her lip. Was she really up to dancing in front of an audience again? Wouldn’t she feel just as self-conscious, just as paranoid, as she had the last few times she’d performed? Would word have gotten out about her and Bill Hemphill?
Could she really get on stage and perform?
Then she smiled again. Yes. She could do it, because Sonny wanted to see her dance.
She glanced in her rearview mirror and noticed that the car behind was following her too closely, its headlights too bright. She’d had that same feeling—that someone was tailing her—on her way to the studio tonight.
Uneasy, she turned onto another street. The car turned with her. Quickly, she reached across the passenger seat to lock the door, then locked the one closest to her. She made another turn and watched in her mirror; as the car behind her turned, she saw its color and make.
Bill! Panic-stricken, she stepped on her accelerator and flew home, praying that her father would be there and that she could get safely into the house before Bill caught up with her. Roxy’s hands trembled as she raced through town, fearing that he would find some way to keep her from getting there and attack her on a dark street where no one could hear.
Her car skidded to a halt in front of her house. Brooke’s and her parents’ cars blocked the driveway; she had no choice but to park on the street. As fast as she could, Roxy threw it into park and leaped out.
But Bill was faster. He grabbed her before she got halfway across the yard, and the potent smell
of Scotch on his breath assaulted her as he threw his hand over her mouth and dragged her to the side of the house.
“I’ll teach you to threaten me,” he said as she struggled to break free. “I’ll make you regret that you didn’t do this the easy way.”
She tried to scream, but her cry became no more than a muffled gurgle as his hand crushed harder against her mouth.
Bill flung her against the side of the garage. “Shut up and do what I tell you,” he said, “or every neighbor on this street will be out here in thirty seconds flat. I may go down because of you, sweetheart, but you’re going down with me. And when it’s all over, it’ll be worth it.”
Roxy squeezed her eyes shut and fought with all her might.
CHAPTER
NICK FOUND NO PLACE TO PARK, either in front of Brooke’s house or in the drive. He frowned, wondering if her family had company. That was all he needed—to have to be cordial as his heart burst to get Brooke alone. As he pulled to the curb at the house next door, he took mental inventory of the cars at the Martins’ home. There was only one that didn’t belong to the family.
As he got out, Nick prayed that Brooke would agree to talk to him. He didn’t know why she would, after he’d broken Infinity. But if he could just talk to her…calmer, more rationally, maybe she would tell him about her talk with the Lord.
He closed his car door and started toward the house. An odd sound stopped him, one that didn’t belong on a quiet residential street. He concentrated—and felt a surge of adrenaline when he identified the sound as the broken, muffled cries coming from the dark shadows beside the garage.
“Stop…please…No!”
He broke into a run, following the voice until he found Bill grappling with Roxy against the wall.
Something inside Nick snapped, and all the anger and pain and heartache and frustration burst within him as he lunged forward. His fist made shattering contact with Bill’s jaw, and the man fell backward as Roxy screamed.
Emerald Windows Page 21