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  Still, she had asked, and the next thing she knew, there the answer was. For God so loved the world… The thought of that, in itself, did promise peace. If she thought God loved her, what peace that would be.

  But some part of her couldn’t believe that.

  “If you want to know Christ, all you have to do is ask Him.”

  She looked back up toward the area that would hold the pulpit, as if she could see God there. “Maybe someday I will.”

  When she glanced back at Nick, she saw the disappointment in his eyes as he gazed down at the floor. Somehow, what she’d said had been wrong. “What is it, Nick?” she asked.

  “I just…want you to have peace now,” he said. “I want you to have all the things that I have. I want you to know the fullness I feel.”

  “Fullness?” she asked.

  “Yes. As opposed to emptiness. I want that for you, because I care about you, Brooke. Promise me,” he said. “Promise me that you’ll think about Christ. Promise me you’ll consider what I’ve said. And that you won’t wait.”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  He swallowed, then sighed, and got to his feet. “Let’s go get some work done, unless you want to go home.”

  “No, we can work,” she said.

  But as she followed him into the workroom, she felt as dismal as she had before. Nothing had really changed.

  CHAPTER

  THE TELEPHONE AT THE MARTINS’ house rang at nine-thirty, but Roxy, who had been alone in her room for most of the evening, didn’t answer it. She was busy turning the pages of the scrapbook she’d kept as a little girl, searching the joyful faces in the cracked and faded photographs for a sign of the happiness she had known before Brooke had left home.

  Her one-time hero worship of her protective big sister had been a fantasy. Brooke could no more protect Roxy now than Roxy could have protected her seven years ago.

  Her mother knocked on her door and stuck her head in, interrupting her reverie. “Telephone, Roxy. Someone named Sonny.”

  Roxy frowned and looked at the extension on her bed table. “Sonny? What does he want?”

  Her mother smiled. “I guess he wants to talk to you.”

  Roxy cast a beseeching look at her mother. “No. Tell him I’m not here.”

  Her mother stepped into the room, still smiling, as if she had caught her shy, awkward daughter on the threshold of her first budding romance. “I’ve already told him you’re home. You know, with that attitude it’s no wonder that you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night. Now, answer that phone.”

  Roxy watched her mother leave the room. Reluctantly she took a deep breath and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Yo, Roxy, it’s me. Sonny.”

  Roxy sighed impatiently. “I know. What is it?”

  “Well, I was just sitting here thinking about you leaving today, and I wondered how you were feeling.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  He hesitated a moment, and she realized that, just maybe, the conversation wasn’t easy for him, either. Maybe he had sat looking at the telephone for a while, and only now had summoned the courage to call.

  “Listen, I know it’s late and everything, but would you like to go out for a Coke or pizza? I could have you home by eleven.”

  Roxy caught her reflection in her dresser mirror, saw the dark circles from too much crying today, her pallid complexion, the bedraggled state of her hair. What could Sonny possibly have seen in her, on a day when she was at her absolute worst? “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Why?” Sonny laughed, but it didn’t disguise the tension in his voice. “Well, why not? I mean, I’m hungry, what can I say?” He laughed nervously again. “Tell you the truth, I didn’t really expect to catch you at home tonight, but I figured I’d take a chance.”

  She sat quietly, unable to believe his invitation was that simple. There had to be more.

  “I don’t want you to think it’s normal for me to be home on a Saturday night,” Sonny qualified quickly. “Usually I have this long line of women lined up at my door, and they drag me out until all hours. But it’s so exhausting, you know, my busy social schedule…”

  A grin made its slow journey across Roxy’s lips, but she didn’t speak.

  “So, what do you say?” he asked. “You feel like goin’ somewhere? I could be there in ten minutes.”

  Her smile faded, and she felt her mouth go dry. “No. I couldn’t get ready that fast. I look awful.”

  “Hey, Roxy,” Sonny cut in. “If you look anything like you looked today, you’ll knock my socks off.”

  She frowned, wondering if he could really be serious. She had rolled out of bed this morning and dressed in grubby clothes, without showering or anything. Talk about a bad hair day. “No, really. I can’t…”

  “Oh, I get it,” Sonny said. “You’ve got one of those mud packs on your face, right? And all that greasy conditioning gunk in your hair? And sponges between your toes?”

  She laughed in spite of herself. “No!”

  “Then what could be so bad?” he asked, more seriously. “My standards are real low these days.”

  Roxy laughed again, becoming more uninhibited the more he carried on. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Hey, I’m trying to raise them some,” he said. “What can I say? So will you wash the mud off of your face and come with me, or not?”

  She smiled softly and brought her other hand up to the telephone. Something deep inside her urged her to say yes, but the part of her that had kept score over the past year warned her to stay at home. “I really can’t,” she said.

  Sonny gave a great, exaggerated sigh. “All right,” he huffed. “Then I guess I’ll have to resort to that line of women outside my door.”

  “I guess.”

  “But I’m not fooled,” he went on, undaunted. “I can hear in your voice that you really want to come. At least you aren’t snapping at me anymore.” He paused a moment, lowering his pitch. “Maybe I won’t go out, after all. Maybe I’ll just save myself for you.”

  A soul-deep smile welled up inside her chest and pushed out all the pain and misery she’d been dragging around with her. “I’ll see you at St. Mary’s Monday,” Roxy said, and for the first time, realized she actually looked forward to it.

  “I’ll count the minutes,” Sonny teased. “Don’t leave the mud on too long, now, okay? I hear it wrinkles you up like a prune.”

  Laughing, Roxy hung up the phone and kept her hand over the receiver for a moment. Funny, she thought. Ten minutes earlier she wouldn’t have believed that there was a person in the world who could make her smile today.

  Sonny had proved her wrong. She only wished she were wrong about other things, as well.

  It was just before ten when Brooke went home that night. She said goodnight to her parents, then passed by Roxy’s room. The light was off.

  She stepped into the doorway, watching Roxy sleeping soundly in her bed. Her sister’s features were soft and youthful in repose, as innocent as they had been when she was a child. Quietly, Brooke reached down and pulled a blanket up around her.

  Her heart twisted again at what she had discovered about her sister that day. Little Roxy, who used to crawl into bed with her to look at the clouds on her ceiling, involved with a married man.

  She sighed, went back to the door, leaned against the casing. The tragedy of it all was that Roxy wouldn’t find what she was looking for in sleazy bars and secret affairs. But for the life of her, Brooke didn’t know how to show her where she could find it. In many ways, Brooke knew she was just as lost as her sister.

  Quietly, she went to her room and got out of her clothes, then tried to empty her mind of its troubles as she climbed into bed.

  CHAPTER

  MONDAY AFTERNOON, ABBY HEMPHILL hung up the telephone and checked off one more name on the long list on her clipboard. “Gerald, I’ve already convinced over fifty church members to support my recommendation that the Finance Committee revoke the bud
get.”

  Gerald was busy reading the paper.

  “Gerald, did you hear me?”

  “Yes, dear,” he said, lowering the paper. “The Finance Committee budget.”

  “No, the budget for the windows.”

  He looked at her and nodded, but his eyes didn’t quite focus on her. His mind was a million miles away.

  “Already I’ve convinced over fifty church members to support my recommendation not to grant the money necessary for the stained-glass windows. When the pastor tries to override our verdict, they’ll all be there, backing me up.”

  Suddenly Gerald tuned in. “Tell the pastor that he wouldn’t be able to renovate the closet at St. Mary’s without our substantial donations.”

  “That’s exactly what I plan to tell all of them,” she said. “And when I made the phone calls, all I had to do was point out the more immediate needs of the church, and the proof I have that our artists in question are using the windows as a pretense to be together.”

  Gerald raised the newspaper again.

  “Of course, I didn’t bother to call the ones who won’t agree with me.”

  “Good thinking,” he said absently. He set the newspaper down and looked at his watch. “Time for me to go to the club. I’m meeting John Schaeffer there.”

  “Tonight?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He didn’t wait for her approval. He never did.

  “When will you be home?”

  “I can’t say. Don’t wait up, though.”

  When he was gone, she glanced down at the gold watch shackling her wrist, noting that it was after noon. By now, Nick Marcello had probably been notified of the committee meeting. Already, he and Brooke Martin were probably desperately rallying whatever support they did have in the church. Wouldn’t they be surprised when they saw how outnumbered they were?

  She crossed the immaculately decorated living room—quite appropriate for a woman of her station—to the end table, and flicked off a piece of dust she had seen illuminated between the shadowed bars cast by the vertical blinds on the windows.

  It was so quiet. Too quiet.

  The quiet made her feel cold, lonely, detached…and she caged her arms with her hands and wandered into the study, to the small file cabinet where she kept her personal things. There was no need to lock it anymore, as she once had. The kids were grown and gone, and Gerald…well, Gerald would never in a million years have cared.

  She pulled out an overstuffed scrapbook and opened it. A soft smile played across her face at the memories of her glory days. She had been in control then. No one had ever questioned that. And she had been a good role model for all those who looked up to her.

  Maybe too good.

  Her eyes fell on an old, fading snapshot of a young man, grinning at the camera as if he planned to pounce on the photographer as soon as the shutter snapped. He had too, she mused. He had chased her across the park, and when he’d caught her, he had tickled her until she’d collapsed with screams of glee.

  She turned the page, seeing herself, young and pretty and full of spirit, brandishing the tiny engagement ring he had saved for a year to buy her.

  “It’s hardly more than a crumb,” her father had pointed out distastefully. “It’ll probably turn your finger green.”

  And then her mother had gotten all huffy and told her that she had to consider what people would think. It wasn’t appropriate that a debutante would marry the son of a woman who cleaned houses for a living.

  Little by little, her parents had chipped away until she had begun to blame him more and more for not being from the right side of the tracks, for not being someone her social circle respected, for not being the man her parents wanted her to marry.

  Eventually, she had chosen propriety over love. Gerald Hemphill, a more appropriate choice from a wealthy family, had come along and proposed to her.

  But not everyone would have understood her choice. Some would have followed their instincts—or their traitorous hearts. Some would have dived headfirst into the wrong kind of relationship. People like Brooke Martin, or Nick Marcello…or even her daughter, Sharon. People who knew that their actions were inappropriate and didn’t care.

  She flipped through the pages, finding other snapshots of the young man in a variety of candid poses that brought back unsettling memories. He had married, she’d heard through the grapevine. Had two children and a dog and a wife who had no more money than he had. She wondered if he were happy—if ever, in the dead of night when his family was sleeping and life stood quietly frozen, he thought of her. She wondered if his memories were pleasant or if he still blamed her for the choice she had made. He had never understood her need to live her life properly, no matter what sacrifices had to be made.

  There had to be a consequence for taking the easy way, as Brooke and Nick had done, and even as her own daughter had done, with that pregnancy that humiliated Abby so. And if she, Abby Hemphill, was called to be the one to administer those consequences, she was willing. Propriety, after all, was everything.

  CHAPTER

  WHAT WE’RE SAYING,” PASTOR Anderson said in a roundabout manner, trying to make the news sound less cruel than it was, “is that we realize the personal sacrifices both of you have made for the windows, and we appreciate it and intend to compensate you for your time. However—”

  “However, we’re fired, right?” Nick finished, making the job easier for him. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, tapping his mouth with steepled fingers as he surveyed most of the members of the renovation committee on one side of the table, and Abby Hemphill and her Finance Committee on the other. He and Brooke had guessed what had transpired the moment the pastor called him that morning to ask them to attend the evening meeting. The somber tone of his voice had been an immediate clue.

  “No, not fired,” Horace said, his face pinched with distaste at the hateful task he’d been assigned. “Technically, the job has been approved—twice—and the Renovation Committee has approved you to do it. We just…” He lowered his eyes in defeat, and slumped over the table. “We just can’t pay you.”

  Brooke looked at Nick and saw that he was as confused as she. Nick stood up and regarded Abby Hemphill, who sat perched on the edge of her seat with her nose high and a satisfied smile on her lips. “Let me get this straight,” he said quietly. “The Finance Committee revoked the budget for just our salaries or for the expenses of the windows as well?”

  “The budget,” Abby Hemphill said, “is nonexistent.”

  “But as I’ve said, we’re not firing you,” Horace repeated, as if that softened the blow.

  Nick fixed his astonished eyes on the pastor, impatient with his inability to be direct. “Is that supposed to be some consolation?”

  The pastor rubbed his face, and Brooke could see that the ordeal was costing him a great deal. She reached up and touched Nick’s arm to calm him. He peered down at her, saw the censure in her expression. He turned back to Horace.

  Horace cleared his throat and tried to explain. “I know it’s not much,” he said. “But I want people to know that you were capable of doing the job and that this decision had nothing to do with you.” He looked down the table at Abby. “But the Finance Committee does control the budget.”

  “So, what you’re saying,” Brooke began, struggling to get the ruling clearer in her mind, “is that it’s over? All the work we’ve done? All our plans…they’re worth nothing? The windows we designed will never be built?”

  Horace sat back wearily in his chair and rubbed his temples. “I guess that’s about it,” he said. “The renovation will continue, but there won’t be any stained-glass windows.”

  The harsh reality of the decree assailed Brooke. No stained-glass windows…no notice for her work…no redemption from Hayden…no excuse to stay.

  Her heart plummeted and her eyes flitted to Nick’s. Was history destined to repeat itself? Another job lost, another relationship broken, another defeat to overcome? Would she follow the script Abby
Hemphill had written for her and leave town again? Would seven more barren years go by with nothing but regrets and recriminations?

  The emotions evident on Nick’s face told Brooke that the same questions plagued his mind. He got up, and she followed. Without saying another word that could be rebutted or repeated, the two left the meeting together.

  By the time they reached the parking lot, Brooke’s veins pumped with fury. “She’s done it again,” she rasped. “How could she do this to us again?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know. But don’t blame the church. There are good people there. Those like Abby are just louder and angrier. It seems like they’re getting their way, but—”

  “They are getting their way,” she said.

  Behind them, the door to the building opened, and the somber Renovation Committee members spilled out one by one, along with Abby Hemphill’s team of supporters who bubbled and buzzed with the elation of their “moral victory.”

  But what had they been victorious over? Brooke asked herself miserably. Over the distaste of a misunderstood relationship? Nick opened Brooke’s car door for her, then slipped in next to her. Together they watched those who had condemned them going to their cars and driving away without even a look back. Abby Hemphill, in all her glory, was one of the last to leave. They watched her march to her gold Mercedes, get in, and start the engine. When she pulled out of her space, she made a U-turn and drove up beside Brooke’s car. Her automatic window drifted down, and within the solitary shadows of the car, they could see Abby’s cold, smug smile.

  “I trust you’ll have your things out of the church as soon as possible,” she said. “And leave your forwarding address, darling, so Horace can send you a check for the little bit you’ve done.”

  “What makes you think she’s leaving town?” Nick asked.

  “Well, maybe I was a little premature,” she said chuckling. “I assumed she had to make a living. One of you really should, you know.” Then, rolling up her window and disappearing behind the tinted glass, Abby Hemphill drove away.