His pen stopped in midscrawl. As always, Joel found himself weighing his words carefully. “You mean the building project? No … This is my first experience with anything like that—and I hope my last.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Bill said. “I forget you weren’t in church work before you came here. Taught English or something, wasn’t it?”
Joel nodded. “Not much experience with architects in that line of work, I’m afraid.”
“You know, my daughter teaches English. Used to teach high school, but she just took a job at a junior college in Iowa. Seems to like it a lot. Whatever made you decide to quit teaching and take on a job like this? It sure wasn’t the pay.”
Joel forced a laugh, then tensed and rubbed the toe of his shoe over an invisible spot on the carpet. “No, I just … needed a change. Say, Bill, have you had a chance to look at those revised blueprints?”
Bill harrumphed and launched into an account of the most recent meeting with the architect. When the older man left fifteen minutes later and Joel headed back down the hall to his office, it struck him anew how ingrained his evasiveness had become. Four years ago it would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to eagerly compare notes with Bill about his daughter’s teaching experience and to explain in detail his reasons for changing jobs.
But then four years ago he’d had nothing to hide.
Melanie absently plucked a yellowed leaf from one of the geraniums on her front porch and looked at her watch again. “Do you think his flight was delayed?”
“He’ll be here, Mel,” Joel said from his seat beside her on the stone step. “Just be patient.” But Melanie thought there was more than a twinge of concern in his voice.
“I’m hungry, Mommy,” Jerica whined from her perch on the porch railing.
“I know, honey. We’ll go eat just as soon as Joel’s brother gets here.”
Tim’s flight was to have arrived in St. Louis at ten o’clock, and he was renting a car and driving to Silver Creek. But it was almost noon now, and Melanie watched Joel’s eyes anxiously scan the street beyond her cul-de-sac. She had been rather surprised to find that Joel didn’t intend to meet his brother at the airport. But he brushed her off, saying something about Tim wanting to have a car to drive while he was in the area.
The plan was to take Tim to Silver Creek’s annual Septemberfest. Melanie was nervous that a city boy like Tim would find the small-town family festival rather boring. But she was encouraged by the fact that Joel had finally invited his brother for a visit. It was a small sign that he was offering her an opportunity to get another glimpse into his life, into his past.
The sound of a car pulling into the cul-de-sac brought Jerica to her feet, clapping. “I bet that’s him! I bet it’s him!”
The car slowed and pulled into Melanie’s driveway. She didn’t miss Joel’s sigh of relief as he hurried down the walk. Melanie followed at a distance, wanting to give the brothers a chance to have a private reunion. The man who stepped out of the rental car was a taller, blonder version of Joel. The two men greeted each other with a bear hug and wide smiles that Melanie thought still held a hint of the tragedy they’d shared.
With an unexpected lump in her throat, she watched them. After a minute, Joel turned and beckoned her over to where they stood. “Melanie, I’d like you to meet my brother, Tim. Tim, this is Melanie LaSalle.”
Tim took her hand. “Hi, Melanie. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“And this is Mel’s daughter, Jerica,” Joel said.
Tim stooped to Jerica’s eye level. “Hello there, Jerica. What a pretty name.”
“I got it from my Grammy and Grampa,” she told him.
Tim looked up at Melanie, a question in his expression, and she explained to him about Jerry and Erika.
“Well, it’s by fah the nicest name I’ve heard in a lawng time,” Tim said.
Jerica looked up at him, wrinkling her button of a nose. “You talk like Joel,” she said.
The two brothers laughed, and Tim chucked Jerica under the chin. “Are you in school yet?”
Jerica shook her head, then chewed her lip and studied her shoes intently, suddenly shy.
“She’ll start kindergarten next week,” Melanie explained.
“Oh, kindergarten is great. You’ll love it.”
Melanie liked Tim immediately. The soft voice with the heavy accent made her realize how much of his Eastern accent Joel had already lost since moving to the Midwest.
“Did you have trouble finding us?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Drove right to it, no problems at all.” Tim looked at Joel as he said it and some unspoken message seemed to pass between them. “This is sure a pretty little town.”
Jerica tugged on the hem of Melanie’s blouse. “I’m hungry, Mommy,” she said in a stage whisper.
“Silver Creek is having its big fall festival this weekend,” Melanie explained. “We thought we might hit the food court there for lunch and show you some of the sights of our little city.”
“That’s what Joel said. Sounds great to me,” Tim said.
“Do you want to come in and freshen up first?” Melanie offered.
Tim shook his head, then winked at Jerica. “It sounds like I’ve kept this little lady waiting long enough. My car will be okay here, won’t it?”
“Sure,” Melanie nodded.
“Then I’m ready to go whenever you are.”
Jerica cheered and raced for Joel’s Taurus, which was parked on the other side of Tim’s car on the driveway. Fifteen minutes later they were in line at the food pavilion on the festival grounds. Joel ordered hot dogs and Cokes for all of them, and while he and Tim waited for the order, Melanie and Jerica searched out the only empty picnic table in the crowded park. They flagged Joel and Tim down, and Joel squeezed in beside Jerica, helping her unwrap her drinking straw. That done, he started to sort through the wad of change the hot dog vendor had given him.
“Wait a minute,” he said, unfolding several bills. “Didn’t that sign say hot dogs were a dollar-fifty apiece?”
“I think so. Why? Did they shortchange you?” Melanie asked.
“No. I think the guy gave me back too much. With drinks and chips, our total should have come to”—he counted on his fingers, looking perplexed—“at least seventeen-fifty. I gave him a twenty and he gave me back four-fifty.” He extricated himself from the cramped picnic bench. “Hang on … I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Melanie asked.
“I’m just going to take this back.” He creased two dollar bills between his fingers.
“Joel, look at that line! You’ll be there forever. It wasn’t your mistake. Maybe the chips came with it or something,” Melanie said.
He waved her off. “It won’t take long,” he said, already weaving his way through the crowd.
“Your food will be cold, Joel …”
“Don’t waste your breath, Melanie. That’s just Joe for you,” Tim said, taking half of a hot dog in one bite. “Honest as the day is lawng.”
Melanie couldn’t hide her amusement. “Goodness, Tim … hearing you speak reminds me all over again how thick Joel’s accent was when I first met him.” It had almost sounded as if he’d called his brother Joe.
They ate without speaking for a few minutes, the clamor of the festivalgoers around them providing background music. Then Tim swallowed and wiped his mouth with a crumpled napkin. “So, you think my brother is losing his accent, huh?”
“Well, a little,” she admitted, winking. “We can almost understand him now.”
“Well, then it’s high time I talked him into heading back East with me.”
“Don’t you dare,” Melanie warned.
“Don’t you dare what?” Joel asked, appearing out of the crowd and sliding back onto the bench.
Melanie patted his hand. “Never mind.”
By now, Tim and Melanie had almost finished eating, and Joel’s hot dog was anything but hot. He
ate it anyway, and when he was finished, the four of them strolled through the midway at the festival. Melanie held Jerica’s hand and trailed behind them, enjoying the brothers’ banter and their obvious joy at being together again.
With one ear to Jerica’s constant questions and running commentary, Melanie eavesdropped on the men’s conversation.
“So you’re liking your job at the church?”
“I like it a lot, Tim. I think it suits me.”
Tim clapped Joel on the shoulder. “I can see that. You look good, Joe.”
“You’re not looking too bad yourself.”
Tim patted his firm torso. “I took a few pounds off this summer. Hard work, that.”
“Worth it, I’d say. So how’s the real estate market in Connecticut these days?”
“Well, we’ve seen better times. It’s a buyers’ market right now, but we have some things in the works that I think might pan out pretty well.”
Melanie relished the East Coast that tinged each of their voices and smiled to hear Joel’s accent thicken in his brother’s presence. The tenderness she saw between the men was yet another new side of Joel, and it made her love him all the more.
Later that evening, they all sat around the umbrella-covered table on the deck in Melanie’s backyard, enjoying a rare cool breeze and laughing at Jerica’s antics. When Melanie finally told Jerica that it was time for her to get ready for bed, Joel pushed back his chair and went to the cooler for another can of Coke.
“Hey, Joe!” Tim called. “Bring me one of those, will you?”
Melanie looked up in time to once again see something she couldn’t decipher pass between the brothers. The expression on Joel’s face almost seemed to be a warning directed at Tim.
Tim cleared his throat and toyed with the coaster on the end table beside him. “Coke, Joel … if you have it.”
Melanie cocked her head and watched them. This time, Tim had clearly pronounced Joel’s name correctly—almost as if it were deliberate. But at least twice today Tim had called his brother Joe. Maybe it was a childhood nickname that Joel despised. She could understand if Tim was calling him Joey or Jo-Jo, or something equally childish, but Joe was certainly not a name that should cause him embarrassment. Something about the whole exchange made her vaguely uneasy. She brushed the feeling aside, not wanting anything to cloud the happiness of the occasion.
Melanie saw little of Joel for the rest of Tim’s visit. She knew the two rarely got to see each other, and she didn’t begrudge Joel a moment of time with his brother.
However, the following week when Tim had returned to Connecticut and she finally got Joel to herself for a day, he was unusually quiet, and she thought he seemed a little down.
It was Friday afternoon and they’d taken the day off work and driven to the Missouri Botanical Garden. They were enjoying the first hint of autumn in the air as they strolled along the winding pathways of the lush gardens.
Pulling her sweater around her, Melanie cleared her throat and ventured, “Is everything okay, Joel? You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“I’m fine.” He shrugged. “Just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Did you and Tim catch up on all the news?”
“I guess so … There’s not a lot to catch up on.”
“After all those months of not seeing each other?” She tried to make light of it, but he shrugged her off. Something was wrong. “So what did he think of Silver Creek?” she pressed.
“He liked it, I guess. What’s not to like?”
Frustrated, she clammed up. They walked through the English Woodland Garden in silence. The trees still wore all their leaves, but now they were tinged with the faintest colors of autumn. The turquoise sky was unmarred by clouds. It would have been a perfect day.
“Now you’re the quiet one,” he said abruptly.
“Well, I wasn’t having much luck getting conversation out of you,” she countered. “I thought maybe you just wanted some peace and quiet.”
A boisterous group of senior citizens came down the pathway ahead of them, and Joel was silent until they passed. “I need … I want to talk to you, Mel. There … there are some things we need to talk about.”
“I’m listening,” she whispered, not liking the apprehension in his tone one bit.
“Would you mind if we leave now? Go someplace quiet?”
Her heart seemed to stop beating. Numb, she nodded and let him steer her back to the parking lot in silence.
They got on the interstate, and Joel headed back toward Silver Creek. In the waning afternoon, the sky turned pewter and the air felt thick with rain, though no drops fell. The sky matched Melanie’s mood, as a feeling of dread settled over her. Something was terribly wrong.
They drove for thirty minutes, neither of them speaking. Joel turned off at the Silver Creek exit, but instead of driving into town he turned the opposite way, taking a deserted country road. They came over a shallow rise and an old stone church loomed on the horizon, standing sentinel in the middle of the plains. She remembered coming out here years ago on a photo shoot for By Design. The place remained unchanged. In spite of the well-tended cemetery to the east of the building, it didn’t look as though the church itself had been in use for a long time. The prairie grasses had grown up around it, and now bright spatters of autumn’s last wildflowers were daubed among bearded wisps of brome and wheatgrass.
Joel slowed the car and pulled into the churchyard. He turned off the ignition and swiveled in his seat to look at her. Taking her hand, he let out a deep sigh. But just as quickly, he loosed his fingers from hers and raked them through his hair, turning back to hunch over the steering wheel. “I don’t even know where to begin, Melanie.”
“How about at the beginning?” she whispered. Her heart was beating rapidly now, the seed of fear taking firm root.
“I’m not sure … where the beginning is.” Now he looked into her eyes, and what she saw there was an expression of anguish. “I haven’t wanted to keep anything from you, Melanie. There really wasn’t any reason not to tell you this … but now so much time has gone by that I feel like I’ve been—Oh, man, Mel, I’m messing this all up.”
“Joel, please tell me what you’re talking about. You’re scaring me.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Then tell me … please.”
“Can we … walk or something? It’s … stuffy in here,” he said.
She nodded, and he got out of the car and came quickly around to open her door. As she climbed out of the car, he took both of her hands in his, his grasp as urgent and stiff as his words. “I want to ask you something, but … there’s something you need to know first … something I should have told you a long time ago …”
Eleven
Melanie stared at him, waiting.
Joel let go of her hands. He paced in front of her, then stopped to lean against the car beside her. When he finally spoke, his voice was so soft she had to strain to hear him.
“I was in … a very serious relationship … before. I was almost engaged. I … had the diamond. We’d talked about marriage, but Tori—” He stopped abruptly and swallowed hard. “She … died before I could give her the ring,” he said, his voice flat.
In the agonizing wait for Joel to spit out whatever it was he was trying to tell her, a thousand possibilities had gone through Melanie’s mind, but what he had just told her wasn’t even in the ballpark. And in spite of her distress that he was just now getting around to mentioning this fact, the thought that overrode her dismay was what came to her lips now.
“Oh, Joel. She died? How could that be? You … You’ve lost so much … everyone you ever loved.” She turned to him and took his hand, overcome with compassion. “What happened? How did she die?”
He stroked his thumb over her fingers. “There was a fire,” he said. “Tori—Victoria—lived in an apartment over a huge old house. It caught fire, and she … she couldn’t get out.”
&n
bsp; She drew back in alarm. “Oh, Joel. How awful! I’m so sorry. Why … why didn’t you tell me?”
“I should have told you before, Melanie. I’m sorry.” He gently disentangled his fingers from hers and looked into her eyes. “That’s how I got this,” he said quietly, running his index finger along the thin line that creased his cheek.
“I don’t understand.” Tenderly, she reached up and traced the path of his finger.
“When I got there, the house was still burning. The firefighters had already brought Tori out … She was”—his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat—“already dead. But I didn’t know that. Someone told me she was still inside.”
His voice wavered as he continued, “I … I ran up on the porch just as the roof collapsed. They said a falling beam hit me. I don’t remember any of it. I woke up in the emergency room.”
“I don’t know what to say. Oh, Joel, nobody should have to deal with everything you’ve been through.”
“It was a very bad time in my life, Melanie. The hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. I was angry for a while … very, very angry. But I’m … better now. Now, it seems like it happened a lifetime ago.”
He reached out to stroke the back of his hand along her cheek. “You couldn’t know it, but you are part of the reason I’ve been able to work through it all. You didn’t just lose someone you loved; you lost a husband, your child’s father. And still you’ve managed to go on and find real joy in life. You’ve shown me that I’m not the only one in this world who’s suffered.”
The huge lump in her throat wouldn’t let her answer.
Joel drew her into his arms. “I feel so blessed that God has put you in my life. The Lord has been closer to me these last few months than I could have ever imagined. He’s given me the gift of someone to love again. It’s you I love, Melanie, and I’m … I’m muddling through this like a bumbling idiot …”
Now Melanie broke down and sobbed, her tears dampening the shoulder of his shirt. “Oh, Joel. I’m the one who’s been given the gift of someone to love again.” She pulled away to gaze into his eyes, and reached up again to trace her finger lovingly along the scar on his cheek—a hero’s badge. “I love you … so much, Joel.”
A Scarlet Cord Page 9
