A Woman Without Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She could have used ordinary window glass, but she had not. She never used glass that had no color. Seeing splinters and shards of colorless glass glittering beneath hard white light brought back too many memories of the accident, of terrible pain, of death.

  Most of the glass pieces had been cut already. Angel had only to shape the bunches of berries that hung lushly from the top of the window. The branches would be the lead beading itself. The leaves were cut from a piece of green muff. The natural variations in the glass provided a subtlety of shading that recalled a living brush.

  The veins on the leaves had been painted in. Angel would bake on the paint in the kiln, a process that permanently combined paint and glass. Although she could have achieved a similar effect by etching the leaf-lines onto flashed glass, she had chosen to use the varied texture and color shading of muff instead.

  Angel turned on the kiln, drew on supple suede gloves, and went back to the light table. She picked up a simple glass cutter. The hard steel wheel and its pencil-like holder fit readily against the calluses of her right hand.

  She adjusted a piece of textured, raspberry-colored glass over the heavy paper pattern she had fastened onto the light table. The light shining through the paper and glass clearly showed the black cutting lines she would follow. The wheel made a high humming sound as Angel drew the steel over glass, leaving behind a very fine trail of powdered glass.

  As soon as the first major line had been drawn, Angel put down the cutter. Gently, firmly, she bent the glass until it separated at the fine line left by the wheel.

  Despite its name, a glass cutter didn’t really cut glass. It merely set up a weakness in the peculiar molecular structure of glass. In many ways glass responded more as a fluid than a solid. Like a fluid, glass “healed” itself.

  Unless Angel separated the glass within minutes of cutting, glass molecules would begin flowing back together. Then the break would be ragged and almost random rather than clean and precise. As Angel broke each piece of glass, she ran the fresh edges over each other, dulling them from razor to merely sharp.

  The curves of the berries were too deep to cut all at once. After the initial shallow curves had been made, Angel picked up special pliers and nipped at the glass until the desired curves were achieved. It was work that demanded care and concentration. She welcomed both, drawing them around her like a balm, minutes flickering by, uncounted.

  Beneath the concentration, the deepest levels of Angel’s mind continued to seethe toward some kind of resolution, some balance that would eventually allow her to live more than a minute at a time.

  Working with glass brought a kind of peace, a breathing space, to Angel. It had helped her deal with all the small disappointments of her childhood—and with the devastating death of her parents and Grant and his mother in the flaming wreck. It would help her deal with Hawk. Her work would let her live in each minute as it came, nothing beyond this minute, this instant of brilliant glass taking shape beneath her fingers.

  Working in silence but for the tiny, high song of glass shearing away, Angel finished cutting the pieces for Mrs. Carey’s gift. When the kiln was hot, the leaves went in. While they baked she continued cutting, working this time on the piece of pale muff. It was a large piece, irregularly shaped yet oddly graceful. She cut with confidence, years of experience showing in each elegant stroke, each sure motion.

  After a time, Angel slipped a piece of plywood over the translucent panel in the table. Then she went to the bead stretcher, a simple vise that held one end of a length of soft, H-shaped lead beading while she pulled on the other, taking out any kinks. She used the thinnest possible bead that was consistent with the structural integrity of the finished piece.

  After the lead beading was pulled and a piece had been tamped into the rustic frame, she began to assemble the glass, beginning in the bottom right-hand corner of the frame. Horseshoe nails held the glass in place until the next piece of bead was ready to be laid.

  As Angel selected each piece of glass, she polished it until she could see nothing but the beauty of the glass itself. Piece after piece, color after color, a fragile jigsaw puzzle held together by black lead stretched into suppleness. The sounds of small nails being tacked down replaced the tiny cry of glass.

  Angel worked through the darkest hours of the night, pausing only to wipe away the tears that came without warning, a transparent up-welling from a wound too fresh and deep to be quickly healed.

  She noticed the tears only at a distance, a blurring of sight that prevented her from seeing clearly the jeweled shards of color slowly becoming whole beneath her hands. Fragments of the past forged into a new pattern, beauty where only breakage and loss had been, sanity rebuilt piece by piece.

  Ebony night paled to pewter dawn. Crimson flushed the studio. Angel didn’t notice the light any more than she noticed that her back muscles were burning and knotted or that the shoulders of her blouse were dark from the tears she had wiped away. She was focused wholly on the puzzle she had just completed.

  She mixed the cement that would be the final touch, the last assurance that the puzzle would not come undone in an hour or a year.

  With a stiff brush, Angel worked the thick cement over both sides of the finished stained glass piece until there was no more space between glass and beading and frame. She poured sawdust over the finished surfaces, absorbing the excess cement. Then, before the cement dried, she took a pointed wooden tool and began to go over each join of lead and glass, picking up extra cement, making sure that the lines of her creation would be as clean and elegant as the glass itself.

  Crimson faded into the softer colors of day. Angel didn’t notice. There was no sound but that of wood squeaking over glass until Derry came in, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “Angie? What’s wrong? Why aren’t you out fishing?”

  15

  Angel looked up, surprised to find that so many minutes had passed.

  It was morning.

  A little of the tension in Angel eased. The first night was the hardest.

  Blinking slowly, she focused for the first time in hours on something that was farther away than the surface of a worktable.

  Derry came closer, swinging easily between the crutches.

  “Angie? How long have you been working?”

  “A while,” Angel said evasively, returning her attention to the stained glass. “I’m almost finished.”

  Actually she had been finished an hour ago. She was simply using the wooden scraper to retrace the lines of what she had created. She enjoyed the colors and shapes, the wholeness where only dreams and lethal fragments of glass had been.

  Derry frowned. “You must have been at it all night.”

  She made a neutral sound.

  “Angie?”

  She sighed and put the wooden scraper aside, knowing she couldn’t evade the issue of why she was home rather than out guiding Hawk.

  “Yes, I worked all night.”

  “You haven’t done that for a long time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Angie,” Derry said softly, “what’s wrong? Is it because last night was the night of the wreck? Four years . . . ”

  Angel hesitated. It would be easier to let Derry believe that she was mourning the past.

  Easier, but hardly the whole truth.

  “That’s part of it,” Angel said, looking up and meeting Derry’s eyes for the first time. “But most of it is that your Mr. Hawkins and I don’t get along worth a damn.”

  Blue eyes widened in surprise.

  “What happened?” Then Derry’s eyes narrowed. “He didn’t make a pass at you, did he?”

  Derry’s voice was suddenly hard, much older.

  Angel’s mouth turned down at one corner, a sardonic echo of the man called Hawk.

  “A pass?” she echoed. “Nothing that personal. There isn’t a personal bone in Hawk’s body.”

  Angel’s voice carried conviction, for she didn’t feel that she was lying. A pass imp
lied unwanted attentions. Hawk’s touch hadn’t been unwanted, not at first. Nor had there been anything personal between them, not in the deepest sense of the word.

  They didn’t know each other well enough to be personal. They had proved it when they had so badly misjudged one another.

  Derry relaxed slowly. “Then what happened?”

  “We don’t speak the same language,” Angel said succinctly.

  Puzzled, Derry waited.

  Angel said no more.

  “What do you mean?” Derry persisted.

  “Does the word misogynist ring any bells?” asked Angel, fiddling absently with the wooden scraper.

  “It’s too early in the morning for dictionary games,” retorted Derry.

  “Mr. Miles Hawkins is a misogynist. He distrusts and hates women. I am a woman. Therefore, he distrusts and hates me. That,” Angel said quietly, looking up at Derry with dark green eyes, “makes it very uncomfortable for me to be around him. He feels just as unhappy to be around me.”

  There was shocked silence for a moment while Derry tried to imagine anyone hating and distrusting the pale, tired woman who stood before him, her eyes haunted by too many sad memories.

  “I can’t believe that,” Derry said.

  “I can.”

  Angel set aside the scraper with a weary gesture.

  “Call Carlson on the radio phone,” she said. “When we ran into him at Brown’s Bay, he offered to take Hawk fishing.”

  “He did? They must have gotten along great.”

  “Why shouldn’t they? Carlson’s all man.”

  Angel heard the bitterness in her own voice and fought a short, silent struggle for control of her emotions. She felt tears burning at the back of her eyes, tears filling her throat.

  “If not Carlson, some other man,” she said tightly, turning away from Derry.

  Then Angel stopped turning so suddenly that her hair lifted, floated, and settled across her face in soft veils. Hawk was standing in the doorway between her studio and her bedroom. She hadn’t heard him come in. He had made no more noise than a raptor soaring on transparent currents of wind.

  Hawk’s thick black eyebrows hooded his eyes, concealing them, making his face a pattern of black lines and harsh brown planes unrelieved by any light. He looked hard, tight, tired.

  The intensity of Hawk’s look didn’t vary, even when Derry cursed at the realization that his conversation with Angel had been overheard.

  “I don’t dislike being around you, Angel,” Hawk said, his voice deep, matter-of-fact.

  “Then you must enjoy hating more than I enjoy being hated.”

  Derry’s breath came in swiftly.

  “Excuse me,” Angel murmured, brushing by Hawk without looking at him again. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  Quietly she shut the connecting door behind Hawk, forcing him into the studio and out of her bedroom. The sound of the door closing seemed unnaturally loud.

  Angel leaned against the wall for the space of a long, shaky breath. Tears spilled again but she didn’t care. She had no strength left for caring. She kicked off her moccasins and stretched out face down on the bed.

  She was asleep before she took another breath.

  When Angel awakened it was afternoon. Clear yellow light filled the room, turning random motes of dust into tiny flashes of gold. She stretched, wincing as her right shoulder blade moved, disturbing the small wounds left by the hook.

  The lance of pain reminded Angel of all that had happened. Her lips flattened as the memories returned, slicing her like freshly cut glass. For a moment she lay very still, not fighting her thoughts, letting them lacerate her. She knew from experience that she was most vulnerable when she had just awakened, whether it was in the middle of the night or the afternoon.

  When Angel was neither asleep nor yet awake, her emotions ruled her. Fighting them only made it worse.

  Mercifully the moment passed, leaving Angel hurting but fully awake and capable of controlling her thoughts again. She pushed aside the summer-weight quilt that was covering her. Her hand paused as she realized that the cover hadn’t been on the bed when she fell asleep. It wasn’t even her quilt. It was from one of the guest rooms.

  The thought of Derry struggling up the hallway on his crutches, dragging a quilt to cover her with, made Angel’s mouth soften. Derry had been so careful of her, so gentle with her since the accident. No matter what she said or did, he still supported her.

  Derry’s thoughtfulness brought a small center of peace to Angel’s emotions, a stillness that spread outward, giving her strength. A long shower increased her feeling of tranquillity.

  She dressed in a soft rose caftan that floated in swirls around her ankles. Tiny silver bells were sewn into the bodice of the dress. Matching pure silver bells were fastened in a gleaming double chain to her right ankle and left wrist, bells shivering sweetly with each movement of her body. Matching earrings murmured and chimed sweetly beneath her hair.

  Angel had bought the dress and jewelry two years ago, when the silence of her Seattle home had threatened to overwhelm her. As she brushed her hair, the bells shivered musically, a soothing counterpoint to the whisper of hair shimmering around her face in a silky, sun-streaked mass.

  For a moment Angel hesitated, watching herself in the mirror. She was tempted to put on makeup to hide the pallor of her skin, the lavender shadows beneath her eyes, the near-transparency of her lips. Then she shrugged and turned away from the mirror. It didn’t matter. Derry knew her too well to be fooled by makeup.

  As for Hawk . . . Hawk was what he was, a man who hated women.

  And Angel was what she was, a woman who had loved the wrong man.

  One minute at a time. Just one.

  Quietly Angel went down the hall, her bare feet making no noise, silver bells singing so softly that only she could hear them. From the guest wing came the deep tones of Hawk, on the phone as usual. Automatically Angel glanced at the clock.

  Three. We’ll miss the tide if he didn’t hurry.

  Nothing new there. We’ve missed many tides. Every tide. Everything.

  Derry was out on the patio, studying a book that was more formulas than words, a book as thick as the cast on his leg. A gentle wind had tousled his blond curls, making him look about seventeen. Frowning, he underlined a section of the book with a bright yellow marker.

  Angel moved around the kitchen discreetly, not wanting to disturb Derry. She scrambled eggs and made toast, then poured herself a cup of the lethal-looking coffee that was Derry’s constant companion while he studied. She ate standing at the counter, eating more because of habit than appetite, habit and the knowledge that she would need the strength that food gave her.

  This time Hawk’s silent arrival did not take Angel wholly unaware. Though her back was turned to the door, she sensed his presence as clearly as if he had spoken to her. She ate the last bite of egg, turned, and rinsed the plate under the faucet.

  Because she wanted very much to avoid Hawk, she turned and faced him. The past had taught her that the more she avoided something, the more she came to fear it. Only when she faced a problem could she begin to accept it, live with it.

  “When is Carlson meeting you?” Angel asked, her voice calm and her eyes direct, empty.

  “He isn’t.”

  Hawk’s fierce, clear eyes searched Angel’s expression. He hadn’t expected this calm stranger looking at him out of Angel’s bleak, blue-green eyes.

  “By the time Derry was patched through to the Black Moon, Carlson was halfway to Alaska,” Hawk said. “There’s a run on, apparently.”

  Angel’s long eyelashes swept down, emphasizing the darkness beneath her eyes.

  “That’s too bad,” she said. “You would have enjoyed Carlson. Who did Derry get to guide you?”

  “No one.”

  Angel lifted her head so suddenly that her silver earrings swayed and chimed, hidden beneath the luxurious fall of her hair.

  Hawk’s eyes dilated
at the unexpected sound. He leaned toward her. Instantly she stepped back, another sudden motion that set other bells to quivering. His dark eyes searched over her, finding and counting each tiny bell, each bit of silver shivering and sighing with every breath she took.

  The sound of Derry’s crutches thumping on the wood deck was almost shocking. Gratefully Angel turned toward the unmusical noise, freed from the dark intensity of Hawk’s eyes.

  “You look a lot better,” said Derry. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  The answer sounded too abrupt, too cool to be a decent response to Derry’s concern.

  “Thanks for bringing in the quilt,” Angel added quickly.

  “Quilt?” said Derry.

  Angel looked at Hawk, but he said nothing, did nothing, simply watched her with the intensity of a hungry bird of prey.

  “Nothing,” said Angel.

  The tiny pool of peace inside her fragmented into sharp confusion.

  Apparently Hawk has some human feeling after all. Guilt, perhaps.

  God knows he earned it.

  “How goes the studying?” Angel asked, pushing aside her memories.

  Derry grimaced. “It goes slowly.”

  He hesitated. His eyes searched hers, concern and affection apparent in his expression.

  “Angie?” he asked tentatively.

  Angel braced herself, knowing what was coming.

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  “Carlson can’t guide Hawk.”

  “I know.”

  “The other guides have their hands full for at least a week, and even then . . . ”

  Angel waited.

  Derry said nothing.

  And then she knew that he wouldn’t ask her despite the need and hope burning behind his eyes.

  She didn’t have to condemn herself to four weeks of Hawk’s contempt. All she had to do was live a lifetime knowing that she hadn’t been strong enough to help Derry gain a foothold on his dream. Derry, who had given her life itself and asked for nothing in return.