A Broken Kind of Beautiful (18 page)

Bruce walked down the hall, whistling.

Luke made to follow.

“Is she your daughter?” Ivy asked.

“Yes.” Luke’s word came out slow. Unsure.

“Do you love her?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What kind of question is that?”

Bruce stopped whistling and did an about-face. “Ivy, what are you doing?”

“Do you love your daughter?”

Luke’s confusion gave way to indignation. “Of course I love her.”

“Then don’t let her do this.” She turned to Tatiana and told her what James and her mother and Bruce should have told Ivy years ago. “Be a kid, Tatiana. Enjoy your life. Laugh and play and climb trees. The world doesn’t need another sex symbol.”

Bruce grabbed Ivy’s elbow. “Thank you for that eloquent speech.” He smiled at Luke, then the girl—as if to reassure them—turned Ivy sharply and marched her to the front door. “If you weren’t my niece, I’d drop you right now.”

“Aren’t I lucky. To have such an understanding, compassionate uncle.” She breathed the belligerent words in his face and stomped out of his office.

17

Sweat trickled between Davis’s shoulder blades and down his face as he pounded the hammer against the shingles of Cornerstone Church’s roof. They’d need a new one soon. His temporary patch jobs during hurricane season only helped so much. The late morning’s brightness lost its edge, offering a brief respite from the heat. But the humidity remained. The sun must have slid behind a cloud.

Davis shifted a few feet over and resumed his pounding, hoping enough whacks with his hammer would tire the chaotic thoughts tumbling through his mind. Surely a morning of hard work would sweat the chaos right out of him. The brightness reclaimed its potency and pressed hot fingers against his back. The cloud, apparently, was not a large one.

“Are you upset with that roof?” The voice of Pastor Voss halted Davis’s hammer in backswing. He looked over the church’s rusty gutters—which would also need fixing sooner rather than later. Pastor Voss stood in front of a flower bush, clutching two bottles of Snapple in one hand, shielding his face like a visor with the other. “It’s a hundred degrees down here. I hate to think what it’s like up there. Why don’t you come down and take a break?”

Davis brought down the hammer. A couple of weeks after his evening in the sand next to Ivy, and his mind had yet to regain equilibrium. Time and distance didn’t help. Sweating didn’t either. Would talking? The hammer clattered against the roof. He shuffled toward the ladder and clanked his way down the metal rungs.

Pastor Voss met him at the bottom and handed him a sweaty bottle of tea. Davis twisted off the cap and took a long swig. The cold sweetness soothed his parched throat.

“I think the whole of Greenbrier heard you whapping away at that
thing.” Pastor Voss nodded toward the front doors of the church as the air-conditioning unit rattled to life. “Let’s go inside and drink these. I need a break from sermon prep. It’s going in circles.”

Davis followed, unsticking his sweat-soaked shirt from his chest and mopping his brow. When he stepped inside the church lobby, the cool air crashed against his skin.

A chuckle rumbled from Pastor Voss as he turned into a narrow hallway. “So, Davis, my youngest daughter seems to think you’re engaged. You need me to perform the ceremony?”

“Ha. Ha.”

“If I don’t laugh at her antics, I’ll cry. Don’t feel much like crying today.”

Davis followed him to his small office, where books of every size and color wrestled for space on the bookshelves. Some lost the battle and ended up on the floor or stacked in crooked piles on the desk. Pastor Voss settled into a brick-red chair. Davis eased to the edge of the chair’s twin, careful not to get his sweat all over the cushion.

“If you can believe it, your grandfather invited me for a round of golf this morning. Doc warned him the heat would give him a heart attack. I think the man’s nuts.”

“He’s nuts for golf, all right.” Davis took another long drink.

Pastor Voss did the same and pulled the glass bottle away with a crisp “Ahh.” He set it on the small end table squished between the two chairs. “So what’s bothering you?”

“What do you mean?”

“All last week you brooded, and now you’re beating my roof to death. Something’s on your mind, and I think you ought to let it out.”

Davis tried to hold a grin on his face, keep things light, but his lips slipped into something that felt more like a grimace. “Is this going to be a therapy session?”

“If that’s what it takes to keep you from tearing down my church.”

If he needed therapy, he could have called Jerry, a buddy on his slow-pitch softball team who was a licensed therapist. But what good would any of that do? Talking wouldn’t save Ivy from the pain she’d displayed all those nights ago. Talking wouldn’t erase the past or the desire accumulating in his chest. He pushed air from his lungs and tapped his heel against the carpeted floor. “I’m not sure where to start.”

“At the beginning is usually best.”

A beginning implied his problems didn’t all melt together. Davis searched the ceiling, like the heart of the matter pulsed somewhere in the tile. “When Sara was two, Mom took her pacifier away. A month later, Sara got bronchitis and couldn’t sleep. So Mom gave the pacifier back. She tried to explain to Sara that she couldn’t have it back forever, just for a little while, until she got better. It was harder the second time Mom took it away. Sara fought for it longer.”

A crease folded itself between Pastor Voss’s eyebrows.

Davis bent over his knees and stuck his hands in his hair. “I feel like an idiot for picking up my camera again.” Words built in his lungs—lots and lots of them. And on an exhale, before he could stop himself, they gushed out.

“The only reason I agreed to do this work for Marilyn is because of Sara and that art program, but now I can’t stop thinking about my camera or Ivy. She left a couple of weeks ago, and we have no idea if she’s coming back. Life would be easier if she didn’t come back, but the thought of not seeing her again depresses me, and that, in and of itself, is problematic. I promised Marilyn I’d finish this project, which means taking more pictures, and my editorial will come out in
Southern Brides
any day now.”

Winded from his fast-paced monologue, Davis took a deep breath and looked up at Pastor Voss. But Pastor Voss didn’t move, except for his eyelids, which blinked like drips from a leaky faucet. “That’s a lot that needed to get out.”

And Davis didn’t feel one ounce better for it. He slapped his hands against the armrests. “I should get back outside and nail down the rest of those shingles.”

Pastor Voss set his hand over Davis’s. “Those shingles aren’t going anywhere.”

Neither was this conversation.

“Why are you worried about your editorial coming out in that magazine? Did the pictures not turn out as you hoped?”

“No, actually, they turned out better than I’d hoped.” When he turned them into Joan Calloway two days after the shoot, she had gushed. Davis looked over Pastor Voss’s desk at the large black-and-white photograph mounted on the wall. Not Jesus or the cross, like a person might expect. But a little boy inside a barn. Light shone through the slats. The small kid crouched near the ground, peeking through to the world outside. The photographer had captured the lines and angles of warped wood in precisely the right way.

“So what’s the problem, Davis?”

“My grandfather thinks it’s ridiculous that I’m taking pictures again. He thinks the charity angle is a lame excuse to indulge myself.” In Davis’s weaker moments, he worried his grandfather was right.

Pastor Voss took a sip from his bottle.

“But I’m not.” Davis reached for his Snapple lid and rolled it in his fingers. “Am I?”

“Did you pray before you made your decision?”

“Yes.”

“And you felt God nudging you to do this?”

God nudging him? Davis wasn’t sure what that felt like, especially since two years ago, he would have sworn God never wanted him to touch a camera again. Not after what happened. “It felt like something I should do, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“I’m worried I won’t be able to stop this time. When the campaign ends. Or that the process will be even more painful the second time around, like with Sara and her pacifier.”

“Why should you stop?”

“You know why.” Davis flicked the bottle cap toward the trash can near the door. It bounced off the rim and landed inside.

“Why did Ivy go back to New York?”

“Her friend died. She left for the funeral.”

“Poor girl.”

Davis examined the floor. “Did you ever meet her as a kid?”

“Can’t say that I did.”

“She’s so much different now. But also sort of the same.” Five years of high fashion in New York City had turned Davis into a shadow of his former self, and he’d gone there as an adult. Not at the impressionable age of fourteen. “When I look at her, I can see her chains, but how is she supposed to find freedom when she’s in love with them?”

“Don’t mistake love for need. Everybody needs to hold on to something. Sounds like that gal’s holding on to the wrong thing.”

Davis scratched his jaw. “I just can’t imagine her accepting anything we might have to offer.”

“That’s the great thing about God, Davis. Her acceptance isn’t up to you or me. All we can do is show His love, share His truth, and let Jesus take care of the rest.”

“But you don’t know what she’s like. You haven’t seen how she acts toward me.” His skin flushed as he remembered her body draped over his in the car when she finagled their way into the Primrose Plantation. Her winks. Her coy smiles. Her not-so-subtle touches. “I’m not so sure God wants me spending time with somebody like her.”

“Jesus hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes.”

“Yeah, but did the prostitutes ever come on to Him?” Davis’s insides squirmed. How could he help Pastor Voss understand? He drained the rest
of his drink and wiped his palms on his shorts. “Do you have things in your past you’re not proud of? things that make you feel ashamed?”

“That’s what makes Christ’s death on the cross so personal.”

A frown tugged at Davis’s mouth. “This model, Ivy, she’s like a ghost. She’s like a walking memory of that time in my life, reminding me why I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Well, son, you know what they say about ghosts.”

“What?”

“Eventually, we all have to face them.”

Ivy lay on her couch as the air conditioner hummed to the silence. She adjusted the cool washcloth over her face. After returning from her fifth morning of go-sees, she’d pulled down all the shades in her apartment, hoping to conquer the headache throbbing in her temples.

They couldn’t have gone worse if she’d showed up in Marilyn’s pink pajamas with a shiny zit in the center of her forehead. She’d been surrounded by teenagers. Beautiful, perfect teenagers. Not only had she felt like a grandmother, she couldn’t stop replaying the scene she’d caused in Bruce’s office. She’d lived the last two weeks in a state of dread, going wherever Maya told her to go, avoiding Bruce for fear he would finally drop her. She obviously wasn’t an asset to him anymore. He had a hundred other models making him money. He didn’t need her.

Her stomach had tangled into such knots that she hadn’t even bothered going to the last go-see. Instead, she’d escaped to her apartment, hoping to float in a state of quiet nothingness. Hoping the darkness would squeeze everything else away. But worry followed her. If Bruce left her, if he told her to hit the road … Ivy shuddered. No, she couldn’t even think of it. She needed to rest before driving to the airport. She needed to rally before returning to Greenbrier.

Because she would return.

Not because Bruce told her to, though that was certainly reason enough. Not because she’d given her word. But because that’s all she had left. A wedding campaign in Greenbrier, South Carolina. She’d give that last remaining pinch of hope everything she had.

A knock sounded at her door.

Ivy wedged herself between the cushion and couch and pretended not to hear. With her lights off, maybe whoever it was would take a hint and go away.