Everyone had layers of self, some of which ended up revealed, others hidden forever. In that respect, she wasn’t any different than most people.
But then she thought about what Nolan had shared with her, and knew it to be a gift. A gift she couldn’t reciprocate without telling him things she’d sworn, cross her heart, never to tell anyone because if she did she’d be endangering her whole family.
But if I trusted Nolan...
She saw the U.S. Marshal’s face as he leaned forward, looking at each of them in turn. “Chances are good you can never go back. Sitting here now, you are not the person you were yesterday. Holding on to who that was will only hurt you, and will possibly put you at risk.
“Don’t think back, don’t tell anyone, become the Nelsons who are moving to Oklahoma because you, Mark—” that was her father’s new name “—were laid off from automobile assembly in Detroit and the economy is so depressed there that you decided to make a completely new start somewhere else.
“You kids have it easiest. Everyone will understand that you’re unhappy about the move. Teenagers never like to leave their friends. You’ll be surprised how few questions people will ask.
“This is a new reality. It is not a game—it’s forever. Don’t look back.” His gaze drilled into each of theirs. “Don’t muddy the waters by sharing with anyone at all the life you had that isn’t in this bible.” He laid a hand on the folder that held all the information they would need about their new identities. “Do you understand?”
They’d all nodded, the way Allie remembered it, except probably none of them really did understand. Certainly, she didn’t. Maybe her dad had—it could be that’s why he’d walked through those days shell-shocked. He was losing a business his grandfather had founded, passed down to his son and then to him. After the Marrs disappeared the business had been sold, and eventually Dad got the money, but by then he was an insurance agent and he’d never tried again to start up his own business.
Mom, in contrast, had been completely focused on what she thought she had to do, to the point where she seemed oblivious to her family’s fears. Allie had watched her with suspicion, trying to figure out what she felt. Allie had decided then that what she saw was pride. Mom had done something big and courageous. Maybe, like most people, she’d never been sure that she could be so brave. That would change a person.
Under the weight of all the memories and her guilt that she couldn’t tell Nolan the truth, she almost dreaded seeing him this morning, for the promised tour of his workshop and lunch at his house.
Yesterday, with Sean along, she could suppress her tangled emotions more easily than she could alone with Nolan. It was okay when his eyes heated with desire, but what made her squirm were the other times, when she saw his kindness and patience and hope.
And she used to think of herself as serene!
Nolan’s directions took her out of town. The distance between driveways grew. Horses and sometimes cattle grazed behind board or barbed-wire fences. Occasional fancy new houses somehow looked pretentious next to the gently aging farmhouses that were their neighbors. Allie would have been awfully surprised if Nolan’s house had been new or fancy, and of course it wasn’t.
No animals at all grazed in what must be his pastures. They grew wild, the grass waist-high and tangled. Thickets of blackberries were trying to take over. A barbed-wire fence had sagged and rusted. She could see a tall white farmhouse and at least two other roofs. At the head of the driveway stood a single mailbox next to a simple sign with the words burned into wood: The Stone Man.
Allie smiled at that, and drove up the asphalt driveway, smoother than the road. The driveway looked out of place between the neglected pastureland on one side and alder and cedar and vine maple woods on the other. It widened in front of a detached garage, she discovered, and curved to stop at double sliding doors on the long, low third building.
The basketball hoop she’d heard about hung on the peak of the garage. Nolan had even painted a free-throw line and what she thought was a three-point line on his court. She parked carefully to one side. Nolan was walking toward her from the workshop as she got out.
He kissed her. “Tour first?” he asked, lifting his head.
“Are you kidding? I can hardly wait to see your lair.”
He laughed and said something she didn’t hear. All her attention was on the enormous stone figure that stood outside the door, guarding the entry. Allie walked forward slowly and stopped a few feet away, surveying the stone man, for surely that’s what he was.
He had to be granite, and not one of the beautiful colored ones she’d seen used as countertops. No, he made her think of the massive foundations of the old Carnegie buildings, gray and rough-hewn. He had to be eight feet tall and was, in his own way, massive. His features weren’t quite clear. Although crude, as it seemed he had to be, he was also powerful. It was as if he was becoming a man, born from the rock. He had presence.
Astonished, Allie turned to Nolan and found he was watching her, his expression rueful. “This was one of my first efforts.”
“Is he a self-portrait?” She didn’t know what made her think that, but saw a flash of emotion on his face that told her she was right.
“You know, I wouldn’t have said that, but...yeah. Maybe.” One side of his mouth tilted up. “He was supposed to be advertising. He’s on my business cards.”
“He’s stunning,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Nolan opened the door and Allie found herself in an entry that reminded her of a mudroom. It held a utility sink and had a row of hooks from which hung dusty coveralls, various pairs of goggles and...she wasn’t quite sure.
“Ear protection,” he told her, seeing where she was looking. “Cutting stone, especially when I’m not using water, is damn noisy.”
He led her into the workshop itself, a fascinating space nothing like she’d pictured. For one thing, even though it was scrupulously neat, it seemed as if a pale dust had colored most surfaces. Much of the back wall was glass, and enormous skylights ensured even on a gray day, like today, the room was bright. The amount of large and somewhat mysterious equipment surprised her, too. Somehow she’d imagined him with a chisel in hand, although she knew that was naive.
He showed her saws mounted on rails and explained that only diamonds were hard enough to cut granite. He had polishers and cutters, some that he used dry, some that sprayed water on the granite as he worked, then ran into a couple of floor drains. An enormous workbench ran the width of the space, drawers and racks holding tools, drill bits, saws, sandpaper and all kinds of odd things, including jars of some white powder that Nolan told her was used to rub stone by hand.
“I go through saws and bits like you wouldn’t believe. I can sharpen the blades a few times, but I don’t like to stop when I’m working, so I have backups. And I have to replace them constantly.”
She turned slowly in place. The other side of the workroom was where he kept his unworked stone. He’d designed and built bins for every size and shape. Mostly she saw slabs, presumably intended for countertops, floors and the like. But there were chunks, too, sized from a square foot to ones taller than her, all raw. The colors were dull and uninteresting. She couldn’t imagine how he saw the potential in each piece.
He only laughed when she said that. “Practice. Sometimes I’m disappointed when I start cutting. Sometimes I’m astounded. You have to understand, there are quarries around the world that produce certain granite or marble of known quality. I handpick the stone I buy.”
He had other stones besides granite, too, although fewer pieces—marble, limestone, sandstone and alabaster.
He showed her some countertops that were ready for delivery and she watched the way he slid his fingers over the surfaces. She had trouble looking away from his hands. She knew what they felt like on her body.
Nolan tipped his head then and saw her looking at him. His eyes narrowed and the blue seemed to darken. She’d have sworn a good
deal of the air in the room had been sucked out, maybe by one of those compressors he’d showed her.
“Your sculptures.” Her voice came out a little high. “Will you show me what you’re working on?”
He seemed to bank some of that fire. With a nod, he took her to the far corner of the room. An astonishing finished piece stood beside the huge double doors. As she gaped at it, Nolan stood back.
“Red travertine,” he said. When she looked at him, he nodded at the work. “The stone.”
“Oh.”
It was something of the same concept as the stone man, but very different in execution. A woman seemed to be rising from what had to be the curl of a wave. Her arms were at her sides, but her torso was clearly outlined and both lithe and feminine. Her head was tipped back, as if she gazed at the heavens. Her face was detailed enough to express exultation, but far from precisely detailed. The entire piece was about movement and emotion.
“You’re an artist.” Allie felt like an idiot. Even though he’d said he didn’t carve realistic pieces, she’d still imagined this was a hobby for him. That whatever he did would be pretty. But this was so much more than that, she was stunned.
Discomfort showed on his face. “I may be getting there.”
“Getting there?” Then she saw what had to be his work in progress.
“This one isn’t done.” He sounded awkward.
Allie ignored him. The style of this piece was dramatically different. For one thing, clearly the details were going to be very fine indeed. The stone was a dark green, dull where it hadn’t been polished, gleaming richly where it had been.
“It’s, er, a torpedo, nose-down in the ocean floor.” Nolan was standing behind her as she reached out to touch a sea star, exquisite and real, textured like ones she’d seen in tide pools. And the arm of an octopus reached up to embrace the torpedo, the surface of it glossy and...
“Oh! Look at the suction cups.” Delighted, Allie touched them, then studied barnacles and a crudely formed crab scuttling up the barrel of the torpedo. There were lumps he had yet to carve into whatever creatures they would be. “The sea is making the torpedo its own,” she said in awe.
He cleared his throat. “Yes.”
Allie turned to face him. “Why on earth do you waste your time on countertops?”
“To pay the bills. And because that’s where I started. Who I thought I was. A stonemason.”
“But that’s not who you are anymore, is it?”
He moved his shoulders as if to relieve tension. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
She shook her head. “You do know.” Then found she was still shaking her head in a kind of daze. “I thought we did the same kind of thing, only the materials were different. But I was wrong. There are artists who work with fabric, but I’m not one. I’m only a quilt maker. You’re an artist,” she said again.
“You are, in your own way.”
“No. I can’t seem to move past the traditional patterns. True artists use fabric in new ways. At most, I reinterpret, see ways a block can be turned on its head to be new, or how color can transform the traditional. That’s different. Remind me to show you pictures of some art quilts.”
Of course, he argued. They were still arguing when he took her back to the house and as he made a simple Alfredo sauce for noodles and took a salad from the refrigerator.
He talked about techniques, and she did the same, explaining what appliqué was while admitting she rarely did it.
“It’s finicky work. And that sounds silly, when the quilting stitches themselves are so tiny, but...it’s different, and I don’t enjoy it the same way. I’m actually making a combination pieced-and-appliqué quilt right now, though, only a wall-hanging size.” It could be a crib quilt, she’d thought, and knew that was what she’d really had in mind. She’d wanted it to be magical and treasured someday by a child. Maybe by her own. “I’ll have to show it to you.”
“Tell me about it.” He sounded as though he really wanted to know.
“The blocks at the bottom are the pieced ones. They’re rocking horses. With each row of blocks, the horses become more fluid. Eventually they leap free of their rockers. By the top, they’re running with manes and tails flying. I thought about giving the very last one, in the corner, wings,” she said a little shyly.
“It sounds beautiful. I do want to see it.” He took a swallow of his milk, his eyes never leaving her face. “Can you sell this one?”
Allie made a face at him. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided. Most of my quilts are for sale, you know.”
“As most of my work is.”
“Have you kept any of your sculptures, besides the stone man?”
“A couple of small pieces. I’ll show you.”
He did show her, and then he showed her his bedroom, which was plain to the point of being ascetic. White walls, oak floors, an enormous oak dresser, bed, table to hold a digital clock and lamp, and a single, upholstered chair. A door to a largely empty closet stood open. She shook her head.
“You need an interior designer.”
He nuzzled her neck. “I need you.”
The deep rumble of his voice sent shivers through her. “I need you, too.” She wrapped her arms around him with sudden desperation. “Please, Nolan.”
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said as he stripped her and laid her on his bed. “I couldn’t begin to make anything as beautiful as you.”
“I’m not.”
He growled his displeasure and kissed her breast, then suckled it. She thought she heard him mumble something about “damn college kids” but by then she was past having the ability to ask a coherent question.
She pushed him down on the bed and straddled him, smoothing her hands over his chest and shoulders. “My stone man.”
He groaned. “Take me inside you, Allie. Now.”
She teased him for a few more minutes, the sense of power new to her, then sank down on him. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. A whimper slipped out of her.
“You look like my mermaid,” he said rawly. He stroked her with his hands as if he had shaped her.
“Is that what she is?”
He grunted—agreement or pleasure, she couldn’t tell. Was the sea the mermaid’s lover? Maybe she hadn’t been rising out of it, but rather above it, over it, capturing it.
Allie’s body seemed to be singing with delight in each stroke. Nolan’s hands kept her from faltering. Gripping her hips, he moved her faster and faster, his hips lunging up to meet her. She cried out when the hot, sweet pleasure leaped free, making her arch with the exquisite tension. He ground her down on him and pulsed deep inside her.
“Beautiful,” he said hoarsely, and she collapsed on him, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
As the tide washed out, she felt more sadness than anything. How could something so perfect be built on lies? How could she not tell him?
How could she betray her mother? Because that’s what she’d be doing, wasn’t it?
In counterpoint to his heartbeat in her ear were the words never, never, never.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING WEEK became a terrible tumble of doubts. I am being melodramatic, Allie kept telling herself, knowing it was true. And yet. And yet. Under the weight of so much confusion, Allie grew quieter and quieter that week and into the next. Nolan watched her with worry in his eyes, but didn’t insist on knowing what she was thinking.
Her mother did.
“Are you getting sick?” she asked, after watching Allie pick at dinner.
“I nibbled while I was cooking,” Allie lied. The truth was, she hadn’t had much appetite. Food didn’t seem to fill her hollow places, so she’d quit trying. She’d become alarmed enough just yesterday to buy a home pregnancy test, even though she and Nolan had been careful, because there could be a prosaic reason for her lack of appetite. Thank goodness, it came up negative.
“You always quit eating when you get edgy about something,” h
er mother said, her eyes sharp. “I used to worry you were anorexic.”
“What?” Allie stared.
“Don’t you remember? Whenever you were nervous about an upcoming competition or recital or anything at all, we could barely get you to sit down to a meal. The worse, though, was after we moved—” Her mouth clamped shut, but finally she continued, “The first time. You didn’t have any weight to lose, but you managed anyway. And it wasn’t as if you were shooting up in height.”
No, she’d quit growing by the time she was about twelve years old. And been intensely grateful—many more inches would have ended her dream of becoming a prima ballerina.
“I took you to the doctor, but he didn’t think you were focused on either food or weight or your appearance at all. He suggested counseling.”
“I never went to counseling.” She knew that much.
Her mother hesitated. “At the time, we were nervous about putting you in a room with a stranger where you were supposed to talk about yourself. There was too much you couldn’t say.”
Something stubborn rose in her. “You mean, that I wasn’t allowed to say.”
“All of our lives depended on you sticking to the details of our new lives.”
“So what happened?”
“You didn’t get any skinnier, so I decided you were simply made to be slight. But after you discovered quilting, you started looking healthier.”
Until they’d moved again. Allie did remember that miserable year, until she graduated from high school. She’d become gaunt. One of her primary emotions leaving for college and dorm life had been relief at escaping her mother’s fussing.
“So what is it this time?” Mom asked. “Does it have to do with the man you’re seeing?”
“Nolan.”
“Nolan,” she said impatiently. “Or is it all those questions you had the day we went shopping?”
“I suppose...a little of everything.”
“I don’t understand any of this. Why on earth are you wanting to dwell on something that happened so long ago?”
How could she say to her mother, Because I feel like I’m falling apart? Because I am not a whole person?
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