“Where could he be?”
“Beats me,” Sonny said. “Did you two have a fight or something?”
“Yeah…something…” Brooke felt suddenly self-conscious, realizing that her eyes were tired and raw from weeping and that she had long ago cried all her makeup off. She was an emotional mess—in no shape for meeting Nick’s family. But…“Look, is your mother home? Or your grandmother? I’d like to talk to them.”
“Sure,” Sonny said, surprised. “I’ll take you inside.”
“No.” Brooke got out of the car and looked at him over the roof. “You just stay out here and keep Roxy company. I have to do this alone.”
Brooke went to the door and rang the bell, holding her breath as she waited. After a moment, a pretty Italian woman in her late thirties answered.
“Yes?” Nick’s sister stood in the doorway, bouncing a fat baby on her hip. “Can I help you?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat, then swallowed. “I’m Brooke Martin…a friend of Nick’s.”
Anna stared at her for a moment, then stepped back. “Ma!” she yelled over her shoulder, then turned back to Brooke, held out a tentative hand, and murmured, “I’m Anna, his sister.”
In less than a minute Nick’s wiry little mother stood at the door, and Brooke saw a hint of resemblance to Nick in the old woman’s dark features.
“Ma, this is Brooke Martin,” Anna said.
Nick’s mother regarded her without saying a word, then peered out into the driveway. “Where’s Nicky?” she asked.
“I…I don’t know,” Brooke said, aware of the chill in the woman’s voice. “That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t think he went home at all last night. I thought you might know of some place he might be.”
“Come in.” Without ceremony, Mrs. Marcello took her arm and pulled her into the living room. She gestured toward an old, worn-out chair. “Sit,” she ordered.
“No, thank you,” Brooke said. She took a deep breath and decided to be as honest with the two women as she could. At this point she had nothing to lose. “Look, I know that you two probably feel the same way about me as my parents feel about Nick. The gossip that follows us is…well, it’s pretty overpowering. But at the moment that isn’t my concern. I’m worried about Nick, Mrs. Marcello. Do you have any idea where he could be?”
The baby started to fuss, and Mrs. Marcello took her from her daughter. “He wouldn’t have told us. We had words.”
“About me?” Brooke asked.
“Nothing against you!” Nick’s mother blurted, shaking a finger at her so hard that the baby began to cry. “You were a child! He has no right influencing children. You, Sonny…” She tried to lower her voice, bounced the baby a moment, then handed her back to Anna. Two other children ran past, one in hot pursuit of the other, and Anna dashed out to intervene, leaving the two women to face each other alone. “He has no right influencing children,” Nick’s mother repeated.
Brooke stepped across the living room to view a collection of family photographs assembled on a shelf. Her eyes scanned them until she found a young man she was sure was Nick, standing beside an old man and his Duesenberg.
He would have liked you, Nick had said. If that was true, then maybe Nick’s mother wasn’t a lost cause, either. She turned back to the brittle old woman. “Mrs. Marcello, Nick always acted in the most appropriate manner when I was in high school,” she said. “He isn’t big on self-defense, so maybe he’s never told you. Nothing happened between us.”
“That’s not what the newspaper said!”
“They were lies,” Brooke said. “How could you know Nick, really know him, and not realize that?” In spite of her efforts to curb her tears, Brooke’s eyes filled again, and she willed her lips to stop shaking. Anna came back into the room, her steps slower as she witnessed Brooke’s impending breakdown. “Nick is the most honorable, gentle man I have ever known,” Brooke went on. “He would never hurt anyone, but things hurt him so deeply. He’s out there somewhere hurting right now, because of something I did. I want so much to tell him I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Marcello’s forehead wrinkled in grudging concern, but she didn’t speak.
“Ma?” Anna asked. “Should we go look for him?”
Nick’s mother turned to his sister, her eyes dark with mixed emotions. “After what he did? Filling Sonny’s head full of dreams so that he didn’t even want to work for Vinnie?”
Brooke had heard all she could stand, and of their own accord, her words tumbled out. “Mrs. Marcello, do you know what it’s like to work twenty hours a day on a job that you may or may not get paid for? Do you know what it’s like to believe in your work so much that you’d be willing to live on nothing for months at a time while you finished it, for a town that would never be grateful? Nick Marcello doesn’t have empty dreams, Mrs. Marcello. He works as hard as his grandfather did, or his brother-in-law, or either of you. No wonder he misses his grandfather so much,” she said. “He was the only one who could see how special your son really is.”
Mrs. Marcello glared at her, stunned silence holding her in its grip, and Anna only looked at the floor. Brooke brought her shaky hand higher and covered her eyes, thinking how much she was going to regret having said these things to his family.
“Excuse me,” she said finally, going toward the door. “I have to go find him.” She was about to leave when Nick’s mother touched her arm to stop her.
“Do you think he’s all right?” she asked in a feeble voice.
Brooke turned and saw that the anger had drained from the old woman’s face, and she felt her face growing hot. “I don’t know…. If I could just. .. find him…” She felt herself breaking, wilting, and suddenly the old woman’s arms were around her, pulling her back inside the house, leading her to the couch, making her sit down.
“Now, you sit,” she said more gently. “When Nicky comes home, we’ll make things right.” She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and began dabbing the tears from Brooke’s face. “And we’ll tell him there are worse things he could do than to marry the girl who cries over him.”
“Marriage?” Brooke laughed in spite of herself. “We’ve never discussed marriage.”
“Then you should!” Mrs. Marcello said.
Brooke laughed again, but the pain in her heart chased that laughter away, making her sobs more racking…more intense. And she knew that nothing would really make things right until she knew Nick was back.
Sonny finally summoned the courage to say what he’d been thinking since he’d seen Brooke and Roxy pull into his driveway. “You’ve been cryin’. Why?”
Roxy managed a weak smile for him. “I’ve had a bad day,” she said. “I sort of lost my job.”
“Really?” Sonny couldn’t help grinning. “Does that mean I’ll be seeing you at St. Mary’s more?”
“I’ll be there,” she said, “but I didn’t think you would. They can’t pay us, you know.”
Sonny took her hand. “The company there is a lot better than minimum wage, anyway,” he said. “I’d pay them to let me hang around you.”
Roxy grinned and bit her lip. “You’re crazy.”
Sonny smiled. “Out of my head. Ever since I saw you dance the other night.”
Something about the way he said it didn’t seem offensive. It didn’t cast her as a seductress. Instead, his soft-spoken words made her feel beautiful. “That wasn’t dancing,” she said. “That was just a couple of steps.”
“It was magic,” Sonny whispered, cupping her chin. “And if you don’t use some of your unemployed time to study dancing again, then I’m going to swear off art for the rest of my life. Think about it. You want that on your conscience?”
Roxy laughed aloud. “Of course not.”
“Then you’ll dance again? On stage and everything?”
Her smile faded into an expression of peaceful contemplation, and she looked down at her skirt, following the texture of one pleat with her index finger. “How can I
turn down an ultimatum like that?”
“Hey,” he said, “I must be getting harder to say no to. While I’m on a roll, I know this great little Italian restaurant that’s not very busy this time of the week. They have tables outside and music playing and—” He offered a self-deprecating laugh. “And I can afford it.”
Roxy’s smile found a warm place in his eyes. “Like you said,” she whispered, “you’re on a roll. How can I say no?”
“You can’t.” His flirtation didn’t frighten Roxy at all, for there was no sly insistence, no threat in his voice.
There was no hurry for either of them, she told herself. They would have plenty more time together.
CHAPTER
NOT KNOWING WHERE ELSE TO look for Nick, Brooke talked Sonny into following her to Nick’s house and letting her in to wait for him. Just the thought that he couldn’t come home without her knowing about it made her feel a little better.
Roxy and Sonny left her there, and she found herself in awe of his home once again. She walked around the studio, looking at each of his works in progress, studying the line, the light…wondering just what he was trying to say. As always, his work had layers of expression, reaching out to her, engaging her heart.
What was it about his work?
The light, she thought again. That light, coming from above, in every one of the paintings. A bright, clean light that cut through darkness and desert and dense forest. A bright light that illuminated something in her.
She went back into the living room and sat down on the couch. Nick’s Bible lay on the coffee table, its leather cover ragged from handling, its pages marked and worn. She opened it.
Except for her research on the windows, it had been a long time since she had read a Bible. Once, when she was eight or nine, she’d gone with a friend several times to one of the local churches. She had read one there, but since then, it had seemed so irrelevant to her life.
Yet Nick didn’t think so.
She remembered the words she’d prayed to God the other night in the church. She had asked Him if He was really there, and told Him how much she needed peace if He was. So far, she hadn’t felt that peace with any permanence. But maybe there was something she had to do first.
She opened to the book of John, from which those teachers had read when she was a child. Somewhere along the way she had memorized John 3:16. But long ago she had put it out of her mind, believing that enlightened people didn’t read the Bible, that intelligent people didn’t believe God became man.
Still, she began to read, and as she did, the light jumped out at her, just like it had in Nick’s paintings.
“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it…“
Was that why light was such a powerful element in Nick’s paintings? Was that light his life? Could she have really loved him and not perceived that, when she thought she knew him so well?
She read down to verse nine and caught her breath. “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.”
Enlightened? Could it be that she was the one who needed to be enlightened?
Tears came to her eyes and she didn’t know why. She read about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Through her tears, she read about Jesus being the Lamb of God. She remembered what she’d read in her covenant research, about lambs being sacrificed to cover the sins of the people. It all began to have relevance as she read page after page, hungrily devouring the Word of God, as if it truly did have life and light. As if it could change her life.
She began to weep as the truth dawned on her. “Lord, forgive me for thinking I was enlightened,” she whispered. “I didn’t know. Show me what to do.”
And as that peace she had longed for fell over her, she gave her life to Christ. She asked the Lord to change her and to help her get rid of her bitterness about the Hemphills and the town, and to help her to forgive.
As she prayed, the bitterness left her, replaced by forgiveness. All at once, everything looked different, bathed in this stark new light. “Lord, take care of Nick. Send him home so I can tell him what I’ve done.”
Warm in the peace that washed over her, she fell asleep on his couch, with his Bible open next to her.
CHAPTER
THE 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.”