A Rush of Wings

by Kristen Heitzmann

  “Play ‘Blue Christmas,’ Mom,” he said, without shifting his gaze.

  “I don’t know that one, Morgan.”

  “Then just chord with me.” He began to sing the melancholy song with all the pathos of Elvis.

  Noelle looked down at her hands, startled by the brilliance of the diamond that announced her acceptance of Rick. She’d seen Morgan’s expression when he noticed the ring at dinner. She had hoped he would understand, or at least accept it, but he sang to her alone, and her heart ached.

  She glanced at Rick, leaning on the wall. He wore the grim look she remembered so well. Was it Morgan’s advances that had caused that same look before, after he’d brought her home from the hospital?

  Caught between them, she felt strangled. How did Morgan dare to do this with all his family looking on? His words wrapped around her, and she hurt for the hurt she heard there. She thought of what Rick had told her of Morgan’s past. “It really tore him up.” And Celia’s words. “It’s not easy to tell, especially with someone like Morgan.”

  Did he care more than she thought? Was he baring his heart in the only way he knew how? Her throat ached with tears. She hadn’t realized how vulnerable he was. He’d boasted of his heart of steel.

  She hadn’t seen, hadn’t understood. She had been focused on herself. Rick’s love had freed her to feel again. But it was Morgan who first cracked the shell. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t love them both.

  Tara jumped up. “Now do a fun one. Sing ‘Jolly Old St. Nick’ with me.” Smiling, he pinched her nose and they sang. When they finished, they clasped hands and made a grand bow together, accepting any and all applause. Of course.

  “Noelle’s turn.” Tiffany waved an arm her way.

  “That’s not fair.” Rick came off the wall like the protector he was. “She didn’t know the rules.”

  “But everyone has to.” Tara caught her hand and pulled her up.

  Noelle stood. “I don’t really sing, but I’ll play.”

  Celia moved for her to take her place. Noelle sat a moment, resting her fingers on the keyboard. “I don’t know any Christmas songs.”

  “Play anything.” Tara leaned her elbows on the piano top. “Chopsticks.”

  Noelle drew a long breath, raised her hands, and played, the music of Chopin flowing from her fingers as she’d been taught. It had been so long, but it was still there. Years of practice and study at Julliard did not so easily fade. Closing her eyes, she found the joy in even this clumsy instrument and forgot those seated around her.

  She imagined her father in his wing chair, eyes closed, listening, and a pang of remorse seized her. If only she were a little girl again, playing for her daddy with all the promise of her life ahead of her. Her fingers called out the music from the keys. Life was ahead of her still … a new life.

  There was utter silence when she finished, and she looked up to see Rick smiling in astonishment.

  “I’m so humiliated,” Tara wailed. “To think I practiced in front of you.”

  Noelle started to stand.

  “Don’t stop!” Stephanie called.

  Tara nudged her back down. “Play something not so serious.”

  Noelle smiled at the irrepressible girl. She wished she’d had so much fire at that age. Caught up in Tara’s mood, she launched into Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Her fingers flew over the keys as Tara dragged Morgan to his feet to dance. Noelle finished and raised her hands.

  Tara clung to her arm. “I want you to teach me.”

  “Be real,” Stephanie scoffed.

  Tara collapsed onto the couch, so Noelle joined Rick against the wall.

  He leaned close. “I’ve got to get you a piano.”

  “Now that we’ve all had our chance in the spotlight, we’ll hear about the true light.” Hank opened up his large Bible. “The birth of our Lord according to Saint Luke.” He read the story that Noelle had heard in various forms since “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” It wasn’t threatening or especially believable—angels telling women they were pregnant, one who had never had relations with a man. How could they believe all that? Couldn’t they tell it was a myth like any other? Zeus and the gods of Mount Olympus procreating with mortals to create heroes half god, half man.

  It was an interesting twist making Jesus poor and helpless, but many of the other myths included jealous rivals threatening the life of the hero and forcing him to flee. The pattern was recognizable. It even brought astrology into it. How else would the wise men have attributed a star to a human event? Astronomy would have accounted for a stellar anomaly, but only a pseudo-science would ascribe prophetic meaning. Hank stopped reading when the mythical family had fled to Egypt to escape the destruction that all the other babies suffered in place of “God’s son.” Why hadn’t the angel warned the other families, cleared them all out of Bethlehem?

  The moment Hank closed the book, Tara jumped up like a musicbox clown. “Presents, presents, presents. Come on, everyone, it’s time to open presents.”

  They all gathered around the Christmas tree. Noelle dropped to the floor with the rest of them. She smiled when Hank pulled on the Santa hat and rummaged the gifts out from under the tree. He handed them around in stacks. No one moved until he was finished, then he winked at Tara. “Oldest to youngest, parents excepted.”

  She wailed.

  “She can have my turn.” Morgan chucked her chin.

  “No way.” Stephanie plopped a package in his lap. “We have to follow Santa’s orders.”

  Morgan laughed when he opened the Looney Tunes tie and looped it over his neck.

  “That’s from me.” Tara bobbed up to get her hug.

  He squeezed her. “I never would have guessed.”

  Rick got leather work gloves from Hank. Noelle watched him pull them over his long fingers and try the fit. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Noelle’s turn.” Tara was making sure no one dallied.

  Noelle looked down. The small box on the top of her stack had Morgan’s name on the tag. She opened it to find a bottle of Parisian perfume.

  He smiled wryly. “Just a little something from the Champs-Élysées.”

  Her chest was tight. “Thank you, Morgan.”

  “I hope that’s what’s in mine!” Tara shook the big box that held Morgan’s gift to her.

  “Oh sure, Tara.” Stephanie nudged her shoulder. “Like Morgan’s going to bring you French perfume.”

  “I will next time, Peanut.”

  Though it was Therese’s turn, Tara tore into her package, pulled out the red-and-white-striped footed pajamas, and shrieked. “Oh, I love them! I’m going to wear them right now!”

  “Wait until you’ve opened the rest.” Celia laughed. “Morgan, how could you?”

  He chuckled. “They had her name all over them.”

  When the family gifts had been exchanged, Noelle handed out the portraits she had done of each of them, finished in the wood frames Rick had fashioned unknowingly. She dropped down next to Morgan. “Yours isn’t framed, Morgan, because I didn’t know you were coming.” She’d only asked Rick for seven frames. “I painted it from memory.” She had certainly not sat and sketched him in the difficult time since he had arrived.

  He slipped the paper off and gazed at the likeness of his face. She had painted him as she remembered him best, blue eyes sparkling with fun, mouth drawn into a droll smile. He spoke softly. “You have a pretty remarkable memory.”

  Last she knelt beside Rick and handed him his portrait. She had used an early sketch of him leaning back against the fence with Destiny behind him. Beyond that were the craggy peaks of the ranch. His pose showed his strength, his mastery, but she had also captured his gentleness.

  He laid it across his knees, took her hands, and kissed her. “This one goes in the main room.”

  “Well.” Hank patted his thighs and stood. “Time for Mass.”

  Noelle glanced up at Rick, and he raised an eyebrow. “Midnight Mass. It’s a traditio
n.” He helped her to her feet.

  “You can’t be serious. You’re going to church now?”

  “Come with me.” He gave her that deep-eyed look.

  She knew what it meant to him. She saw Celia watching. Morgan as well. What could it hurt? It was still her choice, her decision.

  But when she reached the door of the church, she froze. God’s house. The phrase leapt to her mind. And it brought a stark terror. Why? Why would God’s house scare her so? Again the picture flashed. A tall robed figure with giant wings. Not a bird as she’d first thought. A man. An angel? Why would she be afraid of an angel?

  Unaware of her terror, Rick led her through the door with his fingertips to her lower back. The church glittered with candles. Green garlands with red-and-gold ribbon wrapped the pillars. She glanced up fretfully, but there were only small rectangular windows, dark with night sky.

  It was a modern, semi-attractive building, unlike the churches in New York. At least the ones she knew of. It didn’t seem imposing enough to house Rick’s God. Maybe it didn’t. That thought relaxed her. She looked toward the altar.

  A statue of a man hung in the death throes of suffering on a cross. Not a man to people like Rick; it was Jesus, the Savior, the Christ. “And the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us….” The son of God, the Creator, the one to whom Rick gave complete allegiance.

  She wondered, now, how Rick would choose between them. He clasped her hand, but glancing up, she saw his eyes, too, on the cross. His choice would still be for his God.

  She looked up at the tortured face of this Jesus. What kind of father allowed his son to suffer like that? Her chest tightened. What kind chose a rapist for his daughter? She trembled. She loved Rick. She couldn’t help that. But she wanted no part of his God.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Michael left the noise and the lights and the flowing champagne. He closed the door on the madrigal carols, the smell of cider and eggnog sufficiently spiked to assure a Christmas morning hangover. As he passed William’s office, he glanced at the dark doorway.

  William participated only in the earliest part of the annual Christmas party, where the partners all made their remarks and thanked everyone for diligence and competence, with a few words for those whose efforts had risen above. But he had left directly after as always. This year Michael couldn’t stomach the party either. The gag gifts, the hilarity, all those fakes posturing the good life, pontificating bounty and good wishes.

  He pulled on his cashmere overcoat and took the elevator down. He walked the streets, festive with lights, music playing from speakers and sung on street corners.

  He felt more alone than ever before—and that was saying a lot, since he always felt alone, different. Most of his life he’d been alone, either in actuality or in his own mind, a latchkey child, though his mother was actually home. He’d been small, an easy mark. Then, as a sullen adolescent whose genius had been recognized but who was almost too bitter to grasp the sudden change of fate. Almost. But not quite.

  Plucked from his degrading environment by William St. Claire’s Foundation for the Gifted and given the highest education, he remade himself into what he should have been. By absorbing every nuance of expression, voice, and carriage, he’d accomplished transformation—made himself in William St. Claire’s image.

  And he’d been honored tonight by the partners, honored for his accomplishments over the last year, his value to the firm. William had spoken especially warmly. But for once, it didn’t suffice. Michael felt like a fake, like the rest of the fakes. Every day he pretended, and tonight, during this season of goodwill to all, he wanted most of all to hurt someone.

  He had thought, irrationally, that Noelle would come home. Not that she and William celebrated the holiday—he knew they didn’t—but that she would be there anyway. For her birthday, maybe. Or just because this was the time of year families came together. His tension rose. It always did when he thought of family or the idyllic picture the word conjured.

  Stopping abruptly, he hailed a cab and climbed in. At Jan’s he got out. He didn’t ask the driver to wait. He took the concrete stairs down to the “garden” level and knocked. Jan pulled the door open, Bud hanging on her neck like a gorilla. A crowd swarmed behind them in the tiny room. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of booze.

  Jan staggered under Bud’s weight and giggled. “Hi there, Michael. Join the party.” She sloshed her beer at him, and he stepped back sharply.

  “Oops.” She hunched her shoulders and laughed.

  Michael turned on his heel. He took the steps two at a time and pressed through the door into the night. Jan was Mother all over. Well, let her rot.

  William sat before the portrait of Adelle. The blush in her cheeks was rosy with health, the whisper of a smile full of promise. The photographer had captured the gossamer softness of her hair, hanging in a golden cloud to her slender shoulders, shoulders he could cup in the palms of his hands, bending low to breathe her perfume.

  He looked into the blue eyes, blue as the sky above the Seine on whose banks they had met the Christmas Adelle turned twenty. Paris. Though fifteen years her senior, he had married her two months later, and Noelle arrived by their next Christmas together. Christmas.Noelle … Today was her twenty-fourth birthday.

  And she spent it without him. Not so unusual. A woman of twentyfour certainly had better ways to celebrate than with her old stick of a father. Surely there were myriad things she’d rather do. After all, it wasn’t only her birthday. It was Christmas Eve.

  Christmas Eve. He looked down into the glass he held. The clumped ice cubes stood up over the bourbon like an iceberg and chinked against the side when he raised his glass to Adelle’s portrait with a grim smile. “Joyeux Noël, my dear.” And he drained it.

  Christmas seemed unnaturally quiet the next day with Rick’s sisters off delivering homemade goodies to their neighbors. Morgan was out somewhere. In the living room Celia knitted on the couch. Beside her Hank conversed with Rick, but Noelle didn’t listen. Last night had unsettled her. Something lay beneath the surface, something triggered by Rick’s church. But she couldn’t grasp it. Didn’t want to.

  “Good time to build up your line with new blood,” Hank droned on. “With Rawlings’ stallion, Aldebaran could foal…”

  Noelle stood up from her place in the corner. Let them talk horses, horses, horses. She threw on a coat and went outside. Fingers of frigid air reached into her collar, and she pulled the coat closer. She hadn’t realized it was so cold. But a walk would warm her up.

  She should have worn a hat and gloves, but it wasn’t worth going back in for them. She shoved her hands into the pockets. Plodding through the snow, she made her way to the corral beside the stable and leaned on the white fence. One of Hank’s mares ambled over to snuffle her hands.

  Noelle wished she had brought her something. “Hello there.” She stroked the soft gray muzzle, ran her hand down the brown neck and the long, coarse mane. “I haven’t met you yet.”

  “Miss T.”

  Noelle jumped as Morgan reached around her to pat the horse’s head.

  “Tiffany named her. Kind of a play on Misty but with emphasis on her own initial.”

  Where had he come from? She glanced toward the house, saw his prints in the new soft snow.

  He leaned on the fence beside her. “You were impressive last night.”

  “Everyone was.”

  He reached for her hand and examined the ring. “Rick has classier taste than I thought. Or did you choose it?”

  “We went together.”

  “Quick engagement for someone who didn’t want a relationship. Or were you just waiting for the right brother to ask?”

  It could look that way—probably did to Morgan. But she hadn’t wanted a relationship. Rick had made it happen, almost without her. She looked into Morgan’s face. “I never meant to hurt you. There are things you don’t know….”

  He closed her fingers into hi
s. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She turned away. Because he wasn’t safe. He was as broken as she, and somehow she’d seen that. Rick was whole. Rick would make her whole.

  He brought her hand to his lips. “Come away with me. Let me take you to Paris.”

  “Morgan, don’t.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Are those the only words I’ll ever get from you? Can’t it once be, ‘Morgan, do’?” He pulled her close. “What if I’d been there when the shell came apart?”

  Her pulse throbbed in her throat. “I don’t know.”

  He gripped her chin. His kiss was ardent and demanding, but she felt herself respond. How could she?

  Morgan lurched away as Rick’s fist sent him sprawling to the snow. Noelle gasped at Rick’s wrath unleashed, the rage she’d sensed on the mountain. He grabbed Morgan by the collar, but she caught his arm.

  “Rick, stop!”

  His muscles tensed and rippled. “Don’t ever touch her again.” He dropped Morgan, grabbed her sleeve, and pulled her toward the house.

  Her heart raced. “He didn’t mean anything.”

  “Yeah, right.” The vein in Rick’s temple pulsed and his face was set.

  She began to tremble. “You shouldn’t have hit him.”

  He stopped, turning his full thunderous gaze on her. “No? Were you enjoying yourself? Maybe you wanted it. I’ve heard Morgan’s good.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Maybe I should have let him make love to you right there in the snow.”

  Her hand stung from the slap she delivered as Rick turned away and stalked to the house. From the corner of her eye, she saw Morgan holding his jaw. Shaking with more than the cold, she turned away, limped through the gate and out over the field.

  Rick went straight to his room and threw off his coat. His cheek flamed from Noelle’s slap, and he shook out the knuckles of his right hand. He’d never been violent before. Never struck someone in anger. He knew it was wrong, but—He spoke through clenched teeth. “Morgan had it coming.”