She slipped off her dress and hung it up. She didn’t want to go from wedding dress to nothing without him seeing the lovely silk nightgown Anita had helped her choose. It didn’t take long to wash and get ready, but her stomach was doing summersaults as she put her hand on the doorknob and slowly opened the door.
Tony stood before her in only his trousers. He took her hand. “Oh, my.” His eyes lit. “Ravishing.”
She felt the heat climb her neck all the way to her hairline. Her eyes focused on his strong chest instead of that poor scarred shoulder. “You’re rather gorgeous yourself, Mr. Walker.”
He laughed. “Are you practicing the name?”
“I am. It should be a lot easier for me than for you. I mean, I’d be getting a new one anyway.”
Another song began, a waltz. He drew her close. His right hand cradled her back. His touch was gentle, his rhythm perfect, although they barely moved in the small space. She felt as if she were floating.
He bent to take her lips, gently at first, then with a growing hunger. When they finally shed their clothes and his hands were touching her in wonderful and intimate places, he whispered, “I won’t hurt you. I won’t ever hurt you.”
“I know,” she whispered back, but that was all she could say because that marvelous man was doing all the marvelous things of which she’d only dreamed. And, honey, she did a whole lot of them right back.
Finally.
The morning came lazily. Her hand slid over the sheet, and a slow smile spread. They’d barely slept—who knew lovemaking could take so many forms and be so much fun? She reached out for her new husband. Who wasn’t there. She stretched, ready for the coffee she could smell.
He was making her coffee. The darling.
She padded into the bathroom and climbed in the shower, letting the heat ease muscles that were just a little sore. The door opened. The sound of ceramic against countertop filtered through the shower curtain, and then a hand reached in, drew the curtain back, and a gloriously nude male joined her.
“Well, hello,” she said with a grin that had to be on the far side of sappy.
He took the soap from her hands and reached behind her to rub it up and down her back. “Come here, Mrs. Walker.” His voice was deep and seductive, and she obeyed.
Glory, but no one had ever told her one could love like this.
The water ran cool before he switched it off. She wondered if her wobbly legs would hold her up for the climb out and for whatever else she was supposed to do. Her brain seemed to have turned to mush along with her limbs.
He helped her to the bathmat and toweled her dry. She stood there, thinking that his simple attentions felt like breakfast in bed, roses on her pillow: romance in the practical. He grinned as she grabbed his good shoulder for support. Slowly, she regained the ability to stand—and even to lift a coffee cup and sip. It tasted heavenly.
He reached for his slacks and pulled a card from the back pocket. “Your wedding present. I was going to save it for Paris, but now just feels right.”
A line drawing of a heeling sloop decorated the front of the card. She opened it. You pick the place and you pick the boat—as long as you’ll sail away with me forever and a day.
A boat. “Forever and a day.” She had to lean against the counter this time.
Her eyes filled. She clutched the card to her breast.
His eyes glinted with what looked like delight, and his smile, that crooked, wonderful smile, lit his face. “You have a little boat, and I have a little boat, but wouldn’t it be fun if we bought one large enough to sail places? There’s a lot of water in the world, and being land-bound has lost its appeal.”
“Oh, Tony.” The tears overflowed then, but he drew her close and held on until they slowed.
Handing her a tissue, he whispered, “We’ll have such fun.”
That changed the tears to a laugh. And she hiccupped.
“Get dressed,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose, “and we’ll talk boats over breakfast.”
She watched his trim backside until he was out of sight. Lord, have mercy, but I’ve got to thank you for that man.
Conversations with God might still be rather one-sided, but she figured she owed him for all the non-coincidences that had brought her to this moment with this man in her beloved uncle’s home. To the point when she was Mrs. Anthony Walker and totally, unabashedly in love.
Thank you for reading Two from Isaac’s House. If you enjoyed it, please consider posting a short review—and do check out Normandie’s other books.
BONUS READ follows immediately—simply click to turn the page and travel to Italy…
FROM FIRE INTO FIRE
For twelve years, they've been hiding from terrorists--in plain sight. Now it's time to tell their son the truth.
From the author of TWO FROM ISAAC'S HOUSE comes the story behind the story.
1
Meira
“Allahu Akbar!”
The madman’s cry flashed into memory, and Meira saw again the knife-wielder who’d proclaimed his god greater than all others. He’d pounced, his face so close to hers that his spittle had dripped down her cheek. But he’d missed his mark, and she, though scarred, had lived.
What she and David planned to do today brought into full relief all that had happened sixteen years ago, along with the fear that hearing their truth would leave indelible scars on their son.
Here in rural New York, gulls screeched over the placid lake, and the sun angled its way into day. She pressed her bare feet against the porch floorboards to set her rocker in motion and tried to get her pencil working to sketch something, anything. Maybe the scratch of lead on paper, the rhythmic creak of the old boards, and the back and forth, back and forth, would erase memories of the men—and the woman—who’d brandished those words along with a knife, a gun, and a bomb. Or maybe, if the memory glued itself to her thoughts like sticky tape, she could use it to help with what was to come.
Behind her, the cottage waited, cool and welcoming, their safety net in the early years and the place that had allowed them to pretend to be normal once they’d begun their undercover life as Arabs. Would it cocoon them as well after the tale was told? She prayed so.
She and David knew the difference between the truth and a lie. Knew it intimately. Moral relativism, that posh term for a decadent point of view, didn’t fit either of them, and yet they lied for a living.
She stared out at the lake, where the light shimmered on the water, silhouetting David as he lowered himself to the dock next to their son. The sun, edging its way over the horizon, blurred images just as their lies had smeared the charcoal portrait of their life.
And now they were about to break into truth with the one who meant the world to them. It made her gut hurt, because Tony would hate them after this day’s work. He’d think their truths putrid because of what the years in Lebanon had taught him.
He turned and waved his rod, obviously wanting her to remember his promise of fish for tonight. “Today I’ll catch the big one, Mom. I can feel it. Today is my lucky day.”
Tears had welled at the words, but he’d merely glanced at his dad and grinned. Her men often shared that look, the one that meant women were incomprehensible to the male mind.
David and Tony baited their hooks and tossed lines off the dock’s edge. She couldn’t see the splash of the weight as it pulled the morsel down to fish level, but she could imagine it. Imagine the plop as it hit the water and her boy’s grin because they were out there again, with the promise of dinner waiting to be reeled in.
If only fishing were all they had to do today. If only.
2
Tony
Tony braced his fishing rod against the dock, steadying it with one hand as he examined the bucket of wiggling earthworms. “You think those are good enough as bait?”
His dad nodded. “Good enough.”
“That guy at the shop, he said he uses lures.”
“We have some if these don’t work, but the fish li
ked worms when I was a kid. Doubt they’ve changed preferences.”
Tony bent to stare at the floating cork, waiting for anything that looked like a bite on his line. They’d only been here a couple of days, and his dad seemed kind of tense. Mom said they’d come home from Lebanon for a vacation, and a vacation was supposed to relax you, wasn’t it? Maybe canoeing and catching fish would do the trick. Tony was determined to catch a good one before he left, bigger than legal, so maybe two feet. Wouldn’t that be trophy sized? He grinned at the thought of the letter he’d send back to Bahir. With a picture. And he’d promised himself he’d swim all the way to the diving platform this year. Get his dad to take a picture of that, too.
They’d probably take a bunch of photos of that stupid boarding school they were forcing him to go to instead of letting him go back to Lebanon with them. Only because some stupid jerks had beat up on him and Bahir. He was fine. Or almost. His black eye had turned yellow, so that meant it was almost good as new, and the rest of him didn’t hurt so bad anymore. He and Bahir’d just have to watch out and not go to the beach without other friends around. They could be careful.
But the school had said yes to taking him. So he guessed it was set—unless he could talk Mom and Dad out of it in the next couple of months.
He tugged at his shorts, which were kinda snug and kinda high up his leg. Maybe he was finally starting to grow. He sure didn’t want to go to some dumb new school if he still looked like a kid. No one would believe he’d be fourteen his next birthday. He looked ten.
The other guys back in Beirut, like Bahir, were growing or were already big. Some had muscles, really good ones. Tony’s arms still stuck out like sticks with lumps the size of lemons where he’d tried for biceps. His dad promised it wouldn’t be long before he grew, but what did Dad know about long? When you were the puny one in a group, “not long” seemed like forever.
Poor Bahir was mad because he couldn’t get rid of the kid pudge he’d carried for as long as Tony’d known him. It must be from his mother’s side, because Bahir’s dad was tall and real skinny. Or maybe Bahir just hadn’t got there yet. All Tony wanted was to start catching up with his dad. Then maybe his voice would change, and he wouldn’t feel like such a wimp. And no one would freak out when he and Bahir when alone to the beach. He liked Lebanon, especially with a best friend. The Mediterranean sure beat anything they had in New York.
He heard a plop out on the lake and looked down at his line, willing a fish to swim in this direction. “You think we should try one of those lures yet?” he asked.
“Give it time.” Dad lifted and lowered his rod so his cork bobbed.
Tony sighed and went back to worrying that he might take after his mom. She was little, but at least her dad and her brother weren’t. They lived in Israel. Tony didn’t get why they’d want to be there. Plus, his grandmother sure cried a lot. Dad said that was just the way some women did things. Got weepy over movies and saying goodbye.
Anyway, until he grew some, he didn’t think going away to school would work for him.
“This is great, isn’t it?” Dad said. “Just the two of us.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad we’re out here alone, because I need to talk to you.”
Tony shifted position. “Okay.”
Dad didn’t say any more. Guys did silence. Tony got that, but not when one of them said he wanted to talk and the other agreed to listen.
Finally, his father cleared his throat. “It’s about you, us, our family.” He pulled at his line again, tweaking it like he wanted to check for a bite. “You know how you’ve always been with Arabic children and speak their language as well as you do English?”
Tony flattened himself on his stomach to look over the edge of the dock. The dark water lapped against the pilings. Sometimes it sounded like a burp. “Sure,” he said.
“You remember that your grandfather’s father was Armenian and where Armenia is?”
“Sure.”
“What you may not know is that he was a Christian whose family fled genocide in 1917 and moved to Israel. He lived and traded with the Jews and the Arabs there. Then one day he fell in love with your great-grandmother.”
“We’ve got a picture of her. She was beautiful.”
“Yes, she was beautiful. And great-granddaddy Yerev loved her and wanted to marry her, but her father thought it was a terrible thing. Yerev’s family and friends weren’t any happier.”
Something in the way his father spoke made him sit up again. He didn’t like the look on his dad’s face, like right before Tony got in trouble. Only, this wasn’t the mad voice.
His father said, “Your great-grandmother was…” and swallowed a word. Then it came out whole. “Miriam was a Jew.”
Jew? Tony took a moment to make sure that’s what he’d heard. “Jew? No way.”
“Yes, she was.”
“You mean like the Israelis?”
“She was an Israeli Jew.” His dad put down his fishing rod.
Tony stared out over the water. He picked out one lonely cloud, like a rhino’s head with its horn. “How can my grandmother be a Jew and me be an Arab? Did she change?”
“Well, son, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I guess it boils down to you not being an Arab.”
Wait. That couldn’t be true. He was an Arab. They were all Arabs. They didn’t worship some Jewish God. Because Arabs didn’t.
“My grandfather Yerev figured the God of the Christian and the God of the Jew were the same, so it didn’t much matter that Miriam wanted to raise my father a Jew. Both of my parents were Americans, but they were born in Israel.”
Tony could barely squeak out his next question. “What about Mom?”
“Jewish.”
No. No way.
He swallowed back the saliva that started to fill his mouth. This didn’t make any sense at all. If what Dad said was true, that meant . . . they’d lied. His whole family was a bunch of liars.
“We wanted to tell you from the beginning, but for your safety we’ve let you think we were all Arab-Americans. If you had known the truth, it would have been dangerous for you.”
“But . . . why?”
“I think you know why.”
“You lied.” That was all that mattered. “All my life.” He scrambled to his feet, his fists brushing his sides.
“Son.”
“No. Just no.”
“We didn’t lie,” his father said as Tony turned toward the house. “We just didn’t tell you the whole truth.”
“And that’s not lying?” He spoke the words that came to him, the emotion that choked him. “I . . . I hate you.”
The build-up of saliva had become bile as his stomach knotted and threatened to punch his breakfast up and out, and he crouched, just in case.
This book is dedicated to Joshua, my son, who promised always to stand by the people of God. No matter the cost.
You shall not prophesy against Israel nor shall you speak against the house of Isaac.
―AMOS 7:16
But God said, “…Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”
―GENESIS 17:19
“And I can teach you, kinsman, how to shame the devil—by telling the truth!”
―WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV, Part 1
Acknowledgments
So many people had a hand in helping me get this story from concept to reality. Huge thanks to my critique partners, Jane Lebak and Robin Patchen, and to early readers Linda Glaz and Regina Smeltzer.
After they poked and prodded, Ray Rhamey of Flogging the Quill took on the task of editing the story and Jane Shealy proofread it. A few gracious readers also put their eagle eyes to work, including Jennifer Fromke, Tracie Heskett, Susan Peterson, Becky Hrivnak, and Katherine Harms. Hilary Hauck checked my Italian usage as it’s been years since I lived there. And Reena Ribalow helped make
sure I wasn’t too far off on the Israeli end of things. Any mistakes in language or setting are mine alone, but I’m so grateful to my fact checkers and all my beta readers. My books wouldn’t be what they are without your input and encouragement.
Thanks also to my beloved husband, whose patient kindness prevails each time I ask him to read the manuscript “one more time.” His eagle eyes invariably catch things I miss, and his technical expertise, coupled with his love of research, keeps me from making mistakes about guns and cars and the things one does with them.
A Note from the Author
I hope you’ve enjoyed following Rina and Tony on their initial adventure. If you’d like to read another in the Isaac House Series, pick up a copy of the novella, From Fire into Fire. This story answers questions about how Tony’s parents got into the business. I hope you’ll look for it.
Would you consider letting others know what you think by posting a review anywhere books are bought, sold, or discussed? I’d be very grateful.
If you’d like to receive the occasional email alerting you to gifts and goodies, stop by my website: www.normandiefischer.com
And I’d love to visit with you me on social media at: www.facebook.com/NormandieFischer www.twitter.com/WritingOnBoard
I look forward to hearing from you!
Blessings,
Normandie
Also by Normandie Fischer
CAROLINA COAST NOVELS
BECALMED
2014 Heart of Excellence finalist
2014 Selah finalist
With her days chock full - designing jewelry for the shop she co-owns with her best friend, sailing her sharpie, and hanging out with girlfriends - Tadie Longworth barely notices she's morphing into the town's maiden aunt. When Will, a widower with a perky daughter named Jilly, limps into town in a sailboat badly in need of engine repairs, Tadie welcomes the chance to help. Her shop becomes Jilly's haven while Will hunts boat parts, and Tadie even takes the two of them sailing. It's the kind of thing she lives for, and it's a welcome distraction from the fact that her ex-boyfriend Alex, aka The Jerk of Jerks, is back in town. With his northern bride. Oh, and he's hitting on Tadie, too.
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