Emerald Windows Read online

  He didn’t answer for a moment, then he said, “I appreciate that. I really do.” Silence reigned between them again. “I’ll let you go now. Get some sleep,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, you too,” she said. “And Nick? Don’t think about what Abby Hemphill and your family said to you tonight. Just remember what I said.”

  “I will,” he said. “Good night, Brooke.”

  “Good night, Nick.” She hung up the phone and sat smiling down at it. Then, feeling better about everything in general— because he had called her when he needed her—she headed back to bed.

  CHAPTER

  BROOKE PASSED ROXY’S OPEN bedroom door on her way back to her room. Her sister sat at her desk in a long pink gown with her bare feet crossed on the floor, examining a paper under the dim light of her lamp.

  “Studying?” Brooke asked quietly.

  Roxy looked up. “No, I was just going over my savings account,” she said. “I thought I’d have more money saved by now.”

  Brooke went into the room and sat down on the bed. “What are you saving for?”

  “My escape,” Roxy whispered. She closed her bank book and swiveled around on her chair to face her sister. There was no hostility in her voice or her expression, no belligerence in her manner. Only a gentle sadness that touched Brooke’s heart.

  “Escape from what, Roxy?” Brooke asked. “Me?”

  “No,” her sister said. She looked down at her gown, picked at a white dot on the fabric. “From this town. From the people here.”

  A faint note of alarm rang out in Brooke’s head. “Are you planning to get married or something?” she asked.

  Roxy laughed aloud, but there was no mirth in her eyes. “No, I don’t plan to get married. I just want to leave town when I graduate, like you did. I want a chance to be somebody different.”

  Brooke pulled her feet up onto the bed and gazed at her sister, trying to view her as a grown woman rather than as the little sister she wanted so desperately to protect. “I like who you are already,” she said.

  Roxy’s smile was wistful as she met her sister’s eyes. “But you don’t know me that well, do you?”

  Brooke stood up and ambled to the desk. She leaned a hip against it and faced Roxy. Roxy’s face looked so mature for her age. Brooke wondered what went on behind those beautiful, guarded amber eyes. “I’d like to fix that,” she said.

  Roxy looked away, as if embarrassed by Brooke’s honesty.

  “Listen, I don’t know if you’re interested, but Nick and I need to hire some people to help us at the church. If you really want to make some more money, you could work there whenever you could spare the time.”

  Roxy looked up at her, trepidation darkening her eyes. “With you and Nick?” she asked skeptically. “I do need the money. But I don’t know, Brooke. I’m not real good at hiding the way I feel.”

  Brooke reached for a curl of Roxy’s soft hair and tugged lightly on it. “That’s okay,” she whispered. “We couldn’t have paid you for a while, anyway. At least not until Abby Hemphill is finished trying to pull our budget out from under us. It probably wasn’t a good idea.”

  Roxy regarded the bank book on her desk, and an unreadable expression passed across her face. After a moment she glanced back up at Brooke. “What would I have to do?” she asked tentatively.

  “Just simple things, like tracing the patterns, numbering them, coloring them. That way Nick and I can concentrate on the more technical work.”

  Roxy sat back in her chair and ran her hand through the roots of her hair. “You know, spring break is all next week. I have to work at City Hall for a few hours a day, but I could still put in some time at the church.”

  A smile began in Brooke’s eyes and traveled to her lips. “Are you saying you want the job?”

  “I guess,” Roxy said. “When do I start?”

  “We could use you tomorrow,” Brooke said carefully, “if you don’t mind working on Saturday.”

  Roxy nodded. “Just wake me up, and I’ll go with you.”

  Brooke set her hand on Roxy’s shoulder and wished she were close enough to her sister to lean over and kiss her cheek. But it was too soon for that. She would take things one step at a time. “I’ll get you up at seven. Wear something you won’t mind getting dirty.”

  She started toward the door, then turned back. “And Roxy,” she said. “About Nick…you’ll like him if you give him a chance. Really, you will.”

  Roxy’s gaze fell to the floor, so Brooke left her alone, telling herself she could only expect one miracle at a time.

  CHAPTER

  If YOU CAN’T HAVE WHAT YOU WANT, Nicky, then want what you have.” Nick’s grandfather’s old saw flew through his mind on the wings of a memory as he tried to sleep that night. He pictured the old, thin-haired man with his back curved from slumping over the shoes on his work bench. He vividly remembered the first time his grandfather had said those words to him, when Nick was ten or eleven, mourning the fact that his parents wouldn’t send him to an art camp in southern Missouri.

  “But it isn’t fair,” he’d mumbled, kicking at a rock in his grandpa’s front yard. “I’ve saved the money myself, and it’s just for two weeks. What do they care?”

  “They care!” his grandfather had shouted, slapping his hands together. “And they won’t let you go and that’s that.” Nick remembered how surprised he’d been when his grandfather had thrust his sketch pad and watercolor set at him, defying the boy to complain. “So stop-a moping and make the best of what you have! It won’t get better ‘less you make it so.”

  Nick had angrily lunged into a painting that had set the tone for those he had done for the rest of his career. Emotions had emerged in blacks, blues, and browns, for he’d discovered early that it was those dark shades that revealed the mysteries in his soul.

  But now the color he saw foremost in his mind, the color he felt most inclined to mix on his palette, was the emerald-green color of Brooke Martin’s eyes. She was becoming too important to him. He was thinking about her too much. They didn’t have the same goals, the same needs, the same Spirit. She didn’t know or understand the things most important to him, and until she did, he knew that a relationship between them would not work.

  Of all the advice his grandfather had given him, that, perhaps, had been the most adamant. “You marry yourself a Christian girl, Nicky, and your life will be full. You do that for all of your kids and your grandkids. Won’t mean they all follow down the right path, Nicky, but you give ‘em the head start. Make sure they got that head start.”

  Would his grandfather have been so earnest in that advice, to hold out for a Christian woman, if he had even once seen Brooke’s eyes?

  Maybe he needed to spend more energy leading Brooke to Christ than he spent wishing he’d kissed her. Maybe then he would have been more careful about his behavior in the meeting tonight.

  Wearily, Nick gave up on the idea of sleep, got out of bed, pulled on a pair of gym shorts, and went out to the garage, where he kept a can of the special car wax he had ordered for the Due-senberg. Mechanically, methodically, as if ministering to someone he loved, he began to apply the wax in small, gentle circles.

  Nick’s mind drifted back to last night. He had allowed himself to get too attached to her—again. Maybe it was too much to ask, that his emotions would stop where he told them to.

  Maybe he had just made things more difficult for himself.

  What would his grandfather tell him to do? he wondered as he gazed down at the car.

  “Show her the light.” The Italian-accented words breezed through his mind. “Show her, Nicky. She could still be the one. She’s just not ready yet.”

  That’s what his grandpa would say.

  Hope welled in Nick’s heart as he wiped the wax off his car with the firm but gentle hand of a lover. Hope that the time would come, if he could just show her the light.

  CHAPTER

  NICK WAS AT THE CHURCH AT eight o’clock the next morning, fa
tigued from lack of sleep. He had finished waxing his Duesenberg, changed the oil, and conditioned the leather upholstery before he’d finally gone inside and surrendered to sleep.

  He heard the door open and close and the sound of rubber-soled sneakers across the church’s dusty, cluttered floor. His heart leaped, and from his stool he looked up hopefully. But it wasn’t Brooke who appeared at the workroom door.

  “Hey, Picasso.”

  Nick tried not to look disappointed at the sight of his nephew leaning in his doorway, his tall frame slightly slumped in dejection. That smile that Nick had grown accustomed to seeing was conspicuously absent, and Sonny looked as if he’d gotten about as much sleep as Nick had last night.

  “Hey, Sonny. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Sonny said, stepping into the room and sliding his hands into the pockets of his black jeans. “Look man, I’m really sorry about last night. Ma told me about them ambushing you.”

  Nick leaned back against the work table, regarding his nephew with grim eyes. “They’re worried about you.” He uttered a gentle, self-deprecating laugh. “They’re afraid you’ll turn out like me or something.”

  “There are worse things I could do,” Sonny said. He looked down at the floor, and Nick noted the deep frown beginning to chisel permanent lines in the boy’s forehead, making him appear much older than his years. “What’s so wrong with it, Nick? What do they care?”

  “It’s the work ethic,” Nick tried to explain. “They honestly can’t respect anyone who doesn’t break his back all day to make a living.”

  “But you work harder than anybody I know,” Sonny said. “I’ve never been to your house that you weren’t deep in the middle of some project. And here, on these windows, you’ve been at it day and night. What do they want? Blood?

  Nick grinned. “Maybe a little.”

  Sonny went to the worktable, picked up a mat knife, turned it over in his hands. “Well, I don’t want them telling me what I’m gonna do with my life,” he said. “I want to see if I can do anything with it.”

  Nick rubbed his forehead, wishing his encouragement of Sonny didn’t mean direct defiance of his family. “Man, I wish you’d had a chance to know Grandpa. He’s the one who helped me through it.” He crossed his arms and shook his head. “Funny thing is, your ma got her work ethic from him. He was the hardest worker I’d ever seen. But you know what he told me when my family started giving me a hard time about my art?”

  “What?” Sonny asked.

  “He said, ‘Nicky, the Lord don’t dole out talents He don’t expect-a you to use.’ Then he held up the shoe he’d been working on, and said, ‘If I had a talent like yours, I wouldn’t be in here, pulling on the leather, I’ll tell you that.’

  “Man, 1 miss him,” Nick said. He took a deep breath and pushed off from the table. “You know, if you go with your gut, there are going to be a lot of fights to come. Take it from me, the family may never understand. And that hurts, Sonny. Sometimes even I wonder if it’s worth it.”

  “But that’s just it,” Sonny said, setting down the knife and balling one hand into a fist. “It’s not like it’s something I can just turn off. I want it bad.”

  Nick shrugged. “What can I say?” he asked. “I’ve been there. I’m still there. But I’m not sure that I ought to keep you working here, knowing how they feel. They think you’re dishonoring them by working with me. Maybe I need to honor their wishes.”

  “But they don’t understand! No one does, except you. I’m nineteen years old. When do I get to decide what I want to do with my life? What if it was ministry I wanted to go into? What if the folks didn’t want that, but I knew God called me? Would you support that?”

  “Probably. Yeah, I guess I would.”

  “Then what if God called me to be an artist? What if He gave me a gift. He wants me to use it, just the same as if He’d called me to be a minister? Isn’t one calling from God just as important as another?”

  Nick turned back to the table, saw all the work that still needed to be done. He needed Sonny’s talent and passion, and Sonny could learn a lot about precision and detail from working with him and Brooke.

  You’re going to put us through this all over again, aren’t you?

  His sister’s words echoed in his mind, and he weighed the pain they evoked against the plea he saw in his nephew’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Sonny said. “You won’t regret it, Nick.”

  Nick laughed dryly and admitted that if he did end up with regrets about encouraging Sonny’s art, at least they would feel very familiar. “All right, Sonny,” he said with a sigh. “You can work here. But you’re gonna have to make it okay with your folks. I’m gonna trust you to do that, okay?”

  The echo of the door sounded throughout the church, and Nick knew that Brooke had arrived. His heart jolted again.

  “Yeah, sure,” Sonny said. “I’ll do my best.”

  But Nick wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, he was looking at the door, waiting for the sight of Brooke.

  CHAPTER

  BROOKE NOTED ROXY’S TENSION the moment she led her into the church, stepping over the electrical cords and around idle equipment used in the renovation. Because it was Saturday, the construction crews were off, and Brooke breathed a sigh of relief that she would be able to break Roxy in with relative peace and quiet.

  “You’ve been working around all this?” Roxy asked.

  Brooke looked over her shoulder. Her sister looked so young today, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing an old pair of jeans with a hole in one knee and a Hayden High School Tigers T-shirt. “Yeah. You should see it on weekdays. The noise level is so high you can hardly hear yourself think, and you can’t walk through here without fearing for your life.” She tossed a half smile over her shoulder. “I’m starting to get used to it, though. Our workroom is back through here.”

  Roxy hesitated. She crossed her arms, drawing her shoulders up defensively. Was she nervous about meeting Nick? Brooke wondered.

  Slowly, with Roxy lagging behind, Brooke led her down the dark corridor to the workroom. Before she reached it, Brooke could see that the lights were on. She heard Nick’s voice, then another’s. Sonny? Maybe that was good. Maybe his being there would help Roxy to feel more at ease.

  She stepped into the doorway, waiting for Roxy to catch up. Nick sat in his chair with his feet propped on the table. Sonny leaned back against the wall across the room.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi, yourself.” Nick’s face lit up at the sight of her. Then his eyes shifted to Roxy behind her, and he dropped his feet and got up. “Hi.”

  “Roxy has decided to work for us part-time,” Brooke said. “She needed some extra money, and I told her how badly we needed help. She’s willing to wait to get paid.”

  Nick offered Roxy a smile that would have charmed her right down to her toes if she hadn’t already erected such strong barriers. “Hi, Roxy,” he said. “I’m Nick Marcello.”

  “I know.” The words were clipped and made it clear she wasn’t interested in friendship.

  Nick looked bemused when he shot a glance at Brooke. He turned back to Roxy and gestured toward Sonny. “This is my nephew, Sonny Castori. He’s going to be helping out here some too. If his folks agree.”

  Roxy cleared her throat and tried to smile at the young man in the black T-shirt. “Hi.”

  The clouds passed out of Sonny’s eyes, and he brightened at the sight of the small blond standing at the door. “Hey, I remember you,” he said. “You went to Hayden High, didn’t you?”

  “Still do,” Roxy said.

  Sonny grinned, slid his hands into his back pockets, and took a cocky step toward her. “Yeah. I remember seeing you in Ole Lady Hannah’s class a couple years back. I was in the class across the courtyard. You sat by the window.”

  The awkward smile tugging on Roxy’s lips was hard to miss, but it was evident
that she struggled to look unaffected. “I don’t remember you,” she said.

  Sonny shrugged and ruffled his dark mop of hair. “Yeah, so what else is new? I have one of those faces that’s real easy to forget.”

  Roxy grinned. As if to distract herself from her grudging interest in Sonny, she stepped over to the worktable, perusing the tools and patterns lying there. Behind her, Nick gave Brooke a wink that said he knew it would work out with Roxy, if Sonny had anything to do with it.

  Even so, Brooke decided that Nick should be warned of Roxy’s reluctance. She set the case she was carrying on the table. “Before we get started,” she said, looking pointedly at Nick, “I need some help getting some things out of my trunk.”

  Sonny started for the door, but Nick stopped him. “I’ll go,” he said. “Sonny, why don’t you just show Roxy where everything is for now? We’ll be right back.”

  Roxy looked at Nick, then at Brooke. She dropped her gaze to the floor, as if she knew without a doubt that Nick had more on his mind than getting anything out of Brooke’s car.

  As if oblivious to Roxy’s disapproving glare, Nick escorted Brooke back out into the corridor. “So you talked her into it, huh?” he asked quietly as they walked.

  “Yes,” Brooke whispered. “But she’s skeptical about it. She isn’t exactly crazy about you, you know. She believes everything she’s ever heard about us.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to work hard to win her over.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Brooke said. “But she’s a tough one. Thanks for suggesting that she work with us, Nick. It means a lot to me. Maybe there’s hope for Roxy and me yet.”

  CHAPTER

  NICK STILL HAD HOPES THAT THEY would get the job done on time. The four of them worked diligently for hours, Nick and Brooke enlarging sketches and numbering them to keep the pattern pieces from getting lost, and Sonny and Roxy tracing pictures through sheets of carbon so that there would be three precise copies of each cartoon, the paper pattern and the working drawing.