"What are Connie's chances to escape this life-style?" she asked.
"She's highly intelligent and her grades are tops in her class. She has a dream of finishing high school and going to college. Sister Maria is already trying to figure out a way to arrange for a scholarship when the time comes." He pulled papers out of the portfolio and fanned them out in front of her. "Here are her sketches for the wall panels," he said in a tone of voice that reflected pride in his pupil.
"Very nice," Lisa said, forcing herself to concentrate on the panels and not on his hands. His left ring finger was bare. So was his right one. That could mean that he wasn't married, but it could also mean that he didn't like to wear jewelry.
"Each panel's a picture of one of the vegetables grown on the nearby farms."
"I see," she murmured. The possibility that he might be married filled her with instant dismay.
"Connie's thought was that the dining room should be decorated with pictures of the vegetables that provide the people's livelihood. Besides," Jay added with a little laugh, "she thinks they're beautiful, and she says she wishes that the other people here thought so, too. She says that they look at the vegetables with eyes that don't see."
Lisa swallowed and made herself speak in a normal voice. "And she wants to make them see?" she said.
"That's her idea. It's surprising that Connie would think that way when you know more about her. She and her cousins were abandoned by both sets of parents a couple of years ago, and Connie's been mother and father to her cousins ever since. She never lets things get her down—she's always cheerful and happy. I think it's because she expresses her pain through her art. That way her sadness doesn't ever spill over into real life."
He was so earnest, and she sensed that he genuinely wanted her to appreciate Connie's work. How could she when she was mesmerized not by what he said but the way he said it? A sudden heat rose from her throat to her cheeks. She didn't know when she'd ever been more flustered by a man's presence.
"I have more of Connie's work in the trunk of my car," he said. "I could bring it in if you'd like."
It was almost nine o'clock, and Lisa knew that Adele would be expecting her and would worry about her driving home in the dark along the treacherous canal-banked road. Still, she didn't want to leave now.
"I'd like to see whatever," she said, zigging over to Plan B, which meant phoning Adele to warn her that she'd be late, and she was glad when Jay looked relieved and said, "I'll only be a minute," before hurrying out to the parking lot, where Lisa saw him unlocking the trunk of a dark blue Kia Sorento. Lisa paced back and forth in the dining hall while she waited for him. She felt breathless and crazy and her heart was beating a mile a minute, and at the same time she was aware that she could do nothing about it. It was as though Jay Quillian had cast some sort of benign spell on her.
When he came back he spread Connie's work on several tables, Lisa bent over it, enchanted in spite of herself by the simplicity of the drawings. He waited expectantly for her comments.
What to say? She was fearful of driving him away forever by saying something stupid. Finally she said, "Connie has a good feeling for color." They were looking at a picture of several children grouped around a storyteller.
"Her composition is excellent, too," Jay pointed out. "Look at this watercolor of the fields outside Yahola. I like the way she's positioned the children so that we can see only their faces and none of the adults'."
Lisa's attention really was captured by this one. Connie's painting portrayed children working beside their parents, picking vegetables among the rows. The parents looked very big, the children very small. What struck Lisa most was the expressions on the faces of the children. Without exception they were woebegone and forlorn.
"What a disturbing picture," she said under her breath. When she looked at Jay, she realized that he was moved by it, too.
"That one always makes me sad," he said. "Children shouldn't work in the fields, but it's more common than you'd think."
"Even kids like Connie and Pedro?"
"We look after them here at the mission. Connie and her cousins usually arrive in Yahola late in the fall when the harvest begins. They're lucky if they can stay through April or May, when their grandmother packs them up and hauls them to the next job. No telling if they work in the fields there, but I suspect so. There isn't always child care for the workers like the nuns provide here." Jay straightened and began to slide some of the paintings back into the portfolio.
Lisa took a deep breath. She couldn't overcome her attraction to him, and it had been a long day. She was tired. But through it all, she felt an overwhelming compassion for these children.
She walked over to a window and toyed with a loose flap of the hem on one of the curtains. When she spoke it was from her heart. "I—I came to this job because I thought it would be different from my last job, where I worked in a tiny office all day. I thought it would be good to be directly involved with the people who needed what I have to offer, and yet—"
She felt Jay close behind her, so close that she thought she could feel his warm breath on her neck.
"And yet?" he said softly.
She dropped the curtain and turned to face him. "I didn't expect to be caught up in feelings," she said, the words tumbling out in a rush. "It was just an interesting job. And now the kids and the old people and the mothers and fathers who have to work so hard tear at my heart. This is different from any other job I've ever had."
She really should go home. She was exhausted. She hadn't meant to confide in this man she hardly knew.
"Yahola can get to you, all right. I know. You'll be proud to be part of the good the mission is doing. I promise you that." He studied her quietly and seriously, and a current of recognition ran through her like a jolt of electricity. It shook her to her very soul, and she blinked her eyes in confusion.
In that brief moment, she was aware that they had each acknowledged like meeting like, and it was as though they had truly seen each other for the first time. Whole vistas opened up and spread out before her, her world expanded and contracted, and she wondered if he knew what was happening to her. Of course he knew. This man would know everything about her, just as she knew everything important about him. She stared at him, stunned and unsure what to say or what to do.
But the flicker of recognition that had passed between them in that instant was over. He was moving away from her now, picking up the portfolio, turning toward the door.
"Thanks for the coffee," Jay said on the right note of politeness.
"Any time," she said as casually as she could.
She sensed that he was stalling, that he wasn't ready to leave. She felt a tug of impatience. Why didn't he ask for her phone number and be done with it? Next time she had to stand up to his scrutiny, she hoped it wouldn't be under these long fluorescent lights that made her naturally blond hair look green. She gave him plenty of time, but apparently she hadn't made an impression, after all, because he gave her no cause for thinking that he was eager to see her again.
"See you," he said, and then he turned and was walking away from her, his step almost jaunty, portfolio tucked under one arm.
Sister Clementine peeked around the door leading to the kitchen, her eyes twinkling beneath the graying ruffle of bangs escaping her short veil. "Jay likes you, Lisa, he really does! He's such a nice man—too nice to remain a bachelor."
"So what?" said Sister Ursula, who was right behind her. "You act like the man is God's gift to women."
"Sister Maria says that he's God's gift to the mission," Sister Clementine said calmly.
"I even doubt that," Sister Ursula retorted.
"Sisters, have you poured the cornmeal into those screw-top jars I brought? If you don't, we're going to be plagued with insects in the kitchen," Lisa said by way of diversion.
"Insects—that must be a nice way of saying 'roaches,'" Sister Ursula huffed.
"It's also a way of saying 'butterflies,'" Sister Clemen
tine reminded her gently, but they retreated into the kitchen, leaving Lisa in peace.
If that was what you could call it. She didn't feel peaceful. Instead she felt unnerved. The news that Jay was a bachelor was exhilarating, but it shouldn't make her heart pound wildly and her knees turn to jelly.
As Sister Ursula would say, "You must be sick."
And as Sister Clementine would say, "No, she's not sick. She's in love."
Chapter 2
For his part, Jay Quillian was sure that he would never marry. As he drove back to his town house in Jupiter after showing Lisa the sketches, he congratulated himself for remaining free of entanglements until the age of twenty-eight.
So why was he thinking about this woman, this Lisa Sherrill? During one short afternoon and evening, she had invaded the space of his mind, convinced him that she shared his compassion for the people of Yahola and reminded him that his sex life was inadequate.
Loneliness. Maybe that was it. He didn't admit to it often, and when he did it was usually in a fit of self-pity that he managed to overcome by immersing himself in work.
He could have understood his fascination with Lisa if she'd been a great beauty, but if he'd been pressed for a description, he would have described her as cute. How else would you describe a pixie kind of a person with wispy blond hair, eyes that sparkled even when she tried to appear dignified, and a figure that was diminutive but very appealing to him?
Not that those eyes merely sparkled. He had seen for himself how they could glow with excitement, crinkle with humor, and deepen with emotion. He could only imagine how they might darken with passion, but why was he thinking about that?
He waved at the guard at the gatehouse to the development where he lived, decided that he should backtrack to his office and pick up a folder of work to bring home, and just as quickly changed his mind. He didn't want to face another evening spent with his nose buried in his work.
He parked his car in its usual slot beside his town house and unlocked the gate to the cypress-fenced courtyard. Hildy, his half mutt, half Old English sheepdog, ambled painfully out of her doghouse and nuzzled his knee.
He bent down to scratch her behind the ears. Poor old Hildy was getting along in years. He could remember the days when she used to come bounding out of her doghouse at the sound of his key in the lock and plant her big paws in the middle of his chest to welcome him. Often as not, her greeting would include a loud slurpy kiss. Nowadays, she was hard of hearing and barely managed to wag her tail when she saw him.
What would he do when she was gone and there was no more Hildy to greet him at the gate? He didn't like to think about it. The truth was, his town house smelled of loneliness—a smell of too many store-bought frozen dinners and rooms left closed all day to incubate a faintly doggy smell.
"Hildy, old girl, how about some chow?" He let them both in the front door, and she waited eagerly as he poured kibble into a dish beside the kitchen closet where she slept when she stayed inside.
He wasn't hungry. The meal he'd eaten in the dining hall had been delicious, and it had seemed to be a hit with the people of Yahola, too. He was glad that the mission had decided to hire a dietitian and to start a meal program. Some of the kids in school had a hard time concentrating on their lessons, and he knew the reason was that they didn't get enough to eat at home.
Lisa didn't look like the type to isolate herself at a nowhere kind of place at the edge of the 'Glades where her coworkers would be nuns and where poor families predominated. She looked as if she'd be more comfortable in classier surroundings.
But perhaps she wasn't what she appeared to be. Some of the things she'd said tonight made him think that maybe she felt the same way about the mission as he did, which was probably impossible. He had begun his association with the mission out of atonement, but he continued it out of love.
The first time he'd ever driven to Yahola, he'd been overwhelmed. First of all, the camp was in a wilderness dominated by water. Silent water, slipping through the saw grass toward the sea; lazy water, green with algae, lapping at the sides of the canals on both sides of the road; water that weltered out of the sky in great thunderstorms, the likes of which he'd never experienced anywhere else in Florida or in Tennessee, the only other state where he'd ever lived.
Then there were the nuns at the mission, exceptional women who were devoted to the migrant children with a passion that burned so strong that he was in awe. And of course there were the kids, who were the main reason for the mission's existence in the first place. He had grown to love the children, two hundred or more of them, whose lives and futures held little good fortune and even less promise.
Of course, Sister Maria disagreed. "Many of them will succeed in ways that their parents have not. If we enable just one to finish high school, to go to college, to find hope in the midst of despair—then we have succeeded," she'd told him.
At first Jay didn't know if it was possible to change the courses of the migrant children's lives even with the single-minded devotion of the dedicated Sisters of Perpetual Faith. He only knew that art could make a difference and that self-expression was an outlet for young people who had no other way of getting their feelings out in the open. In this he was no less dedicated than the good sisters.
He could have been a partner in a busy Palm Beach law firm after he graduated from the University of Tennessee law school, but he'd turned down the offer. Instead, he now shared a partnership and a cramped office with another up-and-coming young lawyer, and their office was by no means located in the best area of Jupiter. He made enough money to support himself, and his practice was growing. The growth worried him. He didn't ever want to give up his work at Faith Mission School or renege on his commitment to Connie, his prize pupil.
The first time Jay had seen Connie Fernandez in class, she was tightly gripping a blue crayon and concentrating on a picture she was drawing. Her thick black hair curved over her cheekbones, and she had brushed it behind her ears from time to time with a distinctively impatient flip of the wrist. She was a beautiful child with that brown skin and black eyes, but that wasn't what had impressed him the most. It was Connie's sheer raw talent and her own placid acceptance of it that struck him on that first day. It was only later that he realized Connie's rare capacity for interpreting the human condition with her head as well as her heart.
Three years ago, when he had first remarked upon her, Sister Maria had told Jay that Connie was the brightest student in the third grade. Since then Connie had never earned less than an E for Excellent on any of her report cards.
Connie looked to him, her beloved art teacher, for guidance, and he'd done his best. One life, a twelve-year-old girl's life, hung in the balance. Art could be her salvation, so it was up to him to offer encouragement and show her that there were better ways to live than the way she was living now.
After Hildy ate her dinner and retired to her bed in the kitchen closet, Jay flipped on the stereo and flung himself down on the couch in the living room. He should throw in a load of laundry, clean up his studio, coax Hildy outside for a walk.
He should have, but he didn't do any of those things. Instead he pictured Lisa Sherrill, who looked like a child when she was wearing overalls, like a mother when she was taking care of children and like a temptress when she wore a short skirt. And who would have expected to find a temptress in the dining hall at the Faith Mission?
* * *
"Sister Maria, you can do me a favor," he said on the following Wednesday, his regular day at the mission.
"I'd give you the world if I could," she said, beaming up at him from the desk in her office.
He sat down in the chair across from her.
"I don't need the whole world," he said. "Only a phone number."
"I'd give you the phone number to heaven itself if you asked," she said. "But, then, we have other channels to God, so perhaps it's one of his angels you'd prefer to speak with."
"Maybe she is at that," he said lightly. "It's
Lisa Sherrill."
Sister Maria lifted an eyebrow. "Lisa Sherrill. Yes, she's delightful, isn't she?"
"Don't go getting any ideas," he warned.
"Ideas? Me? I'm sure you only want to discuss business with her, right?" Sister Maria blinked innocently at him from behind her bifocals.
"The children are going to paint panels for the dining hall. I need to discuss it with Lisa, and she's not in the kitchen this afternoon. Sister Clementine said that she's gone to West Palm Beach for a meeting," he said.
"Yes, a meeting of professional dietitians, I believe. Here it is in her personal folder—her land line and cell phone numbers." The nun scribbled on a scrap of paper and handed it across the desk to Jay.
"Thanks," he said.
"Jay," Sister Maria said when he turned to go.
He looked over his shoulder, saw that she looked unusually serious, and halted in the doorway. He turned around to face her.
"Jay, you really should have more of a social life. I worry about you," she said.
Sister Maria was the only person at Faith Mission who knew why he gave so much time to their work; the two of them had mined this conversational ground before.
"I'm fine, Sister," he said patiently.
"It isn't natural for a young man like you to hang out with a bunch of children and nuns."
"For me it is," he said quietly. "You know why."
"It's not a good enough reason. You deserve a life, and what you have isn't much of one by most people's standards."
"I don't live by most people's standards—not any more."
"I never want to lose you as a volunteer at the mission, but even I can see that it's not enough for you. If you're thinking of becoming friends with a young lady, you couldn't find a nicer one than Lisa. By the way, the advice is free."
"The trouble with giving me advice is that someday I may want to repay you with the same currency." His voice rose on a teasing note, and he grinned at her.
She laughed. "Fortunately, yours is always welcome. You don't know how happy we are to know a lawyer to call when we need one."
Sunshine and Shadows Page 3