Emerald Windows, Page 2

  He looked up then and saw the other student staring, as if she’d witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to see.

  He realized that Sharon Hemphill, the daughter of the school superintendent, who came from old family money and owned half the town, had clearly misinterpreted what had just happened.

  He went to her desk and looked at her project. It was an uninspired mosaic of her favorite pop star, but it looked nothing like him.

  “Maybe the eyes are too far apart, Sharon,” he said, hoping to divert her attention.

  The chubby girl looked up at him with round, striking eyes. “It looks more like a caricature than a portrait, doesn’t it, Mr. Marcello? Maybe I’m using the wrong medium. My mother saw it the other day and said my talent was more in line with painting on velvet. She suggested Elvis.” She said it as if it amused her, but Nick knew from living in Hayden all his life that nothing the girl ever did could please her mother.

  Brooke got up and came over to her. “You can do it, Sharon,” she said. “Look…just take out this piece, and move this around…”

  Nick watched with admiration as the piece took on new life. The girl’s pale face brightened. “Wow. That made a huge difference. Thanks.”

  “Sure.” Brooke went back to her seat and stared down at her sculpture with deep concentration.

  As he might have expected, rumors had begun to fly around the school after that. Sharon Hemphill must have described what she’d seen with an imagination he wished she’d applied to her art work instead. Nick had assured the principal that there was nothing going on—that he’d never even been alone with Brooke, that she was a very gifted student working on the most poignant piece of sculpture he’d seen by an amateur, and that as her teacher, it was his job to guide and encourage her so that she could win the state competition. The principal had chosen to believe Nick.

  But that wasn’t the end of the rumors.

  Brooke had shown up with her sketch pad at another car show an hour from town, and the Hemphills, Sharon’s parents, had seen her talking to Nick and assumed they had gone there together.

  Another time he’d gone into a coffee shop and found her sipping a latte and working on a charcoal drawing. He had joined her for a few minutes—just enough time for two teachers from the school to see them and draw conclusions. Mr. Hemphill, the superintendent, confronted him the next morning with the threat of firing if there was “one more incident.”

  Sharon had approached him at lunch, apology dimpled into her face. “Mr. Marcello, I’m so sorry about my parents. Dad was going to fire you today, but I talked him out of it. I know you haven’t done anything wrong, but to my mother, you’re guilty until proven innocent. With her on the school board and my dad being superintendent, the deck is kind of stacked against you.”

  He had smiled, set his fork down, and looked at the young girl who seemed too pleasant to have come from such a family. “I appreciate that, Sharon.”

  “See, my mom has always had a thing about Brooke.” She stopped and tugged at her baggy pants. “It’s almost like somebody from Brooke’s neighborhood…you know, blue collar family and all…doesn’t have a right to be talented and pretty and thin…” She looked down at the books she held. “Everything I should be, but I’m not. It really chaps her. And then there’s that appearance thing. It doesn’t matter how things really are. It’s how they appear, you know? That’s why she’s got it in for you. If you were bald and had a fifty-pound paunch, she’d leave you alone.”

  Nick nodded, seeing Sharon in a new light. “I’m glad you told me.”

  She stood there in her ill-fitting clothes, as if she didn’t know what to do next. “Well…guess I’ll get back to class.”

  “Aren’t you going to eat lunch?”

  “No,” she said. “My mother won’t let me drive my car until I’ve lost thirty pounds.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “I wish.”

  That explained why her clothes were so baggy lately, and why she looked so pale. She was probably starving herself. A case of bulimia waiting to happen.

  She drew in a deep breath, then hugged her books tighter. “I’ll see you sixth period, Mr. Marcello.”

  She left the room, and Nick realized that if her father and mother would be so unmerciful to their own daughter, they certainly wouldn’t go easy on him. He vowed to avoid even the appearance of evil.

  But just before graduation, Nick got word that Brooke had won first place in the University of Missouri scholarship competition. Because he was her art teacher, Nick had presented the award on graduation night.

  Brooke had sprung out of her seat at the announcement and cried as she’d made her way to Nick. He’d wanted to grab her up and hug her, but he knew the rumors would only mushroom if he did. Instead, he shook her hand, congratulated her, and gave her the small statue.

  After the ceremony, Nick had gone to stand in the lobby to congratulate each of his graduating students. Brook was one of the last to come out. She held her diploma in one hand and her award in the other, looking as excited and vibrant as he had hoped she would. He had taken a step toward her, but she’d been encircled by her family, swallowed into their hugs and congratulations, and ordered to put her robe back on and pose for an eternity of pictures.

  He had thought of waiting to congratulate her, but a surprising melancholy had fallen over him. The school year was over. His star student was going to college. He would have no reason to see her again.

  That melancholy had disturbed him, and finally, he had withdrawn from the crowd and headed for the art room. He had turned on one of the easel lights, casting the room in a dim yellow glow, and had stared at the air as he reminded himself that he couldn’t get so attached to his students if he was going to make it as a teacher.

  When she’d stepped through the doorway, it had startled him. She had her graduation gown draped over her arm, and her award and diploma in her hands.

  “I was looking for you,” she said with a smile. “I thought I might find you in here. Do you ever go home?”

  “Sometimes.” Smiling, he nodded down at the statue in her hands. “How does it feel?”

  She tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. Grinning, she just shook her head. “You knew and didn’t tell me.”

  “I wanted you to be surprised,” he said. “And I wanted everyone to know about it. Your moment of triumph. You deserved it.”

  Her eyes misted over. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Sure, you could have.”

  She shook her head, insisting that she couldn’t. “Where is it?” she asked. “My sculpture, I mean. Did they return it?”

  “I have it in the closet. I thought of displaying it in the foyer at graduation, but I was afraid it would get knocked over and chipped in the crowd.” He went to the closet and got it out. “Here. You can make it the centerpiece of your first showing. It’s really amazing, Brooke.”

  She took it reverently. “Did you know I named it Infinity?” she asked quietly.

  “I saw that on the entry form,” he said. “Interesting name. Where did it come from?”

  “I just thought those hands represented something that lasted. Something that just goes on and on, no matter what.” She studied the sculpture, her green eyes sobering. “Mr. Marcello, I want you to have it.”

  Nick caught his breath. “But, Brooke,” he said. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever done. You should keep it…or sell it…”

  “I could never sell this,” she whispered, setting the sculpture in his hands. “It means too much.”

  He took it then, frowning down at it, and tried to think of something eloquent to say. When words failed him, he just reached down to hug her.

  Suddenly the lights flashed on, flooding the room in cruel fluorescents. Nick and Brooke jumped apart and turned to the door. There stood the school superintendent, Gerald Hemphill, and his wife, Abby, gaping at them in horror and condemnation, as if they’d caught a teach
er molesting a child.

  Abby Hemphill looked as if she’d been personally offended. “Apparently we’ve interrupted something,” she said. Then picking up Brooke’s graduation gown, she thrust it at her. “I suggest you take this and go home.”

  “Yes,” her husband said. “We have some important matters to discuss with Mr. Marcello.”

  “I just came to thank him—”

  “It’s all right, Brooke,” Nick said. “I can handle this.”

  For the rest of his life, Nick was sure he would never forget the look of mortified humiliation on Brooke’s face as she left the room.

  Mr. Hemphill had fired him on the spot, and the school board had threatened to take legal action. But the thought that kept running through his mind was that Brooke was hurting. As soon as he’d gotten near a telephone that horrible night, he’d called her.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he’d assured her. “We’ll get this straightened out.”

  But the next morning the headlines in the paper read, “Teacher Fired for Rumored Affair with Student,” and the article told how rumors had abounded for weeks about twenty-four-year-old Nick Marcello and eighteen-year-old Brooke Martin. It also stated how Mr. and Mrs. Hemphill had discovered them in a compromising position after the commencement ceremony and fired Nick.

  Brooke had left town that same day, and as far as Nick knew, she had not returned until today.

  Now he had the chance to work with her again, one artist with another. He hoped she didn’t turn him down. His interest in her was strictly business, he assured himself. Some lessons were never forgotten. Especially when one learned them the hard way.

  CHAPTER

  BROOKE PULLED HER CAR OUT of the church parking lot and onto the main street that ran through Hayden, past J. C. Penney’s, the Phillips 66 gas station owned by Jarrett Plummer and his son, and the old rec hall where she’d had her first art lesson at age five. Everything was the same as when she’d left it. Yet everything was different.

  She’d had her down moments since she’d left Hayden, and Brooke was certain she’d have more of them in her life. But there hadn’t been a day since that graduation night that she hadn’t felt the abysmal humiliation that had begun when she’d looked up, startled, into the shocked faces of Mr. and Mrs. Hemphill. A day hadn’t gone by since then that she hadn’t closed her eyes at least once in remembrance of that hug and wondered how something so innocent could have had such ugly consequences.

  Now, as she drove through the blue-collar section of town to her family’s home, she recalled the anger in her father’s face the night Mrs. Hemphill called and told him what they’d allegedly caught his daughter doing. For the first time in her life, Brooke had seen in her father’s eyes that he was capable of doing harm to another human being. As long as she lived, she would never forget his huge frame bolting across the floor as he’d carried his broken pride like a weapon that would exact the only revenge he understood.

  “Daddy, where are you going?” she had shouted.

  “I’m going to find Nick Marcello and kill him!” George Martin’s voice had shaken the frame house.

  She turned to her mother. “Mom, stop him!”

  “No!” her mother screamed. “If he doesn’t kill him, I’ll do it myself!”

  How could her parents so quickly and easily believe the things the Hemphills said? “But it didn’t happen that way! It was just a hug! He was congratulating me! He doesn’t feel that way about me, Mom!” she cried. “We never did anything, Daddy. We just hugged. What’s wrong with that?”

  “He’s a grown man, and you’re a child!” her father had roared. “He’s a teacher!”

  “He didn’t do anything!” Brooke sobbed, but she knew that nothing she said would ever make things right in their eyes. “Nick did not take advantage of me.”

  “That’s not the way Abby Hemphill tells it!” her mother said, hysteria cracking her voice. “We’ve worked all our lives in this town to be known as good people with good children, and it wasn’t easy with an income that makes people look down on you, anyway. But now, in one night, it’s all ruined. We’re reduced to trash, because whatever happened, Abby Hemphill’s word is the only word that matters!”

  And her mother had been right. As long as she lived, Brooke would never forget the headlines the next morning, the words that implied she and Nick had been having a secret affair for some time. When she read that he had been fired for something he hadn’t done, it had been too much to endure.

  She had packed her suitcases that morning, withdrawn all the money she’d worked at the local theater box office to save, and driven the little third-hand car she’d bought months earlier out of town before her parents even knew she was gone. The only person who had seen her leave was her little sister, Roxy, only ten years old at the time. Roxy had sat on the porch and waved goodbye, a look of mournful confusion on her face as she tried to understand the events that would change her family forever.

  The summer that followed was the loneliest and most miserable of Brooke’s life. She had rented a tiny hole-in-the-wall apartment in Columbia, Missouri—three hours from Hayden— and taken a job as a waitress to support herself until school started. There, she had nursed her wounded pride. But she imagined that the blow to her pride was nothing compared with the loss of Nick’s livelihood. She doubted that he would ever forgive her.

  She had concentrated her time and efforts on school, and had been considered by her professors to be a stellar art student. After graduating, she had gone to work for a stained-glass artist. She had been there ever since, nurtured and trained by one of the finest. Her boss—a jolly old man who treated her like his daughter— always wanted her to stretch and take on new projects, and he’d been thrilled by her opportunity to do the windows at St. Mary’s.

  If he’d only known what those windows might cost her.

  She pulled into the driveway of her family home and sat for a moment, staring at the little house in which she had spent a happy childhood, before she’d known what cruel games adulthood played on people. What would her parents say, now that the black sheep of the family was back in town? Would they count the days until she left, fearing that the longer she stayed, the more gossip she would provoke? And when they learned she would be working with Nick…

  She reeled the thought back in and told herself just to face what came and not to dwell on the unknown. Slaps in the face were easier to endure when they came as a surprise, she told herself. Dread and anticipation were wasted energy. She knew firsthand.

  Brooke grabbed her suitcase from the back seat and got out of the car. For a moment, she peered up at the small house that clearly represented the Martins’ modest status, but revealed their stoic pride in what little they had. The house was freshly painted in blue, though it had been white the last time she’d seen it. And they had changed the color of the front door. A large awning hung over the picture window, a new addition in the last few years. Funny that her parents had never mentioned it when they’d visited her in Columbia—but then, it was such a little thing…not the kind of thing families talked about when they got together only once or twice each year.

  Brooke went up the steps to the porch, set her suitcase down and shook her key chain around until her old house key was in her hand. It jammed in the knob, as if it didn’t fit, and she stepped back, frowning.

  The door opened from the inside, and her mother smiled at her, as she had when Brooke was a little girl—before she had become the family albatross. Alice Martin’s expression gave Brooke’s heart a nostalgic twist, making her ache for the simple childhood days when her parents’ approval was so easily earned. For a moment, as Brooke smiled at her mother, who still wore her hair in the same frosted bob she’d worn for fifteen years, she wondered whether it could be possible that things hadn’t changed that much, after all. “Brooke, we’ve been waiting for hours. Where have you been?”

  “I got tied up.” Brooke hugged her mother and stepped over the threshold
, dropping her keys back into her purse. “The key…it didn’t fit…”

  “We had the locks changed a few years ago,” her mother explained, taking her suitcase out of her hand and setting it against the wall. “Roxy lost her purse, and we were afraid whoever found it would break in.” Her mother saw the distraught look on her daughter’s face and gently touched Brooke’s hair. “I’m sorry, honey. It never occurred to me to tell you. It’s been so long since you were here. I guess I thought you’d never come through that door again.”

  Brooke sighed, and her gaze panned the living room. Her mother had covered the warped hardwood floors with an inexpensive wall-to-wall carpet, and new furniture filled the room. The old recliner she remembered with its split seams where the stuffing oozed out was gone, as was the old couch with the leg that fell off if you sat on the wrong end. The unfamiliarity and newness made her want to step back outside and focus on her mother’s face a little longer. “Everything looks…different,” she whispered.

  Her mother took her hand and drew her toward the kitchen. “Don’t look so surprised, Brooke. When you decide to stay away for seven years, you have to expect a few changes.”

  Brooke rallied and forced a smile, determined not to reveal how difficult this homecoming was. Maybe she should have come home a few days earlier, allowing more time to break the proverbial ice and put the past behind her. But somehow, before today, she hadn’t been able to do it.

  The swinging door to the kitchen burst open, and her father hurried out, his leather-tanned face sporting the same smile he’d worn when she was his princess.

  “There you are!” He swept her up into his arms and swung her around, as if she weighed fifty pounds again. “I took off work early today to see you, but we were beginning to think you’d never show up.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Brooke said, her delight at seeing him fading as he set her down, waiting for an explanation. “I had something to do before I could come home.”