Fear and panic squeezed her rib cage. He doesn’t know me. When he finds out...
Do not think about this right now, she ordered herself. Maybe you misread him. Maybe that wasn’t what he meant at all. Maybe...
No more.
Filled with anxiety, she found waiting to be torture. She paced. She eyed her computer but decided she couldn’t bear to check her email in case there was a message from Jo or Rachel. They must be wondering why they hadn’t heard anything from her, especially after she’d sent that blasted photo she took with her camera phone. Maybe tonight she could type, I’m mailing it in the morning.
She ached to be able to type that, to be able to go back to enjoying the lively email correspondence that had felt like the beginning of real, adult friendship.
Finally, she made herself settle down to work, firing some already glazed pieces, carefully using and then distorting a stencil on another fat-bellied bottle. Frowning when she finished, she wondered how she’d come to use such pale colors. What was wrong with bold ones? What did it say about her that the patterns on her ceramic pieces faded into near invisibility where they swelled? That a woman lost something at the very moment she was most female? To heck with that. What if the color glowed deepest and richest where the porcelain was distended, as if to suggest the power of the life within?
For the first time all week, she became energized and lost herself in her vision. The sound of her doorbell actually caught her by surprise.
The Brett on her doorstep had shed the tie, unbuttoned his shirt at the throat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. She might have been offended when he said, “You’re a mess,” except that he looked happy to see her, even if she had hurt him this morning.
“I suppose I should go change.”
He shrugged, appraising her. “Doesn’t matter. I like the overalls. Easy to get you out of them.” A smile in his eyes, he undid one strap with a deft flick of his hand.
“Hey!” She batted at his hand and slid the metal loop over the button again. It was stupid to feel giddy because he wanted her even in her slobbiest, everyday getup, but... How could she help it?
In the end, she changed into jeans and a T-shirt to make sure she didn’t get wet clay or glaze on the sleek leather seats of the ZR1, which she had found online only so she could gape at the price he must have paid. He loved his car. Why would he want to quit a job that let him have all those perks?
As they zipped through the city streets, he talked about his day, more to distract her than because he had anything important to say, she suspected. His effort didn’t succeed. She felt like a rubber band being stretched taut, one that was already brittle enough to have some cracks and might snap any minute under the strain. By the time he parked in front of the duplex, she was completely quiet, concentrating on remembering how mad she was. Not scared. Not feeling inadequate because what could she possibly say that would convince this guy to give her the quilt.
I am self-righteously mad.
Check.
She got out and marched up to the front door without waiting for Brett, although he caught up with her as she was leaning on the doorbell. It wasn’t dark yet, so she couldn’t be sure whether there were lights on inside or not. They both stood there listening. There wasn’t even a whisper of sound.
“They don’t have a car anymore,” Ella said, not bothering to keep her voice down. “How could they leave?”
“Walk. Bus.”
Rubber-band Ella snapped. Ella threw herself at the door and hammered with both fists. “I know you’re in there!” she yelled.
Brett squeezed her shoulder but didn’t say anything.
She spun on her heel. “I’m going to look in windows.”
“Ella, you could get arrested...”
“I don’t care,” she yelled back, already bounding across the rough grass toward the corner of the duplex. The gate was closed, but she was able to reach over it to the latch. She dismissed the threat of a dog—if Kyle Bernard had one, it would have been howling by now. At a slight sound behind her, she whirled to find Brett shaking his head but following her anyway. “You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“Yeah, I do.”
The tiny backyard was in worse shape than the front. Nobody had ever bothered to landscape. A square concrete patio was separated from a presumably identical one on the other side of the duplex by a ten-foot-long board fence. Brown paint flaked off the boards. An old kettle-style barbecue was a mass of rust.
Ella peeked in the first window to see the shadowy interior of a garage. No car.
“He hasn’t stolen another one yet,” Brett murmured.
She found herself slowing down as she sneaked up on the lighted kitchen window. Her heart pounded. She glanced behind her at Brett, who lifted his eyebrows, but was sticking with her.
Ella suddenly remembered that people who stole cars sometimes carried guns. And she and Brett were trespassing. The creep might even be legally justified in shooting them.
This so wasn’t a good idea.
But what was she supposed to do? Give up?
Am I really prepared to break in if they’re not home?
Yes. Yes, for the quilt she was. Heaven help her.
She pressed herself against the siding and edged toward the window. If Bernard and his girlfriend were home, they’d know Brett and Ella hadn’t left. All they had to do was peek out the front window to see the Corvette in plain sight.
If you’re going to do it, then do it, she ordered herself. Ella took a deep breath and rose on tiptoe.
CHAPTER NINE
SHE WAS STARING at the back of a head. At long, dirty, yellow hair. It was him. Hyperventilating, she dropped to a crouch.
Brett flattened himself against the side of the duplex a few feet away.
At that moment, she heard a man’s voice from inside. “Can you tell what they’re doing?”
The girl’s reply to his question was audible but not clear enough for Ella to make it out.
With a grim expression, Brett grabbed Ella’s hand and yanked her toward him. “We have to get out of here.”
She gave a jerky nod. Bending over, for no good reason, they ran. Brett paused to close the gate behind them. Then they walked hastily straight to the car, neither of them looking back. Ella could feel eyes watching them.
Not until they were in and he’d locked the doors did they glance at each other.
“Well, that was fun,” he said in a normal voice.
Ella stared at him then began to laugh. It wasn’t long before she was crying, too.
* * *
ALL BRETT COULD think when Ella started to cry was that he’d let her down. Maybe he was the loser he’d been accused of being lately. He had convinced himself that determination was enough, but clearly it wasn’t. Stunned, he wondered if all he’d done was give Ella hope when there wasn’t any.
He held her as she cried but was unsurprised when she pulled herself together almost immediately. She straightened away from him and used the hem of her T-shirt to wipe her cheeks. Her eyes were red and swollen when she looked at him.
“It’s okay. I know the world won’t end. Really.” She tried to smile. “Honestly, everybody will be disappointed, but what’s going to change? It’s not as if I even see any of those people.”
Those people? Her cousins. Her family.
She was consoling him. That really stung. He’d let her down, and she was trying to make him feel better.
He started the engine with a vicious turn of his wrist, and without a word put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.
“I’m sorry,” Ella said after a minute.
He spared her an astonished glance. “You’re sorry?”
“Sneaking around the house like that. I could have gotten you in trouble,
too, and it would have been way worse for you. Getting arrested, I mean.”
He swore out loud, silencing her. When he didn’t say anything else, her eyes got bigger and after a moment she looked away. Brett would have sworn she somehow made herself smaller.
Did she feel smaller? he wondered incredulously, but he didn’t need to wonder. Of course she did. One of the first things she’d said was, I knew I’d mess this up. I should never have agreed to help. He remembered the punch in her voice, as if it had been ridiculous for her to believe for a second that she could do anything meaningful for another person.
And Brett still had no idea why she felt that way about herself.
A rough sound escaped him, but she didn’t even turn her head. And I kidded myself believing I could make everything right for her. When I couldn’t even pinpoint what was going wrong in my own life.
Yeah, but thanks in part to Ella, he was beginning to see it now. Maybe he hadn’t totally accepted what the changes he was considering would do to his relationship with his father, but at least he was thinking seriously now.
Great. How did any of that help her?
He reached over and covered her cold hand with his, but she didn’t clasp his. In fact, her hand was so unresponsive that after a moment he let her go. He couldn’t even blame her. In the end, nothing he’d done had helped.
When they reached her house, Brett walked her in. His chest felt weighted, his throat half-blocked. “All right,” he said. “It’s time you tell me why this mattered so much. I’ve earned that much. What happened to make you believe you failed your mother?”
She stared at him, her face leached of color. Guilt slammed him because he was hitting her at a low moment, but he needed to know. And she needed to tell him.
As the silence lengthened, though, he began to think she still didn’t trust him enough to bare herself completely to him.
But then she seemed to sag, and he steered her to the sofa. Sitting on the coffee table, he faced her, close enough to touch.
“I told you she was dying,” Ella said in a stifled voice, after a time. “She had leukemia. Not the childhood kind. They tried a bone marrow transplant, with one of her sisters as the donor. I wasn’t a match, either, and I’m an only child.”
He nodded, although she probably didn’t notice it. Her gaze was now fixed on her hands, although he doubted she saw them, either.
“I was thirteen when she got sick, an awful age. I fought constantly with my father, and was mad at Mom because she took his side more than I thought she should.” A huff of air served as a sort of laugh. “With hormonally driven irrationality, I believed Mom must not want to stay with me or she’d be fighting harder to live, wouldn’t she? So there I was, her beloved daughter, being a brat instead of supporting her.”
Brett remembered his own recent careless behavior and snorted in disbelief. “You were at an age when you were supposed to be pulling away. You had to be torn between helping your mom through her illness and living the life of a normal teenager. But you can’t tell me there weren’t days when you sat holding her hand or talking to her, making sure she knew you loved her.”
Ella frowned as if in surprise. “I guess there were.” Her mouth twisted. “Unfortunately, the day she died wasn’t one of them. Dad had asked me to sit with her. We quarreled, I stomped out and hid in the park instead. I came home hours later to find my father sitting alone in the dark. Mom had died. I never even had a chance...” Her lips compressed, and she seemed to struggle for breath.
Oh, damn. “To say goodbye.”
“Yes.”
What could he say to help her let go of the guilt? He might be gifted with words in the courtroom, but everything was different with this woman, who was able to drag a host of emotions from him, some he hadn’t let himself feel in years.
“At that age,” he said gently, “if you’d known she was dying, not later but right then, would you have been able to sit beside her, kiss her cheek and say the right things? Or would you have sobbed and probably increased her distress?”
She lifted a startled face his way. “I...hadn’t thought of that,” she said finally. “Of course I’d have sobbed. I was all emotion and not much common sense or self-control then.”
Brett nodded. “So how did you fail her? You had no idea it was her last day, and I doubt she did, either. Or your father, or he’d have stayed at her side, too.” He glanced at her. “He didn’t, did he?”
She sat silent for a minute, looking inward. And then she said, “I actually don’t know. Isn’t that strange? He’s...a cold man. If he suspected what was coming, he might have convinced himself Mom would rather have me with her.”
“Surely there was a nurse, too.”
“Yes, of course. I’ve always been so focused on why I wasn’t there when she died, it never occurred to me to wonder about Dad. He was so angry at me.”
“Because he couldn’t admit how angry he was at himself?”
“Oh, God.” Her laugh was soft and sad. “I can see that. He isn’t given to self-examination. Convincing himself someone else failed Mom, not him... Yes, it makes sense.”
At last, she looked at him. Really looked, and he noted that the blue of her eyes had deepened to a color like twilight. Soft, befuddled, relieved.
“Where were you then?” she asked, voice husky. “I could have used you.”
“I’m here now,” he said. “And I’ll be here tomorrow.”
And that’s when she visibly shut down.
* * *
ALL SHE SAID was “I know,” and then began to hint that, gee, wasn’t there somewhere else he should be?
As she retreated, he continued to ask himself: Had he really done everything possible to get her quilt back? He only had so many skills to offer. Was there anything left?
Wait. What was he best at? Practicing law. His eyes widened, but Ella didn’t seem to notice. He wanted to shake his head.
Dumb. Why hadn’t it occurred to him sooner that he had something Kyle Bernard needed? Real leverage.
“Hey,” he said. “I don’t suppose you took a picture of the quilt. Somehow, through all this, you never really described it.”
Emotion flashed over her face. Probably misery—why would she want to look at the quilt she blamed herself for losing? But also, he thought, impatience. She wanted to be alone.
But she nodded after a moment. “I have the picture on my computer. I sent it to Rachel and Jo.”
A moment later he was admiring it. He finally understood what she’d meant when she said she’d added a “border.” There was a center panel—he couldn’t gauge how large—that featured a snowy scene of a charming house with a turret, decorated for Christmas, and holly bushes embroidered with ornaments and lights. A silver star hung in the twilight blue sky, the color of Ella’s eyes, illuminating the Christmas wonderland. Details were a little hard to make out, but there were a couple of snowmen, and was that a wreath on the door of the house?
The first border surrounding the panel had stars pieced—he thought that had been Ella’s word—from fabrics she’d said were from both the bride’s and groom’s childhoods. The second border—Ella’s—was made up of trees, as if the house were protected by a forest. Every tree was different, as if she’d cut them out of fabric and then sewn them to a backing. A few were only the dark silhouette of branches. Others were evergreens, outlined against the sparkling night. And yet more were topped by their own tiny silver stars. Here and there, red and blue and gold ornaments peeked from beneath branches.
He wasn’t sure why he was so stunned. He was already in awe of Ella’s talent as an artist, and logic said others in her family must have some of the same gift. Still... “It’s beautiful.” He touched the monitor, as if he could feel the texture of fabrics that carried the history of the two people who would be getting married.
What if he were the groom, discovering from this just what his bride’s family would do for her? What she meant to them?
No, he thought, with new resolution, he wasn’t giving up. But he also didn’t want to offer Ella false hope.
“Hey,” he said, catching her hand. “There’s something I have to say.”
She tipped her face up. He saw her pain, but also the indomitable quality that had drawn him from the beginning. He took her other hand, too.
“You’ve amazed me since I met you. For a lot of reasons—you’re funny, compassionate, talented.” His smile twisted. “Sexy. But what got me from the start is that you’re a fighter. I don’t know a single other person who would have shanghaied a complete stranger and talked him into chasing a stolen car. Most people are too afraid. Even I’ve been...” He had to clear his throat. “I’ve been coasting. Not being honest with myself. That’s not how I want to live, Ella. You’ve inspired me to, uh, try to do better.” He felt more and more awkward as her expression didn’t change. Lifting one shoulder in a lopsided shrug, he concluded, “No matter how this ends, you did your damnedest. If you have to tell these cousins the quilt was lost, make sure they understand that, too.”
She shook her head and then kept shaking it, as if she couldn’t stop. “That’s... I don’t deserve it. You’re the one... I still can’t believe everything you’ve done, and you didn’t even know me when we started.”
“Your crashing into me was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
Ella stayed frozen for so long, he was about to step away. But then she gave a small cry and flung herself forward. He wrapped his arms around her and bent to press his cheek against the thick silk of her hair. She was shaking as she clung, but she stayed silent.
She didn’t say, It was one of the best things that ever happened to me, too.
A funny kind of tension, even apprehension, crawled over him.
In confirmation of his fear, she straightened away from him, squaring her shoulders. “I have something to say, too.” Her eyes were dry, her voice scratchy. “I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done. But now I think it’s time you quit worrying about me and got over your own denial. You should focus on fixing your life. ‘Trying’ isn’t good enough. Do it.”
The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It SnowYou Better Watch OutNine Ladies Dancing Page 17
