Nicole smiled and patted his knee. “It is sometimes necessary to follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter. I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I’d just showed up one day and tried to make you understand who I was.”
“And my mom?”
“Like we talked about already, your mom never wanted to believe the chair was real and didn’t want to be a part of it, didn’t want you or Shasta to be a part of it. Which meant she didn’t want you to be a part of me.”
Corin sighed. He’d been cheated out of so much. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t his mom’s choice to make, but she’d made it for him anyway.
“The only time she spoke of you was about how you were gone a lot.”
“Yes, my duties surrounding the chair kept me busy. There was too much travel. It’s what drove your grandfather away too.” Nicole smiled a sad little smile. “And I’m not sure what I accomplished. Your mom turned away from Christianity primarily due to my being gone so much, and you weren’t raised in the faith.”
“Why did you devote your life to it?”
“I didn’t feel I had a choice.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.” Nicole rubbed her forearms and stared at the water. “In my defense I can’t remember if I knew I had a choice at the time my mother passed the chair to me.”
“And do I have a choice?”
Nicole laughed and tilted her head. “Of course.”
Corin shifted on the bench. “What about Tori?”
“What about her?”
“She’s not a fan of the chair. She’s been so burned by religion.”
“Maybe she needs to sit in it.”
“I think that would take a miracle.”
Nicole looked at him with eyes wide open and eyebrows stretched to their limits.
Corin laughed. “I get it. Yes, I’ve seen a few lately. I suppose God could pull off one more.”
“Indeed He could.” Nicole stood. “I need to go. There’s someone I have to see. He needs to hear the truth. He needs to see the light.”
NICOLE DROVE TOWARD the Garden of the Gods praying for the right words. Words that would penetrate past the polished veneer, into the heart of Mark Jefferies.
As the mile markers flashed by, she let the sorrow of the time she’d missed with Corin and Shasta seep out of her heart into her soul. So much that was gone forever. Time with her daughter she’d never been allowed.
Nicole’s thoughts turned to the last time she’d seen Rachel. It was the last day she’d seen Corin and Shasta as well. She sat with Rachel at her breakfast table, having the same argument they’d had for the past three years.
“They need their grandma.”
“No, they don’t, Mother. I don’t need your strange ideas and obsessions filling their heads.”
“I need them.”
“You should have thought of that ages ago when that chair became the most important thing in your life.”
Rachel was right. The chair had consumed her. She’d lost her daughter because of it, and now she was in danger of losing her grandsons as well. “I’m sorry, Rachel, you’re right, I—”
“Fine. Nice. Good.” She brushed her dark blond hair back from her forehead. “Apology accepted. But it doesn’t change anything.”
“I’ve changed. I know—”
“Too late, Mother.” She glanced over Nicole’s shoulder.
Nicole turned toward the sound of shuffling feet to her right.
“You’re our grandma?”
Corin and Shasta stood staring up at her, eyes full of questions and a tinge of fear. Three and five. Full of innocent wonder.
“Yes.”
“How comes we don’t see you ever?” Corin said.
“I hope to see more of you in the future.”
“When?” Shasta said.
“I’m hoping this summer we can—”
“That’s enough, Mother.” Rachel turned and shooed the boys away. “Mommy needs to finish a conversation, so go find something to do.”
“Can we slide?” Corin said.
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yes, fine. Just give us a few minutes here.”
Corin and Shasta scrambled to the top of the stairs and moments later sat on a lumpy mattress at the top, goofy grins plastered on their faces. In unison they cried, “One! Two! Three! Launch!”
They lurched forward and the mattress spilled over the edge of the top stair. Corin and Shasta rode the mattress like an out-of-control toboggan, their eyes flashing joy only possible in the very young. They reached the bottom, skidded over the floor, and slammed into the wall across from the stairs.
“Again! Again!” Corin said.
If she were twenty years younger, Nicole would have joined them.
“I don’t like them doing it, but it’s the only way I can get them out of my hair for a few minutes,” Rachel said.
Her grandsons climbed back to the top of the stairs, lugging the mattress behind them.
“They’re so young. If you rid your life of me now, they might not remember me.”
“I don’t want them to remember you.”
Nicole forced her tears to stay inside as she stood and nodded to her daughter. “I see.” She turned and walked to the door, waiting for, praying for Rachel to call her back. But her daughter’s voice was silent.
Nicole blinked and the memory faded. She’d wondered what she would tell Mark when they met. Now she knew; she’d tell him what she’d learned too late in life. That an obsession with the chair was a path of despair unless it led to an obsession with the One who made it.
CORIN SWUNG OPEN the door to Tori’s dojo at 8:20 that night, enough time for any straggling students from her last class to have left. Kings of Leon blared from the four Bose speakers in each corner of the room. She stood at the counter with her back to him, tapping away at her computer, probably recording comments on each student’s performance that night or answering e-mails from aspiring black belts trying to get into her perpetually full class schedule.
He held the yellow roses he’d picked up on the way behind his back and eased toward her, his shoes silent on the sparring mat.
She laughed and said without turning, “True masters can see without seeing and hear when there is no sound.”
“How do you do that?”
“Quite well, thank you.” Tori turned and smiled.
“This is for you.” He handed her the flowers and she took the roses and rubbed them across her cheek. “Thank you. I accept your peace offering.”
“So gracious of you to receive it.” Corin gave a mock bow and returned her smile. “Can we sit?”
“Sure.” Tori came out from behind her counter and they walked toward the double row of white plastic chairs used for parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends who came once a month to see the students spar in a tournament.
They sat and Corin took both her hands in his, stared at her fingers, and rubbed them in his.
“So, you have something to tell me, or did you come down here just to give me a hand massage?”
He looked up into her eyes. “I want you to try sitting in the chair.”
Tori pulled her hands away and leaned back. “You are a stained and polished platinum piece of work.”
“What would it hurt to sit in it?”
“Why should I?” Tori tapped her feet on the floor almost fast enough to double as a drumroll.
“Because it might free you from your past.”
“What in my past do I need to be free of?” Tori folded her arms. “I got free when I left home.”
“Free of your resentment?”
“I’m not holding on to any resentment.”
“Right.”
Tori stood. “Listen to me closely. I’m done talking about the chair forever. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“And if we want to continue this relationship, talk of God is not going to be part of it. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
On the way
home Corin tried to call Tori three times. She didn’t pick up and he didn’t leave a message.
Another relationship on the rocks. He was getting good at denting them. But he’d fix Tori and he once this chair thing settled down. The dust had to land sometime.
But he was afraid the particles would soon be stirred to their greatest height yet.
CHAPTER 43
Corin stood in the back of his store shelving a new shipment of lamps when the bell on the front door announced the arrival of the last person he ever excepted to spill a shadow across his oak floor.
“Hello?” a voice from the front called out.
A voice he’d heard forever.
“I like what you’ve done with the place.”
Was it him? Had to be.
Corin jogged to the front, skidded to a stop at the end of the aisle, scanned the front of the store, and his pulse spiked. There. Right inside the front door. It was Dominique Shasta Roscoe.
His brother had hated the name Dom or Dominique from the moment he could talk. At eight years old he held up a can of his favorite drink at a family picnic—black cherry Shasta pop—and announced from that moment on his name was Shasta.
Corin stared at his brother for what seemed like ten minutes.
“Surprised to see me, bro?” Shasta tilted his head back and to the side.
Shasta’s dark brown hair was shorter than he’d ever seen it. It was almost a buzz cut. And his face was thin. “Utterly.” Surprise, fear, excitement all rushed through Corin’s brain like a flash flood.
Shasta punched the throttle on his wheelchair with his chin and surged toward him, the electric wheelchair shuddering as he bumped over the uneven wood floor.
“I need to get that floor smoothed out.”
“Why? Do you get a lot of incapacitated customers?”
Corin didn’t know how to respond and said nothing.
Shasta stopped five feet away and stared at Corin. “I’m surprised I’m here too.” His gaze moved slowly around the store. “How is business?”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’ll come back.”
Shasta nodded and the silence between them grew louder. Corin looked at his hands, then back to his brother. “I hope so.”
Another segment of silence.
“Robin tells me you’re dating a nice gal. Tori, is it?”
“Yeah.” Corin rubbed his eyes with the tips of his thumbs. The conversation was straight out of Insipid Talks for Any Occasion. “We could probably make small talk for the next two hours, but I’m not really up for it.”
“In other words, why am I here?”
“I think I know why you’re here. But I have no clue what changed your mind.”
“I’m here to go for a ride I’ll never forget.”
“But what changed your mind?”
“You did.”
“Not when we were on the phone.”
“No. After.” Shasta wheeled his chair another foot closer to Corin. “What I had to face after we talked was the fact you’d been healed. Not someone else. Any other person I couldn’t believe, but you, I do. And no, it wasn’t a physical healing, but you’ve fought your claustrophobia most of your life. If it’s gone, some type of miracle happened to you. If there’s any chance of a miracle happening to me, I have to take it. For Robin. For Sawyer.”
Shasta whirled and faced the front door as if to say that conversation was over.
“But not for you and me.”
Shasta didn’t turn back. When he spoke his voice was subdued. “No.”
Corin pressed a knuckle into his chin. Shasta wasn’t here to start building a bridge between them. He wasn’t even willing to look at a set of plans. And there was nothing Corin could do to force his brother to put on a construction hat.
But if Shasta was healed . . .
Movement outside his front window drew his attention. Robin paced next to the elevator lift built into their red van, looking almost as thin as Shasta. Probably on a continual stress diet taking care of Sawyer and Shasta. She glanced everywhere except into the store.
It didn’t surprise him.
She would do anything asked of her to help restore his relationship with Shasta, but if he knew his sister-in-law—and he did—she wouldn’t pry into what kind of verbal volley was going on inside the store.
“The chair isn’t here.” Corin turned back to Shasta. “Do you think Robin would mind swapping vehicles with me for a few hours while we take yours to my house?”
“Nope.”
When they reached Robin she grabbed Corin in a fierce hug and whispered, “I’ve prayed for this. I told you to never give up hope.”
Corin hadn’t almost given it up. He’d given up completely, but now it returned, full force, and was giving him a bigger rush than he’d ever had shattering the edges of his extreme-sports adventures.
It didn’t matter that Shasta was still icing him out of any chance at restoring their friendship. Within forty minutes his brother would sit in the chair.
And Corin would believe in Shasta being healed.
On the ride out to Corin’s, silence was in much greater abundance than conversation but he didn’t mind. It was a chance to talk with God.
Look, God, I don’t know how to pray and I don’t care. I hope You don’t care either. I have to assume You helped set up the circumstances to get Shasta to my store. So if that’s true and You’re part of this . . . just don’t let me down, okay? Don’t let him down.
Heal him, please? Restore us to the way we were before. I want him back.
A peace settled on Corin he’d never felt before.
He glanced at his brother. His brother. Riding alongside him in a car. How long since that had happened? The day of Shasta’s accident, of course. One drive toward disaster, the next drive toward possible restoration.
But what if there was no restoration? What then? Corin tried to push the thought from his mind but it pounded back like the elastic cord on one of his bungee jumps.
C’mon, God, this has to work.
When they reached the house, Shasta’s lift lowered him to the driveway. “I moved the chair from my basement to a hidden bunker I built back when I was making serious bank. It’s a place for priceless artifacts I want kept absolutely safe. No one knows about it and I had to put it in a place where no one would find it. It’s about fifty yards behind the house over rough terrain, which means I’ll have to carry you.”
“Fine,” Shasta said, but he didn’t look at Corin.
“Ready?”
Shasta nodded, his eyes dead. “Sure.”
He hoisted Shasta out of his chair and almost dropped him a moment later from shock. So thin. More bones than flesh. He couldn’t weigh more than 115 pounds. Didn’t he eat?
“Am I doing this right?”
“It doesn’t hurt. No feeling from the neck down, remember?”
“But still—”
“I’ll survive. My physical therapists thrash me much harder than you will. I haven’t turned completely into china yet, and you’re much gentler than a bull.”
When they reached the bunker Corin set Shasta next to an aspen tree next to the entrance and pushed the remote in his pocket. A section of the earth slid back to reveal a narrow set of stairs descending underground.
He tromped down the stairs, opened the bunker door, scrambled back up to Shasta, and picked him up. “It’s going to be different this time.” The words slipped out of Corin’s mouth before he could stop them. He’d inadvertently let his hope spill out and splash all over Shasta.
He guessed hope was pressing in on his brother as well, but Shasta was probably resisting. Too much pain, too many times of trying when the healing didn’t happen.
Corin carried Shasta down into the room and set him in a kitchen chair five feet from the chair.
Shasta gazed at the chair for a long time saying nothing. Finally he said, “So this is the miracle maker.”
; “I hope so.” Corin eased over and touched the back of the chair. Nothing. “Are you ready?”
“Sure.”
Corin lifted his brother and set him on the chair like he was placing a baby into his mother’s arms for the first time.
“You’ll need to hold me, keep me from falling over.”
“Of course.” Corin held his brother’s shoulders and closed his eyes.
There was nothing to say, no instructions to give.
Ten minutes later Shasta said, “How do I know when it’s long enough?”
“I don’t know.” Corin sighed. “Do you feel anything?”
“No.”
Shasta’s voice wasn’t sad, wasn’t hopeful, wasn’t anything.
“Believe with me, Shasta. Think of the deepest thing you want.”
Shasta’s raspy breathing was the only noise in the room for the next three minutes.
“Anything?” Corin asked.
“Nothing.” Shasta coughed. “What should be happening?”
“It’s been different each time.” Please, God, heal him.
Corin didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. Where was the peace and the lights and the warmth?
Ten minutes later Corin carried his brother out of the bunker at his request, across the lawn, and put him in Shasta’s red van. They didn’t speak on the way back to Corin’s shop.
Before he and Robin drove away, Corin stood at the passenger side window trying to find the right words. “The healings have all come after sitting in the chair, not at the time the people sat.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll call me if anything happens?”
“Of course.” Shasta squinted up at him. “You’ll be the first.”
Would God come through? No idea.
But as the van pulled away Corin couldn’t shake the feeling that was the last time he’d talk to his brother for another age.
CHAPTER 44
Corin was pouring over his sales figures in his office, trying to find even one statistic that offered hope when he heard the front door open softly. Problem. He glanced at his watch. Ten fifteen on a Thursday night? A little late for shopping. But maybe not too early for a little breaking and entering.
The Chair Page 24