Emerald Windows (18 page)
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.
I
f 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.
N
ICK WAS AT THE CHURCH AT
eight o’clock the next morning, fatigued 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.
