Emerald Windows (29 page)

Warm in the peace that washed over her, she fell asleep on his couch, with his Bible open next to her.

CHAPTER
   

T
HE RENTAL CAR WAS A FAR CRY
from the Duesenberg Nick had left town in. From now on, his Buick would be his only car, and that space in the garage would be empty. He looked down on the seat next to him, and even in the darkness, he could see the check with all those zeroes staring up at him. Would his grandpa have approved of what he had done? Nick missed him now more than he ever had. The memory of the tearful boy standing over his grandfather’s deathbed came back to him with heart-wrenching force.

“How do you
just
stop loving someone, Grandpa?”

His own words played in his mind, as if it were yesterday, begging the haggard old man not to die.

“You don’t stop loving them, Nicky. That’s not what the Lord intended. You remember them, because you gonna see ‘em again.”

“But I don’t want to remember you, Grandpa. I want you to be right here. With me.”

“I wish that could be so, my boy. But I’m tired…I’m ready to go home.”

He had wept that night when his mother drew him from his grandfather’s bedside. And later, when the man he loved most in the world had passed into another world, he had felt it as a cold jolt in his soul.

Later he discovered that his grandfather had left him more than a memory. He had left him his car, the most treasured possession he had, even though Nick was years from driving age.

Tears filled Nick’s eyes as he took the Hayden exit, and he blinked them back, determined not to weep over his grandpa again. He had done what he had to do to finish the windows.

The car was gone now, but his grandpa was not. He was still here, in Nick’s memory and his heart. His grandpa’s voice would never die.

“Joy is free, Nicky, but-a happiness has a price. It takes a big man to recognize its value.”

He wondered if he had what it took to be happy. He’d been going to great lengths to get the money for the windows, but the Lord had shown him today that he was doing it more to be with Brooke than for any offering to God.

It had taken Nick days of wrestling with the Lord to understand that the windows had to just be about His Father. And if he wanted it to be a pure offering, then he had to give up any idea of a relationship that wouldn’t work. Brooke wouldn’t understand that offering to His Father, and she wouldn’t be able to share that passion for his work with Him. Only a Christian could understand. That created too big a breach between them. He hadn’t wanted to see it.

Exhausted from lack of sleep, he navigated the dark streets of Hayden and pulled into his neighborhood. The lights and lines and shadows looked different from the perspective of this different car…more dismal…more opaque. He reached his house, saw that he had accidentally left the garage open, so that he could pull the Duesenberg right in to shelter it from harm. But the Due-senberg was now a part of a grand collection of classic cars.

He pulled the rental into the garage, cut off the engine, and sat in the dark for a moment. How long had he been gone? Two days? Three? Had Brooke been looking for him, or had she given up and gone back to Columbia to forget about him and the windows? Was that the way the Lord wanted it?

He picked up the check and the box on the seat next to him, got out of the car, and went to the door. It was unlocked. Had he forgotten to lock up when he’d left?

He went into the kitchen, set the box and the check on the counter, flipped on the light, and looked around to see if everything was still in place. The studio was intact, though it looked as if someone had been there. He stepped into the room, flipped on the lamp, and noted that all of his works-in-progress were still in place. He turned to the living room, and his eye caught something on his couch.

A blanket…a woman…

Brooke’s eyes opened, and she sat up in the half darkness, groggy as she looked up at him. She wore not a drop of makeup, and her eyes were red. Her hair framed her face in neglectful tangles. “Nick,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You came back. Are you…are you all right?”

He wanted to reach out and hold her, but his fatigue and confusion and his determination to follow God’s will were too strong. Instead, he stood stiffly back. “I’m fine,” he said. “I didn’t see your car. How did you get in?”

“Sonny let me in,” she said. “And he and Roxy took my car. I didn’t know where to look for you. I was so…worried.”

“You shouldn’t have been,” he said. “I just needed some time.”

“To do what?”

“To think.” His eyes were hard beneath the shadows cast by the lamp. “About you and us and the windows.” He slid his fingertips into his pockets and took a few somber steps closer. “About God’s plan for my life…and your life. Trying to raise the money for the windows kind of made some things clear to me.”

He saw the tears forming in her eyes, penetrating the shield in which he’d cloaked himself. “Nick, I tried to get the sculpture back,” she said. “I went back to the gallery and begged Helena,
but she had sold it. She wouldn’t give me the name of the other person who had bought it, and there was nothing I could do…”

He couldn’t look at her. “You shouldn’t have worried about it.”

“Nick, why are you so mad about this?”

“I’m not mad, Brooke. I’m tired. I haven’t slept since I left. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not in the best mood.”

“Because of the sculpture?” she whispered. “Nick, I only sold it so that we could go on with our work. So that I could stay in Hayden with you.”

“See, that’s what the Lord showed me. That raising the money, doing it for free, wasn’t about Him, but about us.”

“Nick, it was a sacrifice. An offering. Isn’t that good?”

“Not if we have the wrong motives. The Lord showed me that it has to
just
be about Him.”

“So…you don’t want to work with me? You want to get someone else?”

“No,” he said too quickly. “No, that’s not it. I want to work with you. But it needs to just be about work. About God.”

She stood there, stunned for a long moment, not knowing what to say. Finally, as if the silence was too stifling to endure, he grabbed the box he had brought in with him and opened it. Gently, he pulled out the sculpture, held it up to her.

She caught her breath in staggering relief. “You bought it back!
You
were the one who bought it! How?” she asked. “Where did the money come from?”

When he brought his eyes back to hers, all the anger was gone. “It came out of the offering I was going to give to the Lord. That’s when I started to realize how upside-down this whole thing is. Brooke, I sold my car to get the money for the windows, and then I used part of that to buy back the sculpture. What’s wrong with this picture?”

“You sold your car?” Her words wobbled on a faint wisp of breath, and she dropped her hands to her sides. “Oh, Nick.
Why?”

“For all the reasons we talked about when we agreed we’d do the windows for free,” he said wearily. “For the calling that I feel to do those windows. For the sacrifice I want to offer the Lord. But I ruined it.”

She took a step toward him, but he backed away. “Nick, you didn’t have to sell the car. We could have gotten the money some other way. We could have—”

“I wanted to do it,” he told her. “It was my choice. My offering.”

“And I wanted to sell the sculpture for the same reason. For the calling…and the sacrifice.”

His face twisted in pain as he tried to find the words. “Brooke, what I did was wrong. I shouldn’t have used what I had earmarked for God’s house to buy something that—in my eyes— symbolized our relationship. I got my eyes off God. I’ve repented of that, and He’s forgiven me. But He showed me the reality of our different values.”

“I value the sculpture!” she said, confused. “You think I don’t because I sold it, but I do as much as you valued your car.”

“I’m not talking about the sculpture, Brooke,” he said, turning his back to her. “I’m talking about our deepest beliefs. You said it yourself once. We don’t see things the same.”

She stared at him. “Nick, you should know that something happened tonight, when I was sitting here waiting for you. I prayed and told the Lord…”

He swung around at the words, meeting her eyes, but the heavy stone sculpture slipped out of his hands. He gasped as it fell to the ceramic tile floor with a bone-chilling crash.

Brooke cried out and fell to her knees, but it was too late. The fingers of the woman’s hand had broken off. “Oh, no,” she said, picking up the pieces. “Oh, no.”

He stood motionless, so stunned by his own careless failure that he couldn’t find his voice.

Brooke got to her feet, holding the broken sculpture in her hands like a wounded bird. There was no pleading left in her eyes, only a dull, exhausted glimmer of tears.

“Our relationship is your call, Nick,” she said. “But I’m still committed to the windows.”

Nick watched as Brooke cradled the broken sculpture in her hands and left Nick’s house to walk home.

CHAPTER
   

A
BBY HEMPHILL STOOD IN HER
Victorian gown at the front window of her living room, staring out through the vertical blinds and the wrought-iron webbing, to the houses up and down the street. Had they heard yet? Did they know that her son had sexually harassed a minor?

She turned from the window, hands shaking, and went to the sofa to fluff the pillows. Things could never be too neat. Never too ordered. If they were to come here— the police, the photographers—at least they would see that her house was immaculate, that her own life was without reproach, that she had tried to keep things sterile and secure.

Her mind drifted, and she sat down and stared at the portrait of her son on the wall amid those of her daughter before she had ruined her life. That morning, when his name hadn’t appeared in the newspaper, he’d considered himself off the hook. It hadn’t seemed to faze him that Brooke Martin and her sister had reason to press charges, spreading the news all over the front page. Hadn’t she hurt
the girl and her family in that exact way more than once? Wasn’t this their perfect opportunity for revenge?

Abby stood up and drifted into the dining room and, with the hem of her gown, polished a smudge off the table. It left a dull spot. Maybe it was time to have it refinished.

Would the news come out in the paper tomorrow? She felt panic rising in her throat. Would that be the day the police snapped cuffs on her son and dragged him to jail in front of the entire town of Hayden? Would that be the day her life was ruined?

She went into the study, to the little drawer where she kept her private things, and sifted through the articles there that she had been particularly proud of. Her son’s valedictory speech. Her husband’s educator’s award. The newspaper article condemning Nick Marcello and Brooke Martin.

She unfolded the yellowed article and re-read the headlines as they had appeared seven years ago: “Teacher Fired for Rumored Affair with Student.”

Pretty cut and dried,
Abby mused. Didn’t leave much room for doubt. But she knew now, as she had known then, that it wasn’t
exactly
the truth. And she had done nothing to correct it.

She found herself back at the window in the living room. Would the papers have a field day with her son? Would they too take the story a little further for drama’s sake and allege that her son was guilty of statutory rape?

The back of her neck prickled with a thin sheen of perspiration, and she released the top button of her gown and tried to take a deep breath. This must be how Brooke Martin felt the night before her story broke. The feeling of being trapped in a steel box with no air and no escape. It was a miserable feeling. Worse than torture.

Vaguely, Abby wondered if she could stop it all by forcing her son to apologize to Roxy…she could even go so far as apologizing to Brooke herself. Maybe she could even reconsider the budget for the church. Maybe she could find a way to bring the matter to a vote again.

Feeling a tiny bit better now that she stood at the brink of decision, Abby went to the phone and dialed her son’s house. His wife answered, her kind, gentle voice oblivious to the turmoil in her marriage, oblivious to the humiliation she might soon suffer. But Bill had been adamant about not warning her…for the sake of the baby, he’d said. Instead, “for the sake of the baby,” he was going to wait and let his wife discover the truth in the paper. The thought sent a jolt of anger through Abby. Bill still didn’t see that there were wages for his sins, consequences for his mistakes that he could be made to pay. He still didn’t believe the Martin girls would expose him.