Emerald Windows (9 page)

“It isn’t just you,” her mother said. “She’s quiet like that with everybody. She just needs to get to know you again. It would do her good.”

Brooke tried to see them without reproach, without the pain that fogged her vision. Too much time had passed to really go home and pick up where she’d left off. But as Nick had reminded her tonight, it was never too late for a second chance. And if Roxy really needed her…

“All right,” she whispered wearily. “I’ll come home.”

Her parents offered faint smiles, but there wasn’t a great deal of victory in their expressions. Too much had been lost between them. “I’ll have supper waiting,” her mother said, and kissed her on the cheek. “I know you haven’t eaten.”

Brooke nodded. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” she said. “I just have to get my things together and check out.”

“Okay,” her mother said awkwardly. She attempted a smile, and took a deep, uneven breath. “We’ll see you at home, then.”

“Yeah.”

Brooke watched her parents walk toward the door, stiff with the emotion they both held trapped inside. “Mom? Dad?” she said just before they stepped outside.

They turned back to her, and she saw the naked love in both their faces. Suddenly she forgave them for all the mistrust, and all the pain. “I’ll make you proud of me one of these days. I promise I will.”

Her parents only smiled sadly and left her alone.

CHAPTER
   

S
HADOWS SLID LIKE DANCING VISIONS
along the moonlit wall of Nick’s bedroom. It was almost midnight, but he felt about as sleepy as a hungry leopard. Wearily, he slung his feet to the ivory carpet and rubbed his eyes, then let his fingers slide down his face. His gaze drifted out the window, where a weeping willow blew and danced in the breeze with the same cadence as the shadows.

He got up and walked in darkness through the living room into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, letting its light spill out to illuminate the room. He propped his elbow on the door and peered inside, at the leftover pasta and a lone apple.

He stared vacantly at the food and thought of the sound of despair in Brooke’s voice tonight. He wondered if she was, indeed, all right. Of course she wasn’t, he decided, shutting the refrigerator and letting the darkness swallow him again. Because of him, there was a rift again between Brooke and her parents. He must have been crazy asking her to come back here.

He went to the telephone on the kitchen wall, braced his elbows on the counter, and closed his hand around the cool receiver. If he called her just to see how she was and woke her, would it be such a crime?

There were worse things he could do—like getting dressed and showing up at her door. He looked up the number for the Bluejay Inn and dialed it.

It rang four times before the desk clerk answered.

“Would you please connect me to Brooke Martin’s room?” he asked.

“Miss Martin checked out over two hours ago,” the man said.

“She did? Why? Didn’t she just check in?”

“All I know is what’s on my books,” the man said impatiently.

“Yes, thank you.” Nick hung up the phone, running a hand through his hair. His heartbeat accelerated to a threatening speed as thoughts spun wildly in his mind, all leading to the same conclusion.
She’s gone,
he thought.
She’s left again.

Before he’d consciously decided to do so, Nick snatched up the phone again and dialed information to get her number in Columbia.

“Hello.” She answered on the first ring, and he caught his breath, though his heart fell miles to his feet. “Brooke, why did you—”

“This is Brooke Martin,” her voice continued. “I’m not home right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number I’ll get back to you.”

A recording!
Nick realized with some relief. He heard the beep and hesitated a moment. “Uh…it’s Nick,” he said. “I called the motel and you’d checked out. I hope you haven’t gone home, Brooke. This is too important to give up on that easily. The windows, I mean. Don’t give up, Brooke. It’s worth whatever it takes to see it through. I really hope you haven’t gone home.”

Then, unable to think of anything else to say, he dropped the phone back into its cradle and rested his forehead on his palm.

He’d said too much. He hadn’t said enough.

Well, there was no way to know for sure if she’d gone home until tomorrow.

The trick, he thought, would be getting through the rest of the night.

His question answered itself the next morning when Nick looked up to see Brooke standing in his office doorway, shining like a ray of sunlight on a stormy day.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, falling back against his chair with relief. “You’re here.”

Brooke smiled. “Well, that’s some greeting.”

He came to his feet and leaned haggardly over his desk. He imagined that the dark circles he’d seen beneath his eyes in the mirror that morning were still there and that his anxieties were written in every gesture he made. “Where were you?” he asked, schooling his voice to sound calm. “I called you last night. They said you’d checked out.”

Brooke dropped her portfolio onto a chair. “My parents came by after I talked to you,” she said. “We sort of made peace, so I decided to go back.”

He stared at her for a moment longer, but as the simple truth registered, a slow grin spread across his face. “I thought you’d gone home to Columbia,” he said. “I thought you’d given up again.”

A poignant expression softened Brooke’s features, and she shook her head. “I wouldn’t abandon my partner without telling him.”

“Good,” he said finally. “We’d better get to work before the Hysterical Society gets here.”

Brooke’s smile died a little. “Too late. A few of them were driving up when I got here.”

“Terrific,” he said, coming around the desk.

He glanced out the door, shrugging. “Well, at least it can’t go on forever. They’re bound to run out of things to do soon.”

A few of the women walked by and tried to look as if they weren’t intentionally staring into the office as they passed.

“Morning, ladies,” Nick called in a pseudo-cheerful voice.

The women mumbled various greetings that their tones negated and walked on, looking for work to be done.

For the next hour, both Nick and Brooke tried to concentrate, but even with the door closed they could hear the incessant humming of power saws and electric sanders, of banging and crashing, of cursing and yelling over the noise. The office was becoming cramped and hot as they tried to spread out, and with each new panel they sketched, it became more cluttered.

When they’d been at it for over two hours, Brooke threw down her charcoal. “This is never going to work,” she said. “We need our workroom. That’s what it’s there for.”

“They should be finished today,” Nick said. “Things will be more normal tomorrow.”

“In the meantime, we aren’t really getting anything done. It’s a mess in here. I don’t know what I’ve done and what I haven’t.”

Nick leaned forward on his desk and propped his chin in his hand. “Look, why don’t we just use the time to go to St. Louis to start getting bids for the glass and lead?”

Brooke looked at the stacks of papers that depicted some, but not all, of the panels. Even the ones they had roughed out didn’t have details or exact colors—just the basic themes and ideas. “How can you order glass and lead when you don’t know how much you need yet?”

“I can give them a ball-park figure and get some bids going, and when we’re ready, we can give them exact amounts. Today’s as good a day as any.”

Nick’s offer was sorely tempting, but something inside held Brooke back. Idly she fingered the chains at her throat. “We can’t afford to waste time, you know,” she said. “I could take some of this home and work on it there while you go to St. Louis.”

“You’re the expert. I need you with me.”

A smile tugged at one side of her lips. “Don’t give me that.
You
taught
me,
remember?”

“True, but you’re the one who’s been doing it for a living. You’re way ahead of me.”

Brooke shook her head. “Never. In my mind, you’ll always be the teacher.”

Nick’s flip expression faded, and he looked down at his hands for a moment, then flicked a speck of dust off of his sketch. “I wish you could stop thinking of me that way. I haven’t taught in years.”

Brooke averted her eyes when he looked at her. “I wish I could too.” She came to her feet, dusted off her pants as if she could shake away the growing sense of intimacy. “But maybe it’s best that I do. It keeps the boundaries clear.”

Nick’s eyes were penetrating, waiting for her to look at him without defense. “Do you really need those boundaries, Brooke?”

Brooke tossed a wisp of hair back from her face. “We all need boundaries, Nick. They’re like the lead work on the windows. They help support us. They keep us from buckling and cracking with the weight of whatever we carry around.”

Nick nodded and looked down at his hands again, as if some script he needed to get through the day was hidden there, in the lines of his palms. Finally he got to his feet, too suddenly, too brightly, and clapped his hands together. “Well, all right, then. Let’s just take those boundaries and go to St. Louis. What do you say we take the Duesenberg?”

Aware that those boundaries were blurring with each hour, Brooke followed a few steps behind him as he led her past the workers and out into the sunlight.

A
bby Hemphill stepped over a dusty power tool that someone had neglectfully left lying at the entrance to the church and looked around for the culprit.
Who do these men think they are?
she wondered vaguely. From the way they slouched around, chomping on sandwiches and guzzling canned soda, you would think they owned the place.

It was a terrible day when one had to face the fact that the town’s oldest church had been turned into a loafing place for every idiot with a saw, as well as a rendezvous point for Nick Marcello
and that girl. It was a mockery to the solemnity of such a sacred institution.

Across the large room and through the corridor, Abby saw some of the ladies from the Historical Society. Straightening her hair and pristinely dodging cords and machinery, Abby made her way to the room where the ladies had congregated. “Well,” she huffed when she reached them, “it certainly is refreshing to see that not
everyone
is wasting time.”

The women looked up, all smiles and cordial greetings. They, at least, gave her the respect she deserved.

“It’s lunch hour for the construction crews,” Martha Inglish told her. “We were just thinking of going out to get a bite ourselves. But we couldn’t decide whether we could spare the time. Our two
artistes
—” she pronounced the word with great sarcasm “—are getting a little annoyed that they have to share work space with us. We thought if we hurried we could finish this today.”

“The Historical Society’s duties should come first,” Abby proclaimed. “Don’t let them bully you.”

“Oh, they aren’t bullying us,” Mrs. Inglish said. “In fact, we’ve hardly seen them in the last two days, since they’ve taken to locking themselves in his office. And we wouldn’t
dream
of interrupting them.”

The women snickered, but Abby didn’t find it at all amusing. “Locked in his office? Are you serious?”

“Well, not now. They left about two hours ago.”

“Have you actually
seen
them working? Cutting glass or whatever it is they do?”

The women all agreed that none of them had seen any work being done. “They just talked and whispered a lot—when we could hear them at all,” Martha said. “Who knows what’s been going on in that office?”

“That does it!” Abby spun around and started out the door. “I’m going to put a stop to this today!” She marched out like a woman with a divine mission.

CHAPTER
   

T
HE DUESENBERG’S ENGINE IDLED
conspicuously at the red light in downtown St. Louis, drawing admiring stares from the drivers around them. Nick had pulled the top down before they’d left Hayden an hour ago, and the wind and sun had infused more energy and liveliness into his tired face.