Love Shadows

by Catherine Lanigan

  * * *

  RAIN PELTED THE hundred-year-old glass windows in the library, creating a cacophony of pinging and tinkling. Inside the well-lit meeting room, Sarah sat in the same chair as last week, opposite Luke and Margot. Two chairs to Margot’s right was Alice Crane, who was talking about her fiancé’s car accident. “He was coming home from work on a night like this,” she said, motioning to the huge window. “The rain was coming down in torrents, and it was very windy. The bridge just south of town had washed out, but he didn’t see it. The cops told me there was a mudslide, which made the highway even slicker. His car spun and then flipped over twice. He was killed instantly.” Alice started to cry and grabbed the box of tissues on the chair next to her. She blew her nose. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Margot said.

  Sarah got up from her chair and put her arm around Alice. She didn’t say a word, knowing words would have been too much.

  Alice bit her lower lip. “It was so fast, you know? He was never sick. He was just dead. Gone. In a single night. We were supposed to pick out our wedding cake the next day. Burt was looking forward to that. He loved cake. It was the only kind of dessert he liked,” she rambled.

  Margot’s voice was compassionate as she spoke. “And so, Alice, I’m guessing that you feel robbed of that chance that both Sarah and Luke were given to say goodbye. Is that right?”

  Alice’s face shattered, and tears ran in rivulets down her cheeks. “I was cheated. There are so many things I would have said to him.”

  Margot took Alice’s hand, which had been wadding the tissue into a tight ball. “What’s stopping you?”

  “What?” Luke barked. “Her fiancé is dead!”

  Sarah’s head shot up. “You don’t talk to your wife?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Sarah said flatly, staring at him. “In the two years since she’s been dead, you haven’t told her that you miss her? That you wish she were here?”

  “Well, yeah, but...”

  “It’s the same thing, Luke,” Margot interjected. “Alice, for next week, I want you to write a letter to Burt telling him everything you would have said to him if you’d had the chance. Say everything. The good and the bad. Then bring it next week to share with us. Can you do that?”

  “I think so,” Alice replied with a forced, uncertain smile.

  Margot turned to Luke. “I was afraid we scared you away last week, Luke. I’m glad you’re back.”

  “So are we,” Sarah piped in with a smile. Alice nodded.

  “I hadn’t thought I would come back, but I guess you figured that out already. I realized that the reason I came here in the first place was because of my kids. They’re my Achilles heel, I guess you could say. I would do anything for them, but right now, I seem to be alienating them more than being a father to them.”

  “Why’s that?” Margot asked.

  “I get angry at the least little thing they do, or I don’t notice when they’ve done something special. This is not fair to my oldest, Annie, especially. She’s been the little homemaker for both my son and me since Jenny died. She does half the household chores without my even asking. I don’t know why she does that.”

  “She’s assumed her mother’s role,” Margot said. “Because she loves you and sees your unhappiness, she’s taken on the responsibility of your happiness.”

  Luke’s face grew stern and pensive. “This is not a good thing at all. She’s just a kid. She should be doing little girl things. Not pretending she’s the adult, which she does well.”

  Margot cast him an understanding smile. “Precisely. All the things you can do to promote her being a child will be invaluable. Can you hire a housekeeper to do the chores?”

  Luke looked down at his boots and then lifted his head. “No, I can’t.”

  “I understand,” Margot said.

  Sarah hadn’t taken her eyes off Luke since the conversation began. She could tell he was embarrassed to admit his shortcomings, yet he courageously plunged into his explanations. He wasn’t holding anything back. He was earnest in his desire to put his grief behind him. If that were so, then the day would come when he would step out of the shadows of his pain.

  Sarah’s heart opened to him, and she had to fight the urge to get up and give him a comforting hug. She truly wanted to help him, as any real friend would.

  Sarah was so engrossed in what Luke and Margot were saying, she felt as if she were an integral part of their conversation.

  “Is it just the grief? Or are you unhappy, Luke?” Sarah blurted her thought aloud.

  Luke shot her a piercing look. “Sarah, didn’t you say earlier that the grief was heavy on you, like you were being crushed or you couldn’t breathe?”

  “Yes,” Sarah answered.

  “It’s like that for me, too. But you’re right, Sarah. There’s something else. It burns like the dickens right in my gut, and I know it’s anger. I know this. But I can’t make it go away.”

  Sarah gave him mental kudos for blunt honesty. Few people ever admitted their faults like Luke did. Counseling was important to her because she wanted to be whole again. At first, Luke had fought the help Margot offered. But now, Sarah felt she and Luke had come together across a huge expanse. Their experiences were similar. Through their pain, they understood each other on deeply emotional levels. They were strangers no more.

  Margot interrupted. “Luke, think about it. Alice wishes for closure. She feels guilty that she didn’t say what she wanted to say when she had the chance. It doesn’t matter if we know someone is going to die or not, when they are gone, we all feel guilty to some degree. What did you not do?”

  Luke’s eyes went from Margot to Sarah to Alice, then he looked off to the rain-splattered window. “If I’d had money back then, I could have taken Jenny to the Mayo Clinic or MD Anderson in Houston. I read up on herb treatments and diets, even drugs that might have saved her. I had no power to help her. I had to just stand by and watch her diminish to nothing right before my eyes. That’s why I call myself a born-again atheist. Jenny was my gold ring. She was everything any man could want. I was lucky to have even known her, much less be her husband. Nobody gets a shot at the gold ring twice in life. See, my bottom line is that I just want to get through the rest of my life and not hurt my kids in the process,” he said, misery permeating every word.

  Sarah was stunned at Luke’s pronouncement. She’d never heard a heart in as much pain as Luke’s, and without realizing it, she was crying for him. Sarah half listened as Margot asked Alice if she had any words for Luke. Alice offered a benign platitude she must have heard a hundred times from the people who’d handed it to her.

  “God always takes the angels first,” Alice said.

  Maybe that saying had meant something to Alice, but Sarah could tell by the forced and very wan smile on Luke’s face that he was only being polite when he thanked her.

  Sarah realized that Luke had built an emotional blockade around himself, cutting himself off from the pain others might inflict while keeping his torture private and personal. He was the kind of person a thousand counseling sessions would not help. Her heart went out to his children, who had to be feeling trapped and perhaps even scared. Sarah was afraid the only thing that would save Luke was Jenny’s resurrection.

  Margot turned to Sarah and asked, “Do you have anything you wish to share with Luke, Sarah?”

  “I’m so sorry, Luke,” was all she could answer.

  “Thank you for that, Sarah. I appreciate it,” he said with the only warm smile he’d given anyone that evening.

  Margot concluded the session and asked everyone to help her clean up the refreshment table as they always did.

  While Luke folded the chairs and put them in the storage closet, Sarah wrapped up the leftover cookies she had baked for
the evening. “Luke,” she said as he opened a garbage bag for the paper coffee cups and napkins. “Would you like to take these cookies home to your kids?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “It’s fine. Really. If I take them home, I’ll just wind up giving them to my dog.”

  Luke looked at her askance and laughed. “You give him your peanut butter cookies?”

  “Yes,” she replied quite seriously. “I bake them for him every Saturday. He loves them.”

  “But he’s a dog.”

  “Beau is no ordinary dog. Besides, I only let him have one a day.”

  Luke laughed again. “God, you sound like Jenny. She was such a stickler about sugar for the kids, and I love baked goods. Always have. My mother baked cookies for me and sent them to Iraq all the time.”

  Sarah’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Is that too much information?”

  She chuckled. “Not at all. I just didn’t know...about Iraq. Army?”

  “Navy SEAL.”

  Sarah was doubly confused by Luke. He’d just told her he’d seen combat, and probably the kind of atrocities she didn’t think the nightly news could broadcast. He was a man of more contradictions than she could count. How was it possible for a man who’d been through so much—war, fighting, killing and who knew what else—to be so debilitated by a single person’s death?

  And then it hit her.

  That’s how much he had loved. His capacity for loving had been so deep, so boundless, so all-encompassing that the loss of it was nearly his undoing. Luke Bosworth was no ordinary man. He was the kind of man she wanted to get to know. A man like Luke didn’t come around more than once in a person’s lifetime. She knew that he felt honored to have even known Jenny.

  Sarah felt privileged to know Luke.

  Luke cleared his throat. Suddenly self-conscious, Sarah turned away and picked up her red rain slicker from the back of her chair.

  “Thanks for the cookies, Sarah,” Luke said.

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” she replied. Sarah fumbled with the zipper as she said good-night to Luke and Alice.

  Still struggling with the zipper, Sarah’s patience wore thin. “This darn thing!”

  “Here, let me help,” Luke offered, handing her the plate of cookies and then expertly putting the zipper teeth inside the pulley. As he zipped up the slicker, the fingers of his hand grazed against Sarah’s chin. He flung his hand back as if he’d been stung.

  Sarah stiffened. She wasn’t quite sure what happened, but something had zapped her like an electric shock. She stared at him.

  His eyes were locked on hers, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His expression was implacable.

  She held out the plate of cookies. “Don’t forget these. For the kids.”

  “Thanks,” Luke said, then turned toward the back of the room where Margot was turning off the lamps. “Good night, Margot.”

  “Good night, Luke,” Margot said.

  He threw Sarah one last look. “Bye.”

  “Night,” Sarah said and watched him leave. She picked up her purse, bid Margot good-night and then left the room. As she walked toward the library’s huge doors, she stared out at the rain. All she could think about was the electric shock that had run through her when his hand had touched her chin.

  She’d never felt anything like that in her life. It was as if she’d been struck by a thunderbolt. Something had happened to Sarah in that moment, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. She’d felt as if she’d come alive from a long, dark sleep. Vaguely, she wondered if this was like the “kiss of true love” that awakened Snow White.

  Sarah’s level head and logical thinking told her not to dwell on fairy tales. Certainly there were attributes of kindness, caring, good humor and thoughtfulness in Luke Bosworth, but if she’d scoured the earth for a century there was no doubt in her mind that she would ever have found a more emotionally unavailable man.

  However, he had helped her with her rain slicker. Maybe there’s hope there, after all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SARAH WATCHED HER fingers as they traveled up and down the piano keys, creating the melodic and moving strains of “In the Garden.” The children from the vacation Bible School auditioned for the choir with an eagerness she hadn’t expected. Mary Catherine had already chosen nine girls and four boys, including Timmy Bosworth. Now it was Annie’s turn to audition.

  “May I sing something different, Mrs. Cook?” Annie asked.

  “I suppose so, if Sarah knows the song.” Mary Catherine looked over at Sarah.

  “What is it, Annie?” Sarah asked.

  “‘Ave Maria.’”

  Sarah gaped at the eight-year-old. “You know the ‘Ave Maria’?”

  “In English and Latin. My mother taught it to me. It was her favorite. She was a really good singer.” Annie smiled widely.

  Sarah smiled back. “It’s very difficult, but if that’s what you’d like to sing, I would love to play it for you.”

  Annie, dressed in a white, cotton summer dress with watermelon slices appliqued on the skirt, nearly jumped up and down with glee.

  Sarah began the intro and Mary Catherine gave Annie her cue. In less than one bar, listening to Annie, Sarah got goose bumps—the kind that were brought on when one was moved in both heart and soul. Sarah watched every nuance of the little girl who was as much inside the song as any adult soloist could be. With each chorus, Annie’s voice rose in crescendo, matching emotion with words and plucking the heartstrings of her choir director and pianist.

  When the song ended, Annie stood radiant.

  Sarah sat rigid in shock, but only for a moment. Then she bolted to her feet and applauded. “Bravo! Annie. Bravo!”

  She rushed to the little girl.

  Mary Catherine had tears in her eyes. “Beautiful. Beautiful.”

  “Annie, we had no idea you could sing like this.”

  Annie hung her head demurely. “I’ve been practicing.”

  “I should say so!” Sarah couldn’t help it. She hugged the little girl.

  Annie hugged her back. “Thank you, Miss Sarah. I’m glad you liked the song.”

  “It’s one of my favorites, too. My mother always sang it to me on Christmas Eve.”

  Mary Catherine tapped her cheek. “That’s exactly what we’ll do for Christmas. We’ll have Annie sing the solo at the Christmas Eve service.”

  “Wonderful!”

  Annie’s face fell. “What if my dad won’t let me?” she asked.

  “Of course he’ll let you sing,” Mary Catherine chirped happily. “With a voice like yours, you should be on one of those television talent shows.”

  Annie shook her head violently just as Timmy walked up.

  He put his hand in Annie’s. “He won’t let her sing,” Timmy said.

  Sarah was aghast. “Why on earth not? You are both very talented children. It’s practically his moral duty to encourage you and support you.”

  “You don’t understand,” Annie said. “He really won’t.”

  Sarah narrowed her eyes. “You two aren’t here without his permission, are you?”

  “Not exactly,” Annie said. “He knows we’re at Bible School and I told him I wanted to be in the choir. But he wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention when I said today was the tryouts.”

  “Does he know how good you are?”

  Timmy frowned and pouted his lip. “He doesn’t know anything about us anymore.”

  Annie looked from Timmy up to Sarah. “I don’t sing much anymore at home. It reminds him too much of my mom. And that makes him sad.”

  Sarah stood up and folded her arms across her chest. “So where do you practice?”

  “On the beach. Mrs. Taylor thinks I’m good
, too,” Annie said proudly. “She’s teaching me some other songs. I like ‘America the Beautiful’ a lot.”

  Sarah looked at Mary Catherine, who gave her a very worried look. “I think we have a problem.”

  Annie’s blue eyes were filled with the pain of rejection. “I was hoping... I just wanted to be in the choir. So does Timmy. He’s a good singer, too.”

  “Yes, he is, sweetheart. You both are wonderful,” Sarah assured them. “I’ll talk to your dad.”

  Annie’s eyes grew wide and Timmy dropped his mouth. “You will?” They exclaimed in unison.

  Sarah hadn’t expected such elation and eagerness from them. Her heart soared as she realized that, in an instant, she’d become someone’s champion. She hadn’t asked for the job—she’d simply taken it on. Just as quickly, she realized she might have made a huge mistake. Luke was a volatile guy, and nobody knew that as well as she did. But as she stared at their eager, impassioned faces, she assessed the situation. She decided that the kids were worth the risk.

  Mary Catherine escorted the children out of the church as Sarah gathered her music and placed the sheets in her father’s battered briefcase.

  She looked around the church one last time before turning out the lights. As she walked down the cracked terrazzo floor and passed the pews with their worn-out pads, Sarah’s designer-architect’s mind stopped her in her tracks.

  “This place needs more than repairs. It needs serious redesign.” Sarah scanned the dull, brown paint and cracked, peeling gold leaf. Looking at it with a trained eye, it was no wonder the church was losing people. The place couldn’t be more depressing if it was a morgue.

  “It needs me,” she said aloud, as creative adrenaline spiraled through her body. She, turned off the lights—the ones that were working— and closed the doors reverently behind her. Then she took off in a run for home.

  * * *

  SARAH WORKED ALL night at her drafting table, struggling to put down on paper all her ideas for a complete renovation of her church. She used every medium at her disposal, from charcoals to pastel chalks and even acrylic paints, hoping to get just the right blends that would lighten up the church’s dreary interior. The hours passed, but to Sarah they felt like minutes. She was completely unaware of the mess she’d made until dawn seeped through the plantation shutters on the window.