Life Support (16 page)

Sandy Flats Church was located near the two-lane highway built over what had once been the main thoroughfare along the coast for the Indians and early settlers. Alexia turned into the driveway for the church. It was a picturesque building often featured on postcards of local places with historical interest. Two enormous live oak trees stood as sentinels close to the road. The stately trees framed the beauty of the building. The white structure had narrow, stained-glass windows and ornate molding along the rooflines that reminded Alexia of a gingerbread house, although not as ornate. Azalea bushes skirted the front of the building, and dune grass surrounded the parking lot.

Alexia stopped near the front entrance. A small black sign on an iron post pointed around the corner to the church office. She followed a brick path to a small white building constructed behind the sanctuary and connected to it by a short covered walkway. When she opened the door, a bell gave a quaint tingle, and she entered a small waiting room containing a single green leather chair and a matching sofa. A skinny, middle-aged woman with half-frame glasses and short brown hair looked up from an antique desk.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I'm Alexia Lindale. I have an appointment with Rev. Morgan.”

“About a wedding?”

“I wish,” Alexia said in an attempt at humor that was immediately lost on the church secretary. “It's about a divorce case. I'm a lawyer.”

The woman looked down her nose at Alexia. “He's in the sanctuary.”

Alexia chuckled to herself as she walked between the latticework that served as open walls for the covered walkway to the sanctuary. She suspected there would be further interrogation of Rev. Morgan by the dour-faced woman after Alexia left. She went into the foyer through a side door. Her nose immediately caught the smell of well-oiled wood and the slight mustiness that is unavoidable in buildings more than two hundred years old.

Then she heard the music.

Alexia stopped and listened. Within a few measures, she knew it was from
The Italian Concerto
by Bach. The sound that traveled through the wide opening between the sanctuary and the foyer had a richness and depth exactly like the recording she'd listened to the previous week. Bach's genius was undeniable and, when expertly performed, often revealed new facets of intricate beauty far beyond what the composer could have produced on a harpsichord.

Alexia loved classical piano music. She'd taken piano lessons as a child but never progressed beyond watered-down versions of Mozart sonatas. However, her limited talent didn't prevent her from developing an enduring appreciation for the scope of the piano's musicality. In law school, she listened to Rachmaninoff while studying casebooks or marking legal outlines with a yellow highlighter. Friends whose musical preferences were popular songs that repeated the same three guitar chords over and over accused her of being stuck-up. Alexia was unmoved. She jokingly maintained that the intricacies of classical music prepared the human brain for the complexities of the law. But her real motive had no secondary rationale. She loved music because it was the greatest form of beauty created by mankind. Others might like art or poetry. Alexia chose sound.

She set down her briefcase, took a few steps forward, and peeked around the edge of the opening for the sanctuary. A middle-aged man with curly brown hair was sitting in front of a grand piano. His head leaned forward as he bore down on a climactic passage. There was no music on the stand before him. Alexia drew back. She had no sense of reverence for a church building but held in awe the sounds coming from the piano. To intrude was out of the question. She sat in a small chair against the wall of the foyer, closed her eyes, and pretended she was in a symphony hall. Barbara Kensington's case could wait.

When the last notes faded, Alexia wanted to stand up and applaud. She stepped around the corner.

“Bravo!” she called out. “That was magnificent!”

The man looked toward her. He was wearing a simple blue shirt and blue jeans. He took a pair of glasses from the front pocket of his shirt and put them on.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“I'm Alexia Lindale.”

“Ted Morgan. Tell me how you like this.”

The pianist launched into a variation on the wedding march that featured an enhanced prelude and extra frills in the bridges between repetitions. Startled, Alexia walked down the aisle that separated the two narrow banks of pews. As she drew closer, she saw that the music minister definitely looked more like a musician than a preacher. His slightly disheveled hair was sprinkled with gray, and he had a few permanent furrows in his forehead. He had a finely shaped nose and wore wire-frame glasses that gave him a studious look. He cocked his head slightly to the side as he played.

“Would that work?” he asked.

“It's great, but I'm not getting married. I'm a lawyer who needs to talk to you about Barbara Kensington.”

Ted tapped the side of his head with his fingers. “Oh, I thought you were the woman who wanted to talk to me about the music for her wedding.”

Ted stood and extended his hand. Alexia shook it and felt calluses across the top of his palm. She remembered Gwen's comment that the minister also worked in construction.

“Sorry for the misunderstanding,” he said.

“My wedding day hasn't come,” Alexia responded. “But when it does, I know who I want to play the wedding march. I was in the foyer listening to
The Italian Concerto.
I've never heard it performed in person.”

“You recognized it?”

“Yes, I was listening to it on a CD several days ago.”

The minister nodded in approval. “What did you think of my rendition? I know there needed to be more contrast in dynamics.”

Alexia shook her head. “I'm not a critic, but I thought it was perfect. How did you learn to play like that?”

“I took lessons and practiced.”

Alexia laughed. “Me, too, so I know there's more to it than that.”

Ted smiled. “There is, but that's a long story.”

Alexia touched the shiny black top of the piano. “That's quite a piano for a small church.”

“It's a Steinway ‘B,' a seven-footer built in Hamburg in 1919. It doesn't belong to the church. It's mine.”

“It's beautiful. Where did you get it?”

“In Romania.”

Alexia removed her hand from the piano. “I do have a criticism about the way you played the wedding march. People will be more interested in your playing than watching the bride walk down the aisle. No woman wants to be upstaged at her wedding by a seven-foot piano.”

“I can do it straight.”

Ted began again and played in a ponderous manner that suggested the music was slightly beyond the upper end of his ability. He stopped and looked at Alexia.

“How was that?”

“Too typical. Something in between should work.”

“Over the years, I've learned to adapt to a lot of situations.” Ted closed the cover over the keyboard.

Alexia wanted to ask a follow-up question, but reminded herself why she had come. She sat down, opened her briefcase, and took out a legal pad.

“Can I ask you some questions about Barbara Kensington?”

“Sure.”

Forty-five minutes later, Alexia left with two sheets of handwritten notes and several question marks in the margins. Ted stayed behind in the sanctuary. He knew the young lawyer was dissatisfied with his answers to some of her questions. He'd refused to follow obligingly the path she'd marked out for him.

“I'll testify about Barbara's strengths as a mother,” Ted told her. “But if her husband's lawyer asks me about her weaknesses, I'm not going to cover for her.”

“Does the same apply to her husband? Will you talk about his weaknesses, too?”

“If you ask the right questions, and I know the answers.”

“Will you appear without being subpoenaed?” Alexia asked.

“Yes, but please give me as much advance notice as possible.”

“Of course,” Alexia said efficiently as she put her legal pad in her briefcase and snapped it shut. “Thanks for talking to me. I'll be in touch.”

Ted watched the lawyer leave, not knowing how radically he had departed from the stereotypical mold for ministers. To her credit, Alexia didn't bristle or bluster when he disagreed with her that the Kensingtons' marriage could be saved with the right combination of willingness to change by both parties and input from a skilled counselor, but he suspected she wouldn't contact him about the court date. He was a loose cannon she wouldn't want rolling around on the deck of her case.

Ted's perspective about divorce was not solely the product of his theological training. Carved on his heart were wounds from the disintegration of his own marriage many years before. His wife had hired a female lawyer who attacked Ted with zest and made his life miserable for several months. The sharp pain of those days was gone, but he still felt an occasional deep ache, and nights were still often lonely no matter how many had passed by in solitude. Intellectually, he believed the love of God filled all voids. In practice, his beliefs and feelings didn't always agree.

The afternoon sun had dipped below the trees, and the sanctuary filled with silence for the evening. Ted heard the church secretary's car drive across the parking lot. The prospective bride who was going to talk to him about her wedding hadn't shown up. He could have been mistaken about the day of her appointment and would have to check the church calendar in the morning. Keeping a detailed schedule was not his strong suit.

Ted sat quietly on the piano bench for several minutes, letting his thoughts meet the spiritual mood of the moment. It wasn't a game of hide-and-seek with God, but there was truth in the admonition to wait patiently for the Lord. The object of Ted's spontaneous playing was not merely to create a pleasant sound within the parameters of music theory. He wanted to play with purpose. Sometimes the notes reflected the desire of his own heart; at others they glorified him to whom all praise is due. But always, Ted played for an audience of One.

The seed of a sound began to vibrate in Ted's spirit. He smiled. A seed was enough. From it could grow the planting of the Lord. His hands touched the keys, and his spirit rode the notes as they soared from a small spot on earth into the limitless expanse of the heavens.

14

Full well the busy whisper, circling round, conveyed the dismal tidings.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

A
lexia turned on the stereo in her bedroom and put in a compact disk. Listening to Ted Morgan play the piano had put her in the mood for a musical evening. She had an extensive collection of performances by Russian pianists Sergei Rachmaninoff and Ignacy Paderewski. Their early recordings had been digitized and improved through modern technology so that she could listen with greater clarity than a 1960s music lover who owned a stereo system costing thousands of dollars.

Looking through her collection, Alexia found the composition by Bach that Ted had played at the church and loaded it into her machine. The pianist on the recording played it slower than Ted, but she liked the minister's interpretation better. Bach was a religious man, and it made sense that someone who worked in a church would have a superior understanding of the composer's true intent.

As she listened, Alexia thought about the music minister. Without question, Ted Morgan was a paradox—a man whose remarkable talent lay hidden in Santee like a pearl oyster in tidal mud. Alexia was intrigued by him, not in a romantic way, but by the presence of sensitive genius wrapped in a package with callused hands.

She would not ask Ted to come to court. His testimony might prove to be a hindrance to her agenda for Barbara Kensington, and Alexia didn't win by taking risks. She strictly adhered to the legal maxim “never do anything that might hurt your case more than it helps it.”

Misha pattered up the stairs, jumped onto Alexia's bed, and curled up in a furry ball. Boris didn't budge from his cedar bed in a corner of the living room downstairs. The dog's sensitive hearing didn't translate into an appreciation for fine music. His ear was more attuned to the sounds of wild creatures creeping along the ground outside the house or Alexia's voice announcing that it was time for a swim.

Alexia replaced Bach with Rachmaninoff and closed her eyes while the performer serenaded her with
Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 43
. It was an amazing composition. The complete work contained thirty-four variations, but Alexia's favorite was number eighteen, a short but incredibly beautiful melody that took the listener from quiet intimacy to rapturous heights of grandeur. When it was over, she turned off the music and turned on her computer. It was time to do the final research for her upcoming trip to France.

Alexia loved to travel; however, her decision several months before to visit the Provence area of southern France had a secondary purpose. She wanted to prove to herself that Jason's ability to hurt her had ended. She wasn't sure how she would feel when she arrived in Marseille, but she was determined that when she left, she would be free from the last emotional links to her former fiancé.

She had located several villages with charming places to stay off the beaten path and narrowed her top choices to four spots where she made reservations. She would be traveling in rural, non-English-speaking areas but knew enough French to avoid starvation and ask for directions.

Time slipped by as she looked at computer-generated pictures of vineyards, horse-drawn carts, and quaint inns. Misha was fast asleep at the foot of the bed. Alexia yawned and went downstairs to let Boris go outside for a few minutes. She stood on the deck in the dark and listened to the dog crashing through the underbrush behind the house as he followed an interesting scent. It was comfortable outside. The temperature didn't drop rapidly at night along the coast because of the stabilizing influence of the water. She let Boris romp a few extra minutes before calling him. He came running up the steps.