by Deb Elkink
Of course, Aglaia had heard directly from Lou herself sometime after the formal affair but before Incognito’s status as bid winner became public. Lou had called her at work.
“Oliver just let me know he’s found a new wardrobe consultant,” Lou said, her voice full of wrath. “What about our agreement?”
“I guess you could say I rejected the terms.”
“Oh my God, what were you thinking?” Lou demanded.
Oh my, what was I thinking, God? she asked silently. Where has my head been all this time? She said aloud to Lou, “It’s not a good time for me to talk right now.” Or ever, she thought.
“So that’s your modus operandi. You suck up to a prominent person to bask in her glory and then run when the heat’s turned up.” Lou’s voice rasped. “Well, you’ve missed your chance, Aglaia. If I can help it, there won’t ever be employment for you at the university—or for Incognito as a subcontractor, either—once PRU wins the tender for Buffalo Bill’s Birthday.”
The threat didn’t faze Aglaia and she answered as graciously as she could, “I don’t believe the boss will mind. He’s received encouraging news on that front.”
Before Lou slammed the receiver in Aglaia’s ear, she shouted, “You’ve burned your bridges behind you, girl. That was your first big mistake!”
No, Aglaia thought now in her parent’s kitchen, her first big mistake had been entering her name incorrectly at the vital statistics office all those years ago.
The Enns family arrived en masse, stamping the first snow of the season off their boots and crowding into the kitchen. Henry and Tina didn’t have enough chairs, but kids doubled up on adult laps and the older boys—typical teens—hoisted themselves onto the countertop, one of them holding a very fat Zephyr who now made his home on the farm.
Aglaia still couldn’t get over how much Silas looked like his shirt-tail relative, Joel, and how closely Sebastian resembled his birth father, François.
Aglaia was able to think about François without a visceral reaction, now that she understood she’d only been in love by proxy anyway. She’d used François Vivier as much as he’d used her, with a second-hand love having the wrong object in view, and ended up twisting her view of herself.
Across the room, Naomi beamed at Aglaia as she bounced her baby on her knee. Their first conversation after discussing François’s true identity had been difficult for Aglaia as she asked forgiveness from someone who, she felt, had wronged her in the first place. Aglaia called her own wrongdoing “naïveté,” but Naomi wouldn’t let her get away with that. “Nobody’s innocent,” Naomi had said, and the truth cut deep.
Aglaia turned off the stove element and took her place at the table. Tina’s kitchen was a vortex of all that Aglaia had once known and knew at this moment and would know in the future. Her brittle loneliness was being assuaged.
And as if her pleasure was to be without limits, she heard her cell phone ring. It was Eb.
“Sounds as though you’re in the middle of a party, lass,” he said. “Here’s something else to celebrate—put me on speakerphone.” He announced that, as reward for the U.S. branch’s performance of late, Incognito headquarters had promoted Aglaia to managerial status as the new creative director, coordinating and executing all Denver projects and having artistic veto over anything leaving the workshop. “They’ve taken my advice to streamline,” Eb said. “I’ll stay beside you as a part-time consultant until my full retirement. And in the meanwhile, I’m taking Iona to Hawaii for Christmas.”
“I propose a toast,” Byron said when Aglaia hung up. He lifted his coffee cup; Naomi and the kids followed suit with their glasses of juice, and Tina and Henry could have been drinking wine, they were so jovial. “To Mary Grace, traveler to Paris and beyond!” Everyone cheered and she raised her mug to them—the cup of communion—and slaked her own thirst.
“Speaking of Paris,” her mother said to her, “did you ever deliver that Bible?”
It was the question Aglaia dreaded from the moment she took on the challenge from her mother over a month ago, the question that marked the end of her roving down dusty, dark paths of daydreams.
The dry old bones of lost love and death were finally being put to rest. Now every morning, in the pool of light cast by her bedside lamp, like a parched wayfarer coming home to the well, Aglaia opened that Bible and soaked in its message.
Just yesterday she’d taped up the torn pages, carefully lining up the edges as she hummed in practice for her upcoming duet with Naomi: He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, where rivers of pleasure I see.
She’d clipped out and thrown away the message Lou had so imperiously penned: SEE ME. LOU. The three words had served their purpose; she’d seen Lou, all right—seen her for what she really was. And then Aglaia had kneaded her art eraser, warming up the grey putty and shaping it into a pointed tip so that she could lift all the penciled words off the paper and take François out of the book, leaving only the indelible ink behind.
“Deliver the Bible?” she asked. “No, Mom—at least not to François.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you, my dear family—Gerrit, for giving me the rural life and funding trips to France; Tyler, for your literacy; Meghan, for your confidence; and Challis, for your unflagging encouragement. You cheered me on till the cows came home.
I’d also like to thank Elma Eidse Neufeld, for passing on to me Mennonite taste buds and faith; Lorenda Harder, for exclaiming approvingly during long-distance readings; Derrick Neufeld and Bruce Hindmarsh, for in different ways introducing me to the world of academia; Grant Richison, for holding out to me the Word of life; mes amies françaises Christelle, Flo, Hélène, and Alix, for linguistic and cultural guidance; countless friends (a handful of whom read an early draft), for nipping at my heels until the finished product was delivered; and of course Ron and Janet Benrey of Greenbrier Book Company, for affording this late-blooming novelist the joy of publication.
About the Author
Deb Elkink lived the life of a cattle-rancher’s wife in the Great Sand Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada, before she began writing novel-length fiction. She cooked for branding crews of a hundred, earned her private pilot’s license, helped round up a thousand-head cattle herd, homeschooled three children through the ninth grade, and professionally sewed theatrical costumes (not unlike the heroine of The Third Grace).
This was a surprising transition for a woman raised in cosmopolitan Winnipeg, Manitoba—someone who had earned a B.A. in communications from Bethel University (in St. Paul, Minnesota).
Today, her three kids grown, Deb lives with her husband, Gerrit, on the banks of a creek in the rolling hills of southern Alberta near the city of Medicine Hat, a stone’s throw from the Montana border. The Elkinks offer hospitality to a great assortment of wildlife and one, lone, eighteen-year-old Texas Longhorn steer.
Deb also holds an M.A. in historical theology from Briercrest Seminary (Saskatchewan). She loves to travel and, so far, has visited five continents. Deb says, “My smattering of foreign phrases delivered with gusto has offended the ears of Japanese, French, and Spanish alike.”
The Third Grace is her first novel.
Visit Deb’s website: www.debelkink.com
Copyright
THE THIRD GRACE
Copyright © 2011 by Deb Elkink
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Greenbrier Book Company
P.O. Box 12721
New Bern, NC 28561
Visit our Website at www.greenbrierbooks.com
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Most scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Ve
rsion®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
Cover design by Anton Khodakovsky
Cover photograph by Jeff Ruane
Amazon Kindle eBook eISBN: 978-1-937573-28-7
ePub eBook eISBN: 978-1-937573-29-4
Apple iBook eISBN: 978-1-937573-30-0
First eBook Edition: November 2011
