A Rush of Wings (37 page)

———

Noelle looked at her father. He'd hung up the phone and stood there behind his desk, staring as though he couldn't quite place her. What did he expect? What did he want from her? She started to turn.

“Noelle.”

She waited.

“I want you to see a counselor.”

She turned back. “Because I didn't take Rick's call?”

“You won't take anyone's. You won't go out. You're a recluse.”

That wasn't true. She'd gone to the library, stood on the steps, and looked at the lions.
“What are you doing up there, honey? Are you lost?”
And she'd gone shopping, bought clothes to replace her others.

“I've gone out, Daddy. Ask John.”

“Not socially. You've refused every invitation. It's not healthy.”

She looked away.

“I know you've been hurt.” He walked around his desk where he'd been working. Even at home he worked. That's how Rick had reached him on the phone. If Donita had picked up, or any of the other staff, Noelle's refusal would hardly be noted. But Daddy had answered personally.

“There are professionals who can help you through this.”

“Like the last time?” She raised her eyebrow.

Daddy yelling,
“What do you know?”
The woman knew nothing. Noelle drew a line with her crayon, drew another, harder.
“Draw what God looks like.”
A line of red off the edge of the page onto the table. Her back pressed to the wall. Red crayon on the table harder, harder until it broke.

“I'll find you the best—”

“I'm going to a show tonight. Will that make you happy?”

He looked down at his desk. “Why won't you talk to Rick?”

“
Les Mis
. Paige and Sybil invited me, and believe it or not, I didn't turn them down. So you see, your concerns are needless.”

“You could at least have taken his call.”

She raised her chin. “I thought you didn't want me with that cowboy.”

He slammed his fist on the stack of books. “I don't want you like this!” He waved his arm. “This automaton—Get help, Noelle!”

“There is no help, Daddy.”

He dropped his face to his hand. “I watched your mother die. I don't want to watch you.”

She stood very still. “I'm sorry. I'm already dead.”

———

Noelle walked with her companions out of the theater. She should not have gone. It was a poor portrayal of one of her favorite works, and Paige's chatter was getting on her nerves. “I'm just so glad you came with us, Noelle. Jerry couldn't believe it when I told him you were coming.
The whole firm has this idea that you're . . . not the same. I told him of course you're not, not after Michael Fallon. I never liked him; he was so above it all—made Jerry feel like a peon when everyone knows it's the associates who do all the work. But Michael Fallon thought he was God.”

Noelle's breath seized.
“Are you God?”
Why did the images keep overlapping? She knew now they were two separate incidents. Two nightmares she'd rather forget once and for all.

“Does it bother you to talk about it? I'm mean, you're so lucky to be through with all that. Jerry has a friend who'd really like to meet you.” She waved her hand. “Don't worry. He's not with the firm.”

Noelle shook her head. “No thanks.”

Sybil said, “I didn't think much of Jean Valjean. He wasn't as sexy as Javert.”

Paige snorted. “That one? He had a turned-up nose.”

“Great thighs, though. In those tight pants?”

Paige asked, “What did you think, Noelle?”

Noelle shrugged. “I wasn't impressed with any of it. It's a shame to ruin
Les Mis
.”

Paige waved her hand. “Jerry thinks
Les Mis
is depressing. And he won't see anything off Broadway. He says co-op theater is like one-ply toilet paper. Only Broadway will do. Jerry proposed after
Cats
. But we haven't been to a show in months. He's too busy. I shouldn't say it, Noelle, but your father works my husband like a slave. I'm afraid he'll have a heart attack and I'll be a widow at twenty-five.”

“The music was good,” Sybil said. “It's so haunting. Especially Fantine's song to her daughter when she knows she's dying. It breaks my heart.”

Noelle felt a tremor. The first time she'd seen the musical, she'd wept when Fantine sang, feeling the mother's pain but also her own loss. Tonight, well, Daddy was right. She was an automaton. She didn't want to feel anything.

They reached the street. Noelle glanced at a young woman standing on the corner. Between her knee-high boots and miniskirt her thighs were whipped pink by the wind and her midriff was bare between her hips and the black vinyl jacket. There was something familiar . . .

Noelle stopped when the woman looked her way. “Jan?”

The stare hardened.

Noelle trembled. Michael's sister. Her platinum hair and burgundy lips made her face spectral, and there was a sheen to her skin.

Paige elbowed her. “Let's go.”

Jan thrust out her chin and lit a cigarette. What was she doing there? Working the streets? Again the tremor. Had Michael's death . . .

“Come on, Noelle. Jerry's here with the car.”

Noelle left her friends, walked over to Michael's sister. “Hello, Jan.”

Jan only glared.

“What are you doing?”

“What's it look like?”

Sadness. She actually felt sadness. Michael had been so afraid Jan would come to that. He'd tried . . . Noelle's hand shook as she stroked it through her hair. She'd had it trimmed that afternoon. Jan's looked like someone's dog had chewed it at the ends.

“Do you want to go somewhere for coffee?”

“Yeah, right.”

“There's an espresso bar just around the corner. It would feel good to get out of the wind.” A light rain had started as well and blew into her face like spray.

“I'm working.”

Noelle looked back at Sybil and Paige. They stood on the curb with the car doors open, waiting for her. Jerry was saying something, probably that he didn't want his leather seats getting wet. Noelle shook herself. What was she doing, talking to Michael's sister? To Jan, who couldn't weigh more than ninety pounds—dressed—who sucked her cigarette and French-exhaled with a withering sneer. She started to turn away.

“So I guess you hate Michael real bad.”

Noelle felt her throat constrict. Did she? She was so far from any emotion, she couldn't say yes or no.

“Well, I wish he'd never met you.”

Noelle looked into eyes as bitter as hers had ever been. “Jan . . .”

“He'd be alive now if it weren't for you.”

Blood rushed in her ears. She wanted to turn and run.

Jan leaned forward. “I wish you'd been there when they buried him.”

“Stop it, Jan.”

“He loved you.”

Loved her? Enough to beat and bruise and . . . If that was love she wanted no part of it. But tears stung her eyes. What right did Jan have to attack her? “How long have you been selling yourself?”

“Since I was born. One way or another.” She took a drag and sent smoke out her nostrils. “How long have you?”

Noelle stepped back. She turned, walked to the car, and slid into the backseat with Sybil. As Jerry pulled away from the curb, she saw Jan staring.

R
ick gave the connector one final twist and climbed out from under the sink. “That should hold it, Mary.” He stood up and wiped his hands on a paper towel that tore with the first rub. Mary Slague was frugal. Generic towels cost less. He dropped the shreds into her wastebasket. “But if it leaks again, we'll replace the pipes.”

“The squeak was the faucet, not the pipes?”

He leaned into her ear. “Leaks, Mary. If it leaks.”

“Oh yes. I can't have any leaks.” She hobbled into her living room, one nylon stocking bunched around her ankle beneath the hem of her paisley dress. She picked up her pocketbook. “What do I owe you?”

“Not a thing.”

She turned, her lips gathered into a circle. “Nothing?”

He headed for her front door. “Just call me if it doesn't hold.”

“No, I don't want mold. Not in a cabinet. But you're too nice.” She hobbled to the door. A linen calendar from 1987 swung toward him as he opened it. She put a hand on his arm. “I liked you better without the beard.”

Rick rubbed the shaggy growth. He'd thought of taking it off all summer, but it was too much trouble. Now that fall was coming, he guessed he'd leave it. He didn't care how he looked.

He patted Mary's fingers. “You take care.”

As he walked to the truck he noticed the aspens were starting to turn. It was that day or so of succotash before the whole trees burst
yellow. He'd carried Noelle outside and seated her underneath such golden splendor. He got into the truck. Did everything have to remind him?

He thought about what Morgan had said. The hole seemed to grow every day. He'd run out of chores at the ranch beyond the daily maintenance. Now he was reduced to doing everyone else's chores. But since he hadn't taken guests that summer, he was available and willing. The more work, the better.

He drove up to the house and went inside. It hit him when he walked in the door, a feeling so bleak he almost staggered. He sagged against the doorframe, then sank down and sat on the floor. He dropped his face into his hands. It was time to stop running. No amount of kind deeds was going to change the fact that he was in rebellion.

He folded his fingers and pressed his hands to the bridge of his nose.
Lord, forgive me
. He thought of what Pastor Tom had said.
“Unless you are sinless, you'd do well to forgive.”
Could he? Was it even possible?

Rick sighed. Tom had been right about the rest too. It wasn't just Michael he blamed. More than anything, he blamed himself. He had tried to be enough, when he knew what Noelle needed was God's own love and healing and salvation. He'd captured her heart for himself when he should have won her soul for Christ. And now he'd lost it all.

His brows drew together and he pinched the bunched skin.
Jesus, I failed. And I don't know how to make it right
. He had willingly stepped outside God's plan, let his own desires lead him away. He'd wanted her so much. He dropped his head back against the doorframe.

There was only one way to fill the hole, one lasting way. Faith. Belief that God still had a plan. Rick stood up and got his Bible from the table. He opened to the book of Jeremiah and found the passage he wanted.
“ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.' ”

He pressed the Bible to his chest, then closed it carefully and set it down. He went to the closet, took out his guitar, and tuned it. Then he sat on the hearth, played, and sang as he hadn't for too long. His fingers stopped. He dropped his face to his hand and wept.

God's mercy would be sufficient.
Please, God . . .
And then he prayed for Noelle. Prayer was the only thing he could give her.

———

Noelle couldn't stop thinking about Jan. She hadn't ventured out for two months since seeing Michael's sister. Paige had tried three times to set her up with Jerry's friend, though Daddy seemed to have given up matchmaking. She was twenty-four, living at home, and doing nothing with her life. No, that wasn't true. She practiced the piano every day and read voraciously—she'd even read a French cookery book from cover to cover. She was sure if she tried, she could prepare . . . something. But what was the use?

She sat up on the bed and threw her book across the room. Why had she seen Jan? Why hadn't she looked away, walked away?
“He'd be alive if it weren't for you.”
She didn't want to think of Michael in any way except as her attacker, didn't want to consider Jan's loss, his mother's . . . How was she living now? Michael had been her sole support. Insurance didn't pay for suicide.

Noelle pressed her palms to her temples. Why should she care about them? He deserved to be dead.
“He'd be alive if it weren't for you. He loved you.”
Had he? She felt his fist crashing into her skull, his kick in her stomach, his slap across her face.

That triggered the other memories, hands in the dark where no hands should be, her back against the wall. But was it Michael? Or the other face—the face of God? And then there was the window, Michael the Archangel crushing the devil's throat. Why? Because he'd angered God. She stiffened her arms at her sides, clenched her fists.
I never told!

That thought stopped her short. Never told what?
“Give us a kiss.”
Memory rushed in. She had scratched and kicked until he stunned her with his slapping. Her whole body shuddered.
“Spoiled little rich girls need a lesson.”
And all she could picture was the window, God's angel stomping the devil. Her mind shut the man out and filled with the picture instead. Had the same thing happened with the hawk?

Had Michael's blows triggered the same separation, disassociation? And did she really know what happened while she fixated on the picture on his wall?
“You're crazy! I never raped you.”
And then she remembered that too. Michael staggering back, as stunned as she that he'd hit her, and scared.
“Stop it, Noelle! What's wrong with you?”
And all she could do was stare.

Michael hadn't raped her. It was the other man's hands. She bit
her upper lip until she tasted blood. Michael's fists had triggered the terror, the terror that had made her run. But he hadn't instigated it. That had come much earlier, been buried far deeper. And it carried more horror than Michael's violence ever could have.

She stood up and staggered to her door, lingered there, then went back to the bed. Her mind had overlapped the memories. Maybe the trauma of Michael's violence had triggered the old terror. Staring at the hawk, her body remembered the violation of her innocence. And she had attributed all of it to Michael.

“Are you trying to destroy me?”
Had he killed himself because of her accusation?
“He'd be alive if it weren't for you.”
Assault and battery was not rape. He could have gotten off with probation and mandatory anger management. But she'd accused him of worse. Had she pushed him over an edge because she didn't know, couldn't put together the pieces that were tearing her mind apart?

Overwhelming dismay seized her. Had she caused Michael's death? She groaned as the shakes seized her. Not fear now, but . . . guilt? Her teeth chattered. Maybe she did need help. But she didn't trust anyone to give it.

———

Noelle ran her fingers over the piano keys, stopped, and fingered the passage again. The phrase was difficult, but she could master it. She caught motion from the corner of her eye and looked up.

Her father said, “There's a man here to see you.”

She frowned. “Tell him I'm not interested.” Daddy should know that. Whomever he'd put up to it this time . . .

“Noelle, I am not your personal secretary. Tell him yourself.”

She slammed the cover down over the keyboard and saw him wince. Then she rose from the piano and stalked out to the entry. She stopped. Her heart skipped a beat. “Morgan!”

His smile was rascally as ever, and it caught something inside her and tugged. The curt dismissal she'd intended died on her lips. Instead her voice rushed on. “Daddy, this is Morgan Spencer. Morgan, my father, William St. Claire.”

Morgan shook his hand. “It's a pleasure.” Then he turned and brushed her up and down with his eyes.

She spread her hands. “What are you doing here?”

“Business. But in between, I thought I'd have dinner with a beautiful woman.”

She found the familiarity of his words strangely comforting.

Her father nudged her. “How can you refuse?”

“Thank you, Daddy. I can accept my own invitations.” She turned back to Morgan. “I'll need a moment to get ready.”

“Make it count. We'll go somewhere nice.”

Naturally. She felt his eyes all the way up the stairs. Morgan. What on earth had brought him? And why did it matter? In her room, she changed into a teal rayon dress, elegant but not overstated. Then she brushed out her hair. She started to work it into a braid but stopped and shook it loose.

What was she doing? Why had she said yes? Because she wanted to go. Could it be that simple? Something had awakened in her with Morgan's visit, and she wanted it to stay awake. The times they had spent ran together in her mind and mattered.

Walking down, she heard Morgan talking about his latest project. No doubt Daddy was interested in more than Morgan's profession. She joined them and recognized Morgan's admiration as she pulled on her silver fox fur. Fur might not be politically correct, but there was nothing like it against your neck on a cold night, and she could tell he agreed.

She kissed her father's cheek, then took Morgan's extended arm. He wasn't sweeping her off to some mountain hole-in-the-wall; he had entered her world, and he fit remarkably well. His cab waited outside on the circular drive and started off as soon as he had tucked her in beside him.

She said, “I suppose you know where we're going?”

“I do.”

Did he ever not? She stared out at the city lights. Morgan stared at her. Familiarity again.

She moistened her lips. “How did you know where I lived?”

“Give me credit for half a brain.”

She smiled. “I'm not listed in the phone book.”

He only smiled back.

She looked back out the window. It didn't matter how he knew. The fact that he did meant a lot. It had been nearly a year since she'd last seen him, lounging against his white Lincoln rental car outside his parents' house. Funny she should remember that so clearly. She
didn't say anything else while they drove, and surprisingly, he stayed quiet as well.

He led her into La Belle Maison, waited while the maître d' seated her and laid her napkin across her lap, then after the familiar stroke of his hand across her shoulders, Morgan took his own seat. “So.” He crossed his leg and studied her. “How are you?”

Did he really expect her to say? “I'm fine. How are you?”

Their waiter approached, and Morgan said, “Dom Perignon. Nothing younger than 1990.”

“We have a fine vintage, 1987.”

Morgan nodded, and when the man left, he said, “I'm not drinking it alone.”

“It's never concerned you before.” She smoothed the napkin in her lap.

“Killing a bottle of champagne by yourself is depressing.”

Was it possible his eyes were bluer? The fine lines at their edges etched a little deeper? A hint of a shadow showed along his chin and upper lip, and his cheek creased when he half-smiled. What was he thinking?

The waiter brought their champagne, allowed Morgan to approve the label, then opened the bottle and poured half an inch into two flutes. Noelle raised hers and sipped, now that protocol included women in the approval process. He'd made a good choice. Dom Perignon was Daddy's favorite as well. Since neither of them protested, the waiter filled their glasses, tucked the bottle into the ice bucket, and left.

Morgan raised his glass. “To my muse.”

The flutes clinked, and Noelle raised her eyebrows. “Your muse?”

“Inspiration.”

“For what?”

“This evening.” As though he needed inspiration to enjoy himself.

She sipped, then opened the leather-cased menu and studied the selection. For some reason she thought of the Italian restaurant Rick had taken her to. The only restaurant he'd taken her to.
“First date should be special.”
Her thoughts shied. It was easier with Morgan, though her first date with him had left her walking up the mountain in the dark. She closed the menu and set it at the edge of the table. He closed his as well.

A moment later, the waiter came and stood at his elbow. Morgan motioned for her to order and she named her choices, then Morgan
his, in barely discernable French. Noelle covered her smile with her fingers.

Unabashed, he smiled back. “Atrocious, isn't it? You're fluent?”

“More or less.”

“Been to Paris?”

She looked at the crystal vase holding a single stem of yellow orchids. “Once. After my coming out, Daddy and I went.”

“What did you think of it?”

She leaned back. “Very old, deep, and sad.”

“Sad?
Gay Paree?
”

“My mother was from Paris. It's where she and Daddy met. It was painful for him to go back there without her.” She laid her hands in her lap as the waiter set the shallow bowl of carrot bisque before her.

“Why did he take you?”

“I wanted to see my mother's home. In true adolescent oblivion, I didn't think how hard it would be for him.” She spooned the creamy carrot puree garnished with a dab of yogurt and carrot curl. She knew how it was made. There'd been a recipe for carrot bisque in the French cookery book.