Love Shadows (12 page)

Annie and Timmy stood spellbound, watching the exchange.

“I understand this is your first concert,” Sarah said in a deliberately friendly tone. “I hope you like it. I come every week.”

“I just heard about the concert.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Mrs. Beabots told me.” Luke glanced over to where Mrs. Beabots sat in her canvas chair, staring at the two of them. “So tell me, Sarah. Do you always pick up children at the park and buy them junk food?”

“It’s not junk!” Annie retorted. “It’s homemade. Fresh ingredients and all that.”

Luke couldn’t resist his daughter’s naiveté. “I suppose it is,” he said. “I guess I’m asking how it is that you picked up my kids.”

“I didn’t pick them up. I’ve come to know them pretty well, especially now that they’re in the choir.”

“I heard about that. But what do you have to do with that?” Luke asked.

“She plays the piano for us, Dad,” Timmy said. “She’s really good.”

Luke’s blue eyes were scathing as he looked back at Sarah. “Really?”

“Yes,” Sarah answered. Not noticing the storm in his eyes, she rushed on. “I’m sure you know Annie has a very mature voice, and I don’t think I’d be going too far out on a limb to say she’s quite talented. I’ve never heard a child’s voice quite like Annie’s. I was hoping to feature her as a soloist in the choir.”

“Soloist?” Luke barked. “She’s only eight years old.”

“I understand that, Luke, but our oldest child is only ten. The older kids aren’t very interested in choir practice. They’d rather play soccer and basketball.”

Luke shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “You can stop with the sales pitch right now, Sarah.”

“Sales pitch?”

Luke pursed his lips and whipped his head toward his children. “Kids, I need to talk to Miss Jensen alone. You stay right here. We’ll be back.”

“Sure, Dad,” Annie and Timmy replied in unison, their wide eyes glued on their father.

Luke walked Sarah up the hill to a group of soaring Maples.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re up to?” he snapped.

Sarah didn’t understand his meaning but she interpreted his tone succinctly. “Why don’t you make yourself clear, Luke?”

“Fine.” He leaned his face closer to hers, his eyes glaring at her. “I don’t like strangers buying things for my kids. I am perfectly capable of buying treats for them myself.”

“Stranger? We’re in group therapy together, and quite frankly, Mr. Bosworth, we’re more intimate with sharing our hearts than most people in committed relationships, if you ask me. I’m not trying to buy your kids, and I’m not trying to insult you. I like your kids. They’re great people. Which is more than I can say for their father. I came over here because I believe that your daughter is an amazing talent. I think she could go national. Global, if given half a chance. And I would like to feature her as a soloist in a Children’s Pageant I’m putting on as a fund-raiser for St. Mark’s Church, which desperately needs renovation. But since you haven’t been in the church for years, you wouldn’t know about that, either, would you?”

Luke’s frustration rose like magma in a volcano. He hated that she was making sense, and she’d nailed him on his abstinence from church. The idea that he was refusing to let his daughter’s talent be a charitable contribution made him seem as evil as Attila the Hun.

Luke redoubled his attack.

“Annie and Timmy tell me that you’re not a music teacher or an art teacher at all. You’re just a volunteer. I want to know what credentials you have to be telling my daughter she is exceptional in any way. All you’re going to do is build up her hopes for something that will only crush her and break her heart in the end, anyway.”

Sarah felt as if she was in the middle of round three of a boxing match, and for once she scripted herself as the scrappy underdog. She wasn’t about to let Luke land another punch.

“Okay, so I don’t have a B.A. in music, but I’m not deaf, Luke. Annie has something. I would like to help nurture her and encourage her in any way I can. The worst thing a parent can do is stifle a child’s creativity and talent. And that’s what I see you’re doing.”

Sarah could tell Luke was barely reining in his anger, and when he spoke it was through clenched teeth. “I’m not deaf, either. I listened to you when you spilled your guts at counseling. I believe you’re lonely and that this void you talk about in your life is killing you. I think you intend to use my kids to fill that void. You don’t have any kids of your own, so you think mine will do just fine. Well, it’s not happening. Got that? You can take your solos and pageants and shove them. Get somebody else’s kids. You can’t use mine.”

Sarah felt as if she’d been slapped across the face. One part of her psyche wanted to analyze his accusations, but the other part wanted to sock him in the jaw. “Since we’re being so truthful, then why don’t you take a long, hard look in the mirror, Mr. Bosworth. Your kids aren’t just growing up, they’re growing away from you. They’re seeking me out. They’re seeking Mary Catherine out, and anybody else who will pay attention to them because they can’t turn to their dad. He’s spaced out in some dreamland with his memories instead of taking care of them. Annie is sad and unhappy. She looks like she’s ready to burst into tears whenever I see her. She keeps her feelings locked inside, and yet she tells me she does everything she can for you, but you never notice. Timmy is totally lost. He has all kinds of dreams and I bet you don’t know a single one of them. And a lemonade and a cookie once in a while is not going to kill them!”

Sarah watched Luke’s hands as they began to shake so much he clenched them into fists. Determination furrowed a deep rut across his forehead, and his eyes blazed. She’d hit her mark, all right. She could tell he wasn’t even listening to her anymore. She doubted he would ever heed her words.

He started to speak and spittle sprayed from his lips. “I have rules in my house and they will abide by them. My kids don’t eat sugar at night and they don’t need you butting into their lives. We’re just fine.”

Sarah had heard all she wanted to hear. Luke would continue blasting at her all night long and would never hear her side of the argument, anyway.

“You are such a...dunderhead! I’m done here,” she shouted at him as Luke took a breath before his next tirade.

Luke took a step back. “Dunderhead?”

Sarah spun around and tromped down the hill toward her friends. She realized Annie and Timmy were staring at them, cramming popcorn in their mouths faster than they could chew, as if they were watching a scary movie.

“Bye, kids,” Sarah said as she marched past them. She put her hand to her cheek and realized it was on fire. She had never been this angry at another human being in her life, and she didn’t like it. It burned like battery acid in her stomach. She didn’t know how Luke dealt with the seemingly perpetual anger he harbored. Was it like this for him all the time? Was this what he was talking about when he said that his anger was eating at him? That’s what it felt like to her.

Sarah hadn’t had time to assess the meaning of the encounter with Luke, but suddenly she realized she was empathizing with him. Now she knew his kind of anger. She understood precisely what he was experiencing.

Sarah felt her anger at Luke was justified, however. He’d accused her of things that weren’t true, and he’d been insulting to boot. She wondered if she would feel better if she’d actually hauled off and socked him. He had it coming. The worst part was that he was utterly blind to his children’s needs. It was a big mistake to turn down her request to let Annie be soloist. Annie deserved a chance to try her wings.

Sarah also realized Luke was mad at the world, fate, God and the universe. He had no one he could punch out. No one to blast with curses and no one who would fight him back.

As Sarah approached her friends and watched their anticipation-filled faces transform to concern and worry, she realized she was taking on much too much of Luke’s burden. She’d always had a tendency to reach out to others and try to help when they were in need. Her mother had taught her that. Aunt Emily always did that. She’d never thought that being caring and giving was inappropriate behavior, but in the case of Luke and his children, it clearly was.

Sarah could only surmise that the best cure for the pain in her belly and the apprehension she felt whenever Luke came to mind was to stay as far away from him as possible.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

S
ARAH
CAUGHT
GLIMPSES
of the full moon outside her study window. A cloudless, inky-black sky was studded with twinkling stars. Sarah heard her mother’s voice, just as it had been when she was a child.

See those stars? Each one is winking at you, hoping you will make a wish on it.

Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about little Annie singing about wishes and stars. What was it like for that girl to want something so desperately and not be able to grasp even a wisp of it, all because her father was...
Did I actually call him a dunderhead?

Sarah plopped her chin in her hand and looked out the window.
Well, he was being one.

But there were other things Luke said that pinched at the edges of her ego. Was it possible that Luke was right about her? Was she so lonely and so involved in other people’s lives that she didn’t have the courage to jump-start her own? Was she living vicariously through Luke’s kids?

Were they only just another project for her, like the summer festival and the church?

Glancing down at the stack of whimsical booth drawings and the festival layout, she dug deeper into her own motivations. The past two years had been an emotional tempest for Sarah. Breaking up with James was difficult, but not insurmountable. In fact, she’d often admitted to her friends and her mother that she hadn’t been all that distraught when she left James. Too often she’d felt she was simply a prop for him—an essential ingredient in his rise to the top of his field. The large financial institutions and corporations he pursued liked their managers and directors to be “settled” and “stable.” James had “needed” her, he’d told her. Now Sarah realized just what he’d meant by those words.

Truthfully, Sarah had to admit she missed her architecture work in Indianapolis more than she actually missed James. Perhaps it was because they’d grown apart for so many years that when the final break came, there was no “them” to break. James had been swallowed up by the fast-paced financial world of Chicago. Sarah had started work for Charmaine and was struggling with the fact that her mother’s cancer was terminal. Sarah had worried, from week to week, about just how much time they had left.

All those months with her mother had been like sitting on a time bomb with the clock ticking and the countdown continuously being reset. Ann Marie made it through one more weekend. Then one more week. She had a rally. She went into atrial fibrillation and nearly died of cardiac arrest due to a reaction to a new medication. Then she rallied. She went into ventricular fibrillation and they were back in ICU.

Sarah hadn’t had time to mourn her breakup with James. Had she stowed her affection for James in some back alley in her heart, only to have it surface now? Was that what Luke represented to her? A substitute for James? Was she really so terrified of a future without her own family that she would want a man who was still so clearly in love with his dead wife and didn’t want a thing to do with her or almost anyone else?

Am I really that desperate?

Taking out her charcoals, Sarah worked on her sketches for the festival, trying to quiet her mind, but the effort didn’t work. Between sketching a fanciful, 17th century Spanish coffee house booth, which she hoped to convince Scott Abbott to rent for Book Shop and Java Stop, and penciling out the cost of each booth, Sarah had a revelation.

James had always said he needed her. Why would those words mean more to her than “I love you?”

Truth, when it comes to call is not always a welcome visitor, Sarah realized. And Sarah had always needed to be needed. How could she have missed that about herself?

She had always been the acquiescing girlfriend to James, helping him climb the ladder of success. Even in high school, she’d campaigned for him when he ran for student council president.

She had cared for her mother, but to the detriment of her lucrative and fulfilling career. She had liked the attention she got from people who praised her “sacrifice” for her mother. She had not been rejected. She had been accepted for what she had done.

Luke had seen past her manipulation and had nailed her motivations for what they were. Self-serving.

Sarah didn’t like the fact that he saw through her one bit.

She felt like an amoeba in a petri dish, ready for inspection. She squirmed on her work stool, feeling acutely uncomfortable.

This new perspective of herself caused a bit of shock. Sarah’s mother was the most giving person she’d ever known, and she couldn’t help but wonder if need was what had motivated Ann Marie, as well.

Sarah quickly dismissed the notion. Ann Marie shied away from accolades and thanks for her kind deeds. In fact, she went out of her way to keep her donations to the city and to her neighbors secret. She’d planted flowers and tulip bulbs for elderly neighbors without their knowledge. They would wake up on a Sunday morning and find their hedges clipped and their flower beds lush with annuals. She befriended young Lester MacDougal when he walked into Indian Lake from the Kentucky hills as a runaway from a brutal father. She never asked a thing from Lester in return, though he was always around when Ann Marie was tending the community flower planters downtown. Ann Marie did many things anonymously. That was not a trait of a person who was needy. Her mother’s accomplishments brought her joy—just as Sarah felt joy when working with the children’s choir, organizing the festival and even building a case for a loan for the money to renovate St. Mark’s. Her mother was not a needy person. Ann Marie’s motivations had come from a deeply caring and committed heart.

Sarah knew that her mother’s shoes were impossible to fill. She was trying with the summer festival, and though she couldn’t accomplish what she needed to by remaining anonymous, she didn’t think she was being neurotically needy. Sarah only knew that at this juncture, despite the late and nearly sleepless nights she’d spent working on the festival and her renovation ideas for the church, Sarah hadn’t been this content in a long time.

Rifling through the pages of her past for hours that night had resulted in one conclusion. Sarah and James were not meant to be. She had no remorse where he was concerned. She truly wished him well, and hoped he found love in his new life.

No, she assured herself. She was not pining for James and she was not using Luke as a substitute. She responded to Luke with emotions she hadn’t known she possessed. It was because of her growing attraction to Luke, even though he was angry, that she realized she and James had only been friends. Their relationship was fed by habit. Luke was a man who felt deeply and was compassionate, and when he loved, he loved forever. He was a man of commitment and responsibility—both traits Sarah admired.

Sarah supposed these counseling sessions, their reading materials and even her new creative outlet, were driving her to explore these introspective moments, as painful as they could be. Yet even as she trudged through the muck of her faults, Sarah realized she felt more self-reliant and in control of her life.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized she had not used Annie and Timmy for any ulterior motives of her own. She sincerely liked them both and she wanted the best for them. If there was any motivation for the things she’d said to Luke at Arts in the Park, it was that she wanted to encourage the children. All children needed reassurance and inspiration.

She wasn’t being selfish where the children were concerned, and she wasn’t pointedly trying to fill a void, though that was happening. Someday, she would meet someone special and she would have the love she wanted for herself. She would have children of her own.

Sarah looked up and saw that a horsetail cloud had swept across the moon and obliterated some of the stars from view. Peeking through the whisper-thin cloud, she saw Venus sparkling as if it was meant for her.

Venus was the planet of love—a big, important star, and just the right one for Sarah’s wish.

* * *

S
ARAH
STOOD
AT
the podium in St. Mark’s and gave an impassioned plea to the congregation about the church’s need for renovations. Surprisingly, she was met with loud applause.

“I have spoken to Father Michael, who has graciously given his approval. Before speaking to you today, we conducted an emergency meeting of the Church Council, who has also agreed that the renovations are desperately needed.”

Sarah had gathered some of her old brass and wood easels from the attic and brought them to the church that morning, setting them up in the vestibule. She placed her poster-size drawings and renderings of her vision for construction changes on a first set of easels. Before the service, she’d already received awe-filled looks and generous compliments on her work. It was a hopeful sign.

On a second set of smaller easels, she placed her drawings for her summer festival concept. The children were more than enthusiastic and she saw that some of the parents expressed delight over her ideas.

“Permission has been granted from both the Church Council and Father Michael to move forward with fund-raising,” Sarah continued. “As you saw from my drawings in the vestibule, we are planning a summer festival to be held here at St. Mark’s, in the church parking lot and adjacent school yard.”

As Sarah described the festival and the practicality of scheduling the carnival immediately after the Fourth of July Parade, she was met with silence.

Surprised and a bit fearful, her only tact was to plow forward in a rush. “I have contacted and hired a small traveling carnival and rented two red-and-white-striped tents. Mary Catherine Cook is now passing out fliers that we’ll use to advertise. Please take these to your places of business and post or distribute them to the public.

“I will also need help to draw or even paint the cardboard scenery. Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult. No more than coloring inside the lines.”

Still there was silence.

Sarah swallowed hard and continued. “To do what this church needs us to do, we will all have to work together and work very hard over the next four weeks. I need volunteers for all the committees I’ve mentioned. I have spent many hours organizing and drawing up a budget for everything we need. Working together is what church membership and fellowship is all about. The time has come for everyone at St. Mark’s to pitch in and preserve what our parents and grandparents bequeathed to us in this church that they built over a hundred years ago. This will be the fourth renovation that St. Mark’s has undergone, and it won’t be the last. In order for our children to come to our church, be married here and bring their children here, this is our mission.”

Charmaine Chalmers was the first parishioner to stand up and applaud. Mrs. Beabots would have beaten her to it, but her hips were more than the usual bother to her this morning.

Aunt Emily and Uncle George shot to their feet. Isabelle Hawks and Olivia Melton, Louise Railton and half a dozen of Sarah’s friend rose and gave her a resounding applause. Annie and Timmy, who had been dropped off for Sunday services by their father, jumped up and clapped along with the entire children’s choir. In fewer than two minutes, every person in the congregation was applauding.

Sarah’s face broke into a wide and relieved smile. Mary Catherine rushed over and hugged her.

“Thank you. Thank you all,” Sarah said with a lump in her throat. “I’ll meet you at the back of the church with sign-up sheets. And thank you all again.”

* * *

M
ISS
M
ILSE
WAS
working in Sarah’s kitchen when Sarah returned from church. The fact that Miss Milse had a key to the house so she could come and go when she wanted or needed had never bothered Sarah, but because Sarah had not slept all night, she’d planned to draw the drapes and stay in bed the rest of the afternoon. Sarah had never known Miss Milse to work on a Sunday. Unless there was a very good reason.

“Miss Milse, I’m surprised to see you,” Sarah said, petting Beauregard. The dog was vying for all her attention. “You never work on Sundays.”

“I come. Your mother’s sister...”

“Aunt Emily called you?”

“Ya. She did. You not sleep all night, she say. She say I cook for yew. I make eggs, bratwurst and waffle. Come. Eat.”

Miss Milse yanked Beau away from Sarah and walked him over to his enormous doggie bed. Sarah noticed Miss Milse had picked the last of the late-blooming daffodils and put them in a blue vase on the table. Sarah smelled buttery waffles just as the waffle iron beeped.

Miss Milse peeled the waffle from the iron and put it on a plate along with pork link sausages and a huge bratwurst that Sarah knew she’d bought at the butcher shop on Main.

Miss Milse poured the maple syrup that had been heating on the stove into a white china syrup pitcher Sarah’s mother had used since she was a little girl.

Sarah’s stomach growled. She’d had no idea she was this hungry. She’d been running on adrenaline, caffeine and inspiration all night and morning long. “It smells divine,” Sarah said, sitting at the table.

Miss Milse plopped a hunk of butter on the waffle and placed it in front of Sarah. Then she poured a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Sarah crammed her mouth full of waffle. Never had anything tasted this good. She rolled her eyes and thanked Miss Milse, who was scrubbing the pan she had used for the sausages.

Sarah was a good cook, and she’d been taught a great deal by her mother, who was known to have been just about the best cook and baker in Indian Lake, but it would be a tall order to rival Miss Milse’s years of experience in the kitchen. “Did Aunt Emily tell you why I stayed up all night?” Sarah asked.

“For the church.”

“Yes. That’s right. I’m organizing a summer festival. I’ll need a lot of help.”

Miss Milse crooked her head over her shoulder, and without stopping her scrubbing said, “I come every day. You work. I work here. That is best.”

“I’ll be having the committee meetings here. There will be a lot of people in and out. They’ll need tea and coffee.”