Brooke was different. The intuitive knowledge, the awestruck memory, invaded her thoughts. Her sister had never been ordinary. So much style. So much substance. So much emotion. No one in Roxy’s life had ever made her feel quite as special as her big sister had when she was little.
Maybe she was still angry at Brooke for driving away that day and leaving her on the doorstep, she admitted in the solitude of darkness. Maybe that was the big sin she couldn’t forgive her for. That and all the others that had followed.
Time to grow up, Roxy told herself, staring at the ceiling. Life won’t let you stay innocent forever. She understood that better than most people her age. She’d been fighting the inevitable for years. But the fight was coming to an end. If Brooke hadn’t barged into her office tonight, her innocence would have been surrendered like the adoration she’d once had for her sister.
An angry tear rolled down her temple and over her ear, and she closed her hand over her mouth to muffle her sob.
When would her choices get less consequential? When was it supposed to get easier to make it through each day? And when could she stop caring about the hopeless, heartless whispers behind her back, the people waiting for her to mess up so that she could take her turn to wear Brooke’s scarlet letter?
It was inescapable, really, she thought, burying her face in her pillow. It was just a matter of time until the bomb dropped. She would go on making choices based on the fickle, fathomless whims of other people, and stave off the chaos within until she could run away like Brooke had.
But unlike Brooke, Roxy knew she would never look back.
CHAPTER
THAT’S SO INTERESTING.” IT WAS A thought Brooke had not meant to utter, but she couldn’t help herself. Her fascination with Nick’s concept for the windows had sent her to a bookstore for a Bible. Instead of answering her questions, her reading of it had raised many more.
Nick looked up from his sketch. “What’s interesting?” he asked.
“The idea that God provided that ram.” She swallowed and tried to steady her voice. “I know you’re gonna think I’m incredibly stupid. I’d never read that before, about Abraham and Isaac, or how God provided that ram in place of his sacrifice of Isaac.”
“Pretty powerful. Do you think we should show Isaac on the altar? The knife blade as Abraham prepared to sacrifice him?”
“Anguish and tears on his face.”
“But his eyes focused on heaven,” Nick added. “Because he knew God doesn’t break covenant, and He had promised that a great nation would come through Isaac. God would have to either stop Abraham from killing Isaac, or else raise Isaac from the dead.”
She looked up at him. “Can we capture all that in stained glass? The very simplicity of the images might diminish the message.”
“I think we can do it,” he said. “We can give enough of it to make people hungry to read more in the Scriptures.”
Brooke grew quiet as she looked down at her own sketch. “You’re smart, Nick,” she whispered. “This isn’t just about art to you, is it? It’s about getting people to read the Bible.”
He smiled. “Shrewd as serpents, guileless as doves. That’s what Jesus said to be.”
She reached for the stack of sketches he had already finished and began to look through them. Her hand stilled as she came to the one of Mary holding her limp, bleeding son in her arms, weeping over him.
“This one,” she whispered. “It just tugs at something…so deep.”
He looked up at her. “Do you think it goes too far?”
She kept looking at the sketch. “It depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you want people to be able to glance away.”
He smiled. “I don’t.”
“The pastor may have a hard time getting people to listen to him, when they can’t keep their eyes off Jesus.”
“That’s the whole point of having a pastor,” he said. “To keep people’s eyes on Jesus. Horace will be thrilled.”
She was quiet for a moment as not-so-quiet thoughts passed over her face like movie credits on a screen. Then she flipped through more of his sketches, stopping at a rough drawing of a man dressed in modern-day clothing—jeans, a T-shirt, tennis shoes—carrying a cross on his shoulder. “I don’t understand this one,” she said.
“Jesus is the New Covenant,” he said. “And if we enter into that covenant with him, we’re to take up our cross and follow him.”
Take up her cross? How? What did that mean? But she didn’t want to appear ignorant—not to Nick. So she vowed to find the answer herself when she had time to pore through the Bible more on her own.
“Is something wrong?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head. “No. I just wish I’d paid more attention in Sunday school when I was little.” She didn’t know why tears stung her eyes as she spoke, or why that yearning in her heart— for what, she wasn’t sure—kept getting stronger.
He reached across the table and touched her chin. “I can tell something’s wrong. Tell me, Brooke. What is it?”
She couldn’t understand it herself, so she knew she couldn’t articulate that emptiness, that hunger….
“Hey, Picasso.”
They both jumped. Sonny was leaning against the door casing, wearing worn-out jeans and a black leather jacket with a helmet tucked under one elbow. His eyes swept around the room, as round as those of a toddler at Disney World.
“Sonny!” Nick’s voice was a degree less than enthusiastic at the sight of his nephew, but he forced a smile. “Come on in.” Brooke quickly wiped the moisture from her eyes as Nick turned back around. “Brooke Martin, I’d like you to meet my nephew, Sonny Castori.”
Sonny stepped forward, regarding her with a sly grin, and extended a hand to Brooke. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he said bluntly, “now I can see what all the fuss was about.”
Knowing intuitively that he referred to the scandal, though he meant the remark as some kind of compliment, Brooke tried not to bristle. “It’s nice to meet you, Sonny,” she said.
“What brings you by here?” Nick asked. “I thought you’d be in school about now.”
Sonny glanced at his watch. “At five-thirty? Give me a break.”
“Five thirty?” Brooke pulled her watch out of her drawer and gasped. “Nick, did we stop for lunch?”
Nick started to laugh. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Man,” Sonny said. “You mean you two have been in here working all day and didn’t even know how much time had passed?”
Brooke flung a sweeping hand toward the drawings and flopped back in her chair. “We’ve gotten a lot done. But we still have a long way to go.”
Sonny studied the drawings, his expression one of awestruck admiration. Carefully, he began to flip through the sketches. A long, slow whistle eased out on his breath. “Man, these are great. I mean…these are really great.”
Brooke’s weary eyes brightened. “You think so?”
“Man.” He turned back to Nick, not completely abandoning the drawings. “Listen, I just came by to see if I could take you up on your offer to use your studio tonight. But if I could help here, man, I’d love to be a part of this. I could trace the drawings for you or color them in or whatever you need.”
Nick looked at Brooke. “What do you think?”
“I think he’d be a godsend. I didn’t think we’d have time to do color presentations, but with help maybe we could.”
Sonny took off his leather jacket, tossed it onto a chair, and rubbed his hands together anxiously. “Just mark each piece in the color you want and I’ll take it from there,” he said.
Brooke smiled and shook her head. Sonny was just like Nick.
“I’ll order a pizza,” Nick said, heading for the phone. “Brooke can get you started.”
By the time he’d started to dial, Sonny and Brooke were head to head, working hard together.
It was after one in the morning when Nick realized that Brooke wa
s fast approaching the zombie dimension, and he had to admit that seventeen hours of work was about his own limit as well.
After Nick had seen Brooke to her car, he and Sonny ambled toward the Harley parked near his Buick. “Your ma’s gonna kill me for keeping you out so late.”
“No problem,” Sonny said. He threw a leg over the Harley, pulled his helmet over his head, and looked up at his uncle. “Hey, Picasso, I really appreciate your letting me help out on this. Can I come back tomorrow night?”
“You’re welcome to come as often as you can,” Nick assured him. “But don’t thank us. Brooke and I needed help badly.”
Sonny set his wrist on the handlebar, letting the keys dangle from his fingers. “She’s a nice lady,” he said. “Like I said earlier, I can see what all the fuss was about.”
Nick issued a heavy sigh and looked in the direction she had driven. “Do me a favor and don’t bring ‘all the fuss’ up in front of her anymore, huh? It’s kind of a sore spot.”
Sonny chuckled. “Yeah, sure. But really, man. She’s not like most women. Something about her…she’s different.”
Nick smiled. “Yeah. She’s definitely that.”
Sonny kick-started his motor, revved it for a second before he pulled it off the stand. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said.
Nick watched his nephew pull out of sight, one lone light disappearing with a grating shift of gears. For a moment he stood alone in the dark parking lot, feeling suddenly cold and alone. He had never spent so much time in one day with anyone in his life, and yet he had felt strangely deprived when she had to leave. Give it up, Marcello, he told himself. You’re just tired.
Maybe so, he thought, but tired or not, there would be no getting Brooke Martin out of his mind tonight.
CHAPTER
THE ONLY LIGHT STILL GLOWING in the house when Brooke came in was the reading lamp in Roxy’s room. She passed by the room quietly and saw that the door was ajar, casting a bright triangle of light on the comparative darkness in the hallway.
Brooke pushed the door open enough to see that Roxy lay asleep on top of her bedspread, still fully dressed right down to her shoes. A stack of travel brochures cluttered the bed beside her sister: Canada, Washington, Colorado, Jamaica, Idaho—places with nothing in common, except that they were all far away. Frowning, Brooke lowered herself to the bed, careful not to disturb the girl, and reached out to stroke the soft tangle of hair back from her face. Roxy looked so young tonight. So innocent. So unhampered by the bevy of secrets she hid behind her eyes. Tonight she looked almost happy.
But not quite.
Regret filled Brooke’s weary heart. Why had she let herself miss these last few years with Roxy and lose touch with the crises that had altered her spirit? Was her pride really worth it?
At Brooke’s touch, Roxy stirred, lifted her head, and squinted, disoriented.
Brooke withdrew her hand. “Sorry I woke you,” she whispered. “I saw your light on.”
Roxy sat up, looked around her. “Must have dozed off,” she muttered. “What time is it?”
“One-thirty,” Brooke said.
Roxy pushed her hair out of her face and settled her groggy eyes on her sister. “And you just got in?”
“With all the work I have to get done in the next few days, I don’t have time to sleep at all,” Brooke whispered. “Unfortunately, my body demands it.”
Brooke knew that the wheels in Roxy’s sleepy brain were turning, adding up the late hour and her work with Nick and coming up with the same old conclusion. Unwilling to argue about it now, Brooke gestured toward the travel brochures. “You going somewhere, Roxy?”
Roxy pulled her shoes off with her toes. They dropped to the floor with a thud. “As soon as I graduate and save up enough money.”
Brooke tried to keep her expression neutral as she watched her sister slide off the bed and peel back the covers. “Where?”
Roxy slipped between the covers, still fully clothed. “As far from this town as I can get,” she said.
The words hit Brooke like an icy tide, but she didn’t speak. What was there to say, after all? That Roxy shouldn’t run away from her problems? That the grass really wasn’t greener on the other side? Her own credibility on that subject left something to be desired, so instead of digging deeper into Roxy’s psyche, Brooke sat silently beside her for a few minutes as Roxy fell back to sleep, wondering if she had just imagined the misery in her sister’s voice. Were the travel brochures just bits of a dream or crucial parts of an escape plan? And what, exactly, did Roxy feel she had to escape from?
The feeling that she had failed her sister by not being around enough assailed Brooke, exhausting her even more than she already was. Quietly she turned off Roxy’s light and went to her own room, where Infinity sat on the bedside table, profoundly reminding her that she hadn’t always failed. She just hadn’t allowed herself to succeed, at least not at relationships. What would have been different if she had stayed in town seven years ago and faced the gossip? Would she and Roxy be friends? Would she and Nick have fallen in love?
She didn’t know the answers. But Nick was different now. He had changed. Greater things than art occupied his mind. His goals were bigger, more important. His passions were more spiritual. She wished she could share them completely with him, but some of them were out of her grasp.
Covenants…provisions…covenants…provisions. The image of first the rainbow and then the cross the jean-clad man had carried colored her dreams as she drifted off to sleep. Symbols of…what? God’s love? His sacrifice? His covenants and provisions?
Were they for her, or just a chosen few who had that gift of understanding? Would the peace she saw in Nick’s eyes forever be foreign to her?
She didn’t know. From the depths of her soul, she hoped she would find out before she left Hayden again.
CHAPTER
BROOKE FELT WOEFULLY UNPREPARED for the meeting. It was ten o’clock on the night before the presentation when Sonny finally left them alone, sitting solemnly in Nick’s house scrutinizing the work they had accomplished in the previous week. The drawings fell far short of what they had hoped for. Only half of them were finished, and none was done in any great detail. Thanks to Sonny, they did at least have color.
Nick slipped down to the carpet to sit across from Brooke on the floor, studying the panels she would love to have a second shot at. He poured more coffee into her cup, the sloshing sound punctuating the rhythm of a violin concerto on his stereo.
“We gave it our best shot,” he said quietly. “And we can take care of some last-minute details tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. She leaned her head back against the cushions of the chair and sipped her coffee. “They’re going to hate it, you know. They won’t have enough imagination to see what we see here. Not at this stage, before it’s committed to glass.”
Nick propped his wrists on his knees and stared down at his cup. “Oh, I don’t know. Some of them had enough imagination once to drive you out of town.”
She laughed softly.
“We’ll do what we can to fire up their enthusiasm,” Nick said, his voice little more than a whisper. “That’s all we can do. God has to do the rest.”
Brooke lifted her cup to her lips. “Do you think He will?” she asked. “I mean, does God even really care about the little town of Hayden and a bunch of stained-glass windows?”
“Of course He does,” Nick said without a hint of doubt in his voice. “He cares about all of this.”
Brooke wasn’t convinced. “Does He really care about us? Two people who won’t just be dragging these sketches in there tomorrow night—we’ll be dragging in our history together and our alleged affair and everything that’s ever been said about us.”
“He knows they were lies,” he whispered.
She stretched out her legs before her and stared down at one of the sketches. “It seems like I’m always on the losing side of lies,” she whispered. “Why is that?”
Nick took a long sip from his cup, reached for the pot on a trivet on the coffee table, and poured himself some more. “Because you don’t play dirty.”
Brooke looked into her cup, considering it for a moment. “Where has that gotten me?” she asked. “Alone…”
“You’re not alone, Brooke,” Nick said quietly.
“Aren’t I?”
“No. I’m here.”
“But you’re not,” she whispered. “Not really. I used to think we were the same. Now I know that we’re different.”
“Different how?”
She sighed. “Our deepest-held beliefs. Our souls.”
“We both have them.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But yours seems full. Mine doesn’t.”
“It could be,” he whispered. “That’s always a choice.”
She shook her head. “Not really. To have what you have, I have to believe something. I’m not sure I can.” She blinked back the tears in her eyes, and laid her head back. “Maybe that disqualifies me for this job. Maybe because of my lack of belief, God is blocking what we’re doing here.”
“You’re contradicting yourself,” he pointed out. “You claim to lack belief in Him, and then you suggest that He’s acting against you. How can both things be true?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “All I know is that maybe the windows just weren’t meant to be, and maybe that’s my fault. I’m so sorry, Nick.”
“No, it’s never been your fault,” he said. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”
“For what?” she asked.
“For asking you to put your work in Columbia on hold and come here for something that may not even materialize. For disrupting your life…again.”
“It’s okay, Nick. It was time for me to come home.”
His face was only inches from hers, and she could see the warmth in his eyes and sense the apprehension in his heart. “Yes, it was,” he whispered. “Time to come home, and time to forgive.”