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“We’ll do what we can,” he said. “I’m not willing to give up easily. We’ll start working tonight. At my place.”

  “No!” she said again. “How many times do I have to tell you? We can’t be caught alone at your house or anywhere except the church. And then we’ll still be gossiped about.”

  He threw up his hands in frustrated surrender. “Sorry. I just thought since I had coffee there, and food…. We’re going to be at this around the clock, you know. There’s no avoiding it.”

  “Still,” she said, putting him off with a trembling hand. “I just…I can’t. Maybe tonight we should just work independently. I’ll work at my parents’, and you work at home.”

  Nick’s discontent with the proposed arrangement was clear, but he didn’t argue further. They began walking down the corridor, past the lighted room where the janitor was cleaning.

  Brooke sensed the weariness in Nick’s muscles, the heaviness in his stride. Idly, she recalled the ragged condition he’d been in that morning, as if he hadn’t slept in days. She doubted tonight would provide him with much relaxation either.

  They rounded the corner where Mrs. Hemphill’s office was and came to the door marked “Records,” where Roxy worked every afternoon. The lights were all off, creating an eerie, lonely atmosphere. The sound of their shoes against the floor was soft and rhythmic, but another sound, the sound of muffled voices inside the Records office, caught her attention.

  Brooke’s feet slowed. “Wait a minute,” she whispered.

  Nick stopped. “What?”

  “I heard voices in my sister’s office.”

  Nick wasn’t concerned. “It was probably the cleaning woman.”

  Brooke listened for another moment, staring into the darkness, concentrating. The hall had fallen quiet. “I guess it was,” she said, and started to walk.

  Before they reached the glass doors that opened into the parking lot, Brooke could see the light from the street lamps surrounding it. Only a few cars were still there, most belonging to the church members. But one, set apart from the cluster of others, caught her eye.

  Roxy’s car.

  “That’s my sister’s car.” Brooke turned back toward Roxy’s office, trying to decide whether to barge in. “What if she’s in trouble in there? She wouldn’t be in some dark office this late at night if something weren’t wrong.” She started back up the hall. “I’m going to check on her.”

  Nick followed her back to the Records room, and again they heard two distinct but muffled voices—a man’s and a woman’s.

  Brooke knocked on the closed door, though there was no light shining beneath it. “Roxy?” she called.

  The voices instantly stilled, but no one answered. “Roxy? It’s Brooke,” she said again. When there was still no answer, Brooke shoved open the door and snapped on the light.

  The couple moved apart—Roxy and a man with blond hair. Roxy’s hair was tousled and her expression panicked. She stumbled back.

  “Roxy?” Brooke asked, astounded.

  As if the confrontation were too much for her to deal with, Roxy snatched up her purse and started for the door.

  “Roxy!” Brooke said again.

  Brushing past, Roxy said, “Leave me alone, Brooke! Just leave me alone!”

  Before Brooke could speak, Roxy was halfway down the hall, with the man fast on her heels.

  Brooke stood numbly in the doorway, reeling from the hatred she had seen in her sister’s eyes. Nick’s face mirrored her pain. “I have to go talk to her,” Brooke said.

  “You can talk to her tomorrow,” he whispered. “But not tonight, when she’s in this mood. Tonight, we’re going to my house. No arguments, okay?”

  The emotional warfare of the day had drained all the energy from Brooke’s spirit, making her too weak to fight. She released a deep breath and nodded. “No arguments,” she said. “What have I got to lose, after all?”

  The ride to Nick’s house in his old Buick was too quiet.

  Nick gave her a sidelong glance as he drove through town. “What are you thinking?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head dolefully. “Nothing, really. Just wondering what’s going on with Roxy. Worried she’s messing up her life. She learned from watching me how complicated things can get.”

  “I’m not going to complicate things any more for you, Brooke,” he said. “It’s very simple. We’re two artists working together for a few months. That’s all.”

  “I know that, and you know that,” she whispered.

  He let out an aggravated sigh. “When are you going to stop letting them get to you?”

  “When are you going to start?” she returned. “It all seems to roll off your back.”

  “Would you rather I let it break my back? I’m not going to cower in a corner just because some people have nothing better to do with their time than to throw stones at me.”

  “Are you saying that’s what I’ve been doing? Cowering?”

  Headlights from a passing car illuminated his face, then quickly disappeared. “I’m saying that there are a lot of excuses in life to keep from doing the hard things. I don’t need excuses, Brooke. Maybe you do.”

  Nick pulled into his driveway, but Brooke didn’t seem to notice. Instead she glowered at him in the darkness, silently denying his accusations. He let the car idle for a moment, but when she didn’t say anything, he got out to open the garage.

  Brooke stewed as she watched him walk to the garage door and pull it open with a jerk. His words still stung, but deep in the back of her mind, she realized that she couldn’t find a comeback because she feared he might be right. Maybe she did need excuses. Maybe she was afraid.

  She exhaled deeply as he got back into the car and pulled into the shelter of the garage, next to the Duesenberg. When he had killed the engine, they sat quietly for a moment, neither of them making an attempt to get out.

  “Look, maybe I was out of line,” he said, the lack of enthusiasm in his tone making the apology seem less sincere.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, not sure she meant her words either. “It’s time I stopped hiding behind Mrs. Hemphill and all the others. It’s time I really did grow up.”

  He looked at her in the dim garage light and offered a weak smile. “Let’s go in.”

  They stepped into the kitchen from the garage. Brooke glanced around at the cluttered room that looked like a stop-off place for quick on-the-run meals. It was clean, though here and there lay a wadded napkin, an empty milk carton, a watered-down drink.

  The faint, familiar smell of oil paints drew her deeper into the kitchen as Nick closed the door quietly and laid his things on the kitchen table. She peered through a door on the other side of the kitchen, where the strongest of the scents seemed to originate. “Is that your studio?” she asked.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Go on in, if you want.”

  She turned on the light and tentatively stepped inside. The room was larger than the kitchen, and much more cluttered. Paintings in progress leaned against the wall. One back wall was made entirely of glass, overlooking a small canal lit with lanterns on either side. An easel dominated the middle of the floor, with a stool next to it, and a small table where dozens of colors of paints waited in tubes to be used. Paintbrushes soaked nearby in mineral spirits.

  “I think this is exactly what I pictured,” Brooke said with a self-conscious smile. “The room even smells creative.”

  She turned back to the kitchen and saw Nick making coffee. His expression was still sober. “Canvas seems to be your favorite medium,” she said. “Why did you get interested in stained glass?”

  He plugged the coffeepot in. “I had ideas for some things that I thought would turn out better in glass, and I like the freedom to be versatile.” He got two coffee mugs out of the cupboard, and set them on the counter. “What made you specialize in glass?”

  Brooke leaned against the doorway, suddenly feeling at home surrounded by an artist’s tools, an artist’s work, and an artist’s under
standing. It had been a long time since she had experienced such a sense of comfort in anyone else’s home. “It’s just such a beautiful art,” she said. “The only one that sunlight plays a direct part in. I worked with it a lot in college, and I guess I got hooked. I was never that good at other media.”

  Nick stopped what he was doing and turned back to her, his eyes dark with disbelief. “Not good? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Well, maybe good enough to win a scholarship, but I don’t think I could have ever produced anything good enough to sell.”

  Nick closed the cupboard door and turned to face her squarely. An astounded smile sparkled in his eyes, removing all traces of his earlier ire. “Brooke, has your memory really faded that much?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nick abandoned the coffeepot. “Come here,” he said.

  Brooke followed him into his living room, a breathtaking showcase for some of the finest works of art she’d ever seen. The white carpet added contrast to the colors of the pieces hanging on the walls, and even the furniture served to accent the sculptures surrounding it.

  Brooke’s wandering eyes swept over each piece in turn, absorbing the richness of the beauty accumulated there. But Nick touched her shoulders and gently turned her around, where a piece of sculpture provided the centerpiece for the room.

  It was Infinity, the sculpture of two hands, gently embraced, their touch so poignant that even now she could feel the emotions that had driven her as she’d worked on it. She inclined her head in a moment of awe. “You kept it,” she whispered.

  “Of course I kept it,” he said. “What did you think I would do with it?”

  Brooke laughed softly and brought her hands to her face. “I don’t know. I guess I thought it was lying in your attic or something. Or that you’d thrown it away.”

  He led her to the sculpture, picked it up and set it in her hands. Immediately, she remembered the sweet familiarity of every line, the cool warmth of every vein chiseled there. She slid her hand over the male hand, then across the smaller hand it embraced.

  “Does that look like something that could be thrown away?” he asked quietly. “Brooke, you have no idea how powerful this piece is.”

  She had some idea as she realized that Infinity held the key to her past, the lock on her future. It was both the beginning and the end. But it was her beginning, her ending, and as bittersweet as it was, she cherished it in a way that—she was certain—no one else ever could. “I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered.

  “I’ve had offers for it,” he said. “People see it, and they want it. It strikes so much emotion within them. That’s what art does, Brooke. That’s why you were a born artist.”

  She frowned down at the hands, trying to see the work more objectively. “You had offers?” she repeated. “What kind of offers?”

  “Helena at the gallery saw it a few months ago and offered me $25,000 for it,” he said, watching her face carefully for her reaction.

  There was none. “Did you hear me?” he asked.

  “I heard you.” She locked her eyes on the sculpture again, then quickly set it back on the pedestal and backed away, staring at it as if it were a foreign, unfamiliar object. Assigning it that kind of price tag cast it into the realm of something alive and mysterious. Nothing an eighteen-year-old girl could have created.

  “Why didn’t you sell it?” she asked, still staring at the sculpture.

  “Because it wasn’t mine,” he said.

  She tore her eyes from the hands and looked up at him, stricken. “Yes, it was. I gave it to you.”

  “You gave it to me before everything fell apart,” he said. “I always planned to give it back when I saw you.”

  He lifted the sculpture carefully and handed it back to her. Tentatively, she embraced it, not taking it from him, but holding it just as he did. “I want you to take it back,” he said. “When you gave it to me, it was a poignant gesture of thanks. But after what happened, I don’t think you really should have thanked me. Not for messing up your life, running you out of town….” He swallowed and looked down at the sculpture, unable to meet her eyes as he finished.

  “But I don’t want it,” she said.

  “Take it, Brooke,” he whispered. “And when you start doubting your talent, you can remember just how powerful an artist you really are.”

  Brooke accepted the sculpture with mixed feelings, delighted that he had kept it in such a place of honor all these years…and a little sad that he had given it back now.

  CHAPTER

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN BROOKE slipped into her house and saw that Roxy was still up, sitting in the living room staring at some Japanese martial arts movie on television.

  “Hi,” Brooke said.

  Roxy didn’t look away from the screen. “Hi.”

  Brooke dropped her case on the couch, but she kept the wrapped sculpture in her hands. She was bone tired, and her spirit was full of holes, shot from every direction that day. She wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep unhindered, but Brooke knew that this talk with Roxy about the scene she’d interrupted earlier couldn’t wait. She had to start laying some kind of foundation for a new relationship.

  “Look, about tonight—” Brooke started.

  But Roxy immediately cut in. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Brooke sat down next to her, looked at the screen, and realized that her sister couldn’t possibly have beeninterested in the badly dubbed film. Roxy had stayed up, Brooke surmised, exactly because she did want to talk about it.

  “I want you to know that I only walked in on you because I heard your voice and the light was out, and I was afraid you were in trouble. I’m sorry, okay?”

  Roxy kept her blank stare on the television, her eyes so devoid of feeling that Brooke began to wonder if her sister was, indeed, preoccupied by the movie.

  “Who was he, anyway?” Brooke asked.

  Roxy pulled her feet up on the couch and wrapped her arms around her knees. “No one you know.”

  “I might surprise you,” Brooke said. “The town’s pretty small. I got to know a lot of the kids your age going to school functions when you were little. What’s his name?”

  “He’s not my age,” Roxy said. “He’s older.” The tension on Roxy’s face grew more pronounced, and her lips quivered. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.” She picked up the remote control and flipped the station.

  “All right,” Brooke said, crestfallen. “It’s none of my business.”

  She sat motionless for a moment, struggling for some common subject she could broach. Her hands closed more tightly around the sculpture. Slowly, she began unwrapping it.

  “Do you remember this, Roxy?” she asked.

  Roxy looked down at the sculpture, and a grudging spark of interest ignited in her eyes. “That’s the piece you did in high school. The one that won you the art scholarship.”

  Brooke nodded, turning the hands over, tracing the smooth lines with her fingertips. It fascinated her. Holding Infinity was like holding a part of herself she hadn’t glimpsed in seven years. “Nick kept it all these years.”

  Roxy’s gaze climbed to Brooke’s face, amazement and wonder covering the jaded grays that had reigned there before. “You worked so hard on it. I always thought you had it or that you’d sold it or something.”

  Brooke shook her head. “I gave it to him. I couldn’t have finished it without his help. Wouldn’t have won the scholarship.Wouldn’t have even tried for it.” She looked up and met Roxy’s eyes. “Nick was a good teacher, Roxy.”

  The shutters over her sister’s eyes drew shut again, and Roxy looked back at the television. “Why did he give it back?” she asked, her tone deliberately uninterested.

  Brooke’s eyes glazed over as she looked at the sculpture. “He said he always intended to. Just never had the chance until tonight.” She laughed softly for a moment as the conversation played back over in her mind. “He told me that a gallery owner in St
. Louis once offered him $25,000 for it. Can you believe that? And he turned it down.”

  Roxy’s eyes left the screen and focused on her sister, her antagonism blatant. “Guess passion does crazy things to a person,” she muttered.

  “It had nothing to do with passion,” she said tightly. “He just felt that it was mine, and that he didn’t have the right to sell it.”

  “So are you going to sell it?” Roxy asked.

  Brooke looked at the sculpture and realized just how much it meant to her, now that she held it again. She had put so much into it.

  “No, I couldn’t ever sell it. It means too much.” Quickly she looked up at Roxy, as if she’d caught herself in her own trap. “Nothing happened between us, Roxy. And now our relationship is strictly business.”

  Roxy didn’t seem content to let things go at that. Brooke saw the subtle challenge in her eyes. “If he doesn’t mean anything to you, it seems like you could let it go. Especially since you haven’t had it all this time, anyway.”

  “No,” Brooke said, feeling as if the walls of free choice were closing in on her. She stood up and turned her back to her sister. “He could have sold it, but he didn’t. I can’t do it, either.”

  “Twenty-five thousand is a lot of money,” Roxy said.

  “They could offer me a hundred twenty-five and I wouldn’t change my mind,” she said. Then, looking down at the sculpturecarefully cradled in her hands, she started out of the room. “Good night, Roxy. I’m going to bed.”

  Later that night, as Roxy lay awake in her bed, she thought again of Brooke’s attachment to the sculpture. Twenty-five thousand dollars. Just the thought of that amount of money made her heart beat faster. Twenty-five thousand dollars could take her so far away from this oppressive little town.

  She turned over on her side, thinking of the sentiment Nick Marcello had shown in keeping the sculpture instead of selling it. She had to admit, it was a little out of character for the womanizing cradle-robber she’d always imagined him to be. And the same old question that she supposed plagued everyone in Hayden cropped up again: Why would a handsome, gifted art teacher risk his career for an eighteen-year-old girl?