Beyond All Dreams (34 page)

Luke stared at it so long that she thought he must have lost track of time, but when he looked up at her, he covered his heart with his hand, gratitude shining from his eyes.
Thank you
, he mouthed to her before turning his attention back to the meeting.

The only thing anchoring Luke's sanity during the tension-filled weeks following the sinking of the
Maine
was Anna. Or more accurately, the
hope
for Anna.

She still kept him at arm's length, not even letting him touch her on their carriage rides home, which made sitting opposite her a unique sort of enjoyable torture. Nevertheless, he needed those few moments with her each evening, for he feared he was waging a losing battle in Congress that was beginning to take its toll. The tide turned against him as sentiment for war gathered strength, and the golden dream of peace seemed further away.

“Blessed are
the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of
God.”
He clung to that passage like a lifeline, holding firm as tensions ratcheted higher and the drumbeat for war grew louder. By the end of each day, every bone in his body ached with exhaustion, but Anna's gentle smile was a balm on his flagging spirit.

It couldn't change the fact that the pressure for war was gathering momentum. This morning's straw poll in the House showed the war hawks winning by a vote of 280 to 37, and even the support of those 37 men was shaky. Anyone voting for peace risked his political career, yet Luke still dreamed of a world where the lion lay down with the lamb. While it was tempting to abandon what seemed a hopeless cause, he was haunted by the memory of that cornfield, mowed down by a single machine gun, only wisps of straw and dust swirling in the air as the gun fell silent. He couldn't give up the fight.

Echoes of that machine gun haunted Luke as he walked down the hall to his hotel room. At this time of night, Philip was usually sprawled on his bed, drawing charcoal sketches on an oversized pad of paper.

But not tonight. The door to Philip's bedroom stood open,
and he was tossing clothing into a traveling bag. Luke drifted to the open door.

“What are you doing?”

“Packing. I'm going home.”

The contents of the bag revealed only a couple of shirts, although Philip was moving at full steam, hauling stacks of clothing from the drawers to shove into the bag. The boy had clearly sprung into action the moment he heard Luke's key in the front door.

“Why are you going home?”

Philip grabbed a section of the newspaper and flung it at his chest. “
That's
why I want to leave.” Luke didn't even need to glance at the paper to know what had set Philip off. The political cartoonists had been savage, drawing pictures of Luke and Cornelius Jones on bended knee and offering flowers like lovesick suitors to the king of Spain.

“Uncle Gabe wouldn't be afraid of a fight,” Philip said. “I don't want to live with a coward.”

Luke stiffened. He'd been hearing the insult for the past week from others on Capitol Hill, but he'd never expected to be attacked from within his own home.

“And you think trying to find a peaceful solution with Spain makes me a coward?”

Philip tossed a pair of socks in a high arc that landed in the bag. “I saw photographs of the dead sailors floating in the harbor. They were charred
black
. I'm going to live with Uncle Gabriel. He's a real man.”

Luke didn't want to argue with a fourteen-year-old boy about the war. Philip's dissatisfaction in Washington wasn't rooted in political convictions; it stemmed from Bangor and all its temptations. The boy had been wanting to return to Bangor ever since Jason's funeral, but this was the first time he'd launched a personal attack to get his way.

His limbs felt heavy as he sat on the bed beside the half-filled traveling bag. “Philip, I want you to close your eyes and tell me everything you remember about the main room of the Bangor house.”

After a moment's hesitation, Philip slammed a drawer shut and listed the room's features. “The big stone fireplace. Wood beams across the ceiling. An Indian wall hanging to keep the draft out in the winter. Grandma's rocking chair and Uncle Gabe's spiral staircase.”

“The infamous staircase to nowhere,” Luke said. “Begun with such promise, but never finished, and it never will be.”

“You don't know that—”

“Yes, I do,” Luke said. “I love your uncle Gabe. He was a hero, and I doubt I would have survived if he hadn't been there to look out for me while I was growing up. But that staircase, that beautifully engineered staircase with inlaid wood and handmade nails . . . Gabe never got close to finishing that staircase. As soon as something else took his fancy, he abandoned it.”

At last he had Philip's attention. The boy leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, and waited.

“I'm not perfect,” Luke continued. “Neither is Gabe, and neither is your mother. We all want what is best for you, and the time is coming when you will need to make a choice. You've got such fire inside. I don't want to dampen that fire. I want to teach you to harness and control it so you can do something more useful with your talent than building a staircase to nowhere.”

It was an effort to push himself to his feet. He didn't know what to do about Philip. Or Spain. All he really wanted to do was run to Anna and listen to her easy, gentle counsel, but even she was keeping him at a distance. And he needed to take care of business here. Luke sent a pointed glare at the traveling bag.

“The only place you are going tomorrow is school,” he said.
“If you still can't bear to live with a coward at the end of the school year, let me know and I will accompany you back to Maine. But I'd rather you'd stay.”

He closed the door quietly as he left. Instead of collapsing into bed like he longed to do, Luke trudged to the end of the hallway. Too tired to even walk down the stairs, he pulled the lever for the elevator and let the enclosed metal box carry him down the four flights to the lobby. He summoned a carriage and returned to the Capitol, where the telegraph office was operating around the clock. He sent a simple one-line message to Julia.

Please come to Washington. I
need you
.

A
s Anna walked to the Capitol, she felt a growing pressure for war against Spain. With each day that passed, more American flags were erected all over the city and on every street corner. Tailors began making uniforms, women rolled bandages, and pledge drives collected donations for the war cause. One morning as she walked into the committee room, she was stunned to learn that Cornelius Jones had called an end to the special committee, insisting on direct negotiations with Spain.

He banged a gavel to call the meeting into session. “The first order of business is selecting the men to negotiate with Spain.” Given Jones's sympathies, everyone knew he would attempt to stack the delegation with men predisposed toward peace, and Luke was his first choice.

Pride surged through her as Luke nodded to accept the nomination, but even from across the room, Anna could sense he was tired, his heart losing hope for peace. Five more men were appointed to the delegation. Most of the men wanted peace, though Anna spotted a few hawks among them. The meeting
would take place in Saint Augustine, Florida, and the outcome was entirely uncertain. Spain had angrily denied sabotaging the
Maine
and was reluctant to engage in direct negotiations until the United States withdrew the accusation. Nevertheless, a few Spanish diplomats had been selected to discuss compromise, and the covert meeting in Saint Augustine was the best chance for peace.

It wasn't that Anna wanted war, but she wouldn't mind if it happened either, as vengeance for the
Culpeper.
If her father hadn't been executed by the Spanish, would she still be this conflicted? The men of the
Maine
deserved justice as much as her father did. She'd even pressured Luke about it on the carriage ride home that evening. “No one on the committee can talk about the
Culpeper
, but Spain has already gotten away with a lot over the years. Maybe it's time to act. After all, don't you think—”

He stopped her in mid-sentence. “Anna, please. For a blessed few minutes I need to talk to someone who isn't consumed with anger or revenge or scheming for political gain. You're my safe harbor, Anna. Please don't change.”

His face was lined with fatigue, and shadows darkened his eyes. He was becoming ground down as he swam upstream against the deluge of sentiment for war, and she felt guilty for adding her voice to that drumbeat. It was unsettling to witness this dynamic man who normally sparked with energy turn into a drained, disillusioned person. When the carriage drew to a halt outside her boardinghouse, Luke stepped down to bid her farewell. He would leave for Florida in the morning, and she didn't know when she would see him again.

It was past midnight and Philip had long since gone to bed. Luke sat with Julia in the modest parlor of his hotel suite, lit
only by the glow from the fireplace. Julia had arrived two days ago, and he was grateful she would be here to look after Philip while he was in Florida.

She sat curled in the upholstered chair, her face framed by a trail of smoke from the tip of her cigarette. Julia had taken up smoking after she quit drinking, and Luke didn't try to stop her. It was a bit scandalous for a woman to smoke, yet it was a mild vice in comparison with the others Julia had consigned to her past.

Tonight, Julia needed the cigarettes to help cope with her anxiety about being in charge of Philip. She'd seen her son plenty in the years since Luke had taken custody, but there were always other relatives nearby whom she could lean on. While he was in Florida, she would have sole responsibility and it worried her. Philip was moving into his impressionable years, evidenced by the sudden charge of cowardice he'd flung at Luke the other night.

Julia drew on her cigarette. “Imagine what Father's reaction would have been if one of us had accused him of being a coward,” she said.

“We'd have been taken out and shot at dawn,” Luke said wryly.

“You may be underestimating him,” Julia said. “Did I ever tell you what he did after I announced I was pregnant with Philip?”

“I know what he did. He flipped over the china cabinet and broke the entire set of Mother's new porcelain.”

“After that.”

He looked up in surprise. He didn't recall much of anything after Edgar's tantrum that long-ago afternoon. But the way Julia had averted her eyes and ground out the cigarette made him want to hear the rest of the story.

“He asked me to follow him outside to the barn,” Julia said slowly. “I had no idea what to expect. I thought maybe he'd beat me within an inch of my life or shove a wad of bills in my hand
and banish me from his sight, but that's not what happened. As soon as we stepped inside the barn, he pulled me into his arms and wept. He cried so hard I feared he couldn't keep breathing. When he finally got control again, he blamed himself. He said if he'd been a better father, I would never have been out running around with Vincent Hanover in the first place.”

Luke was stunned. Of all the sides he'd seen of Edgar Callahan—the rage, the joy, the brilliance—he had never seen any weakness.

“He wasn't all bad, Luke. On the day Philip was born, when everyone else in the family was embarrassed by me, Dad took out an announcement in the newspaper.”

It shamed Luke to remember the way they'd all treated Julia at that time. He'd been furious that she'd brought another wave of scandal into their home and destroyed her prospects for a respectable marriage, but like all things, he'd stuffed the anger deep inside, never letting a hint of it show. His icy silence surely hadn't been much comfort, and yet he'd prided himself on not lashing out. How mortifying that his father had showed Julia more human decency and compassion than he had.

Julia hadn't finished speaking. “For a while he was the father I'd always wished we'd had. It didn't last. After Philip was born, Dad went back to raging when he didn't get his way or couldn't control every waking action of his children. He died alone because he couldn't force those he loved to be exactly how he wanted to mold them. It was mostly the rum that unleashed his demons, and I understand that temptation. When I was drinking, for a few hours each day I wasn't a failure. I wasn't the girl who let herself get seduced and abandoned. And when I walked down the streets of Bangor, rum gave me the courage to hold my head up when respectable ladies pulled their skirts aside as I walked past.”

A log in the fireplace fell, releasing a shower of sparks and the scent of pine. He stared at the sparks swirling in the gust of heat, anything rather than look at the remembered pain on Julia's face. All his life he'd striven to accomplish and achieve, to prove that he was better than his drunken, reckless father. He'd refused to let the sin of anger corrode him as it had Edgar. Anger was a failing, something to be stifled and repressed.

“I forgave Dad a long time ago,” Julia said. “In any event, I never expect people to be perfect. Not Dad. Not Philip. Not even you, Representative Callahan.”

Luke kept staring into the fire. It seemed as if he was growing more like his father with every passing month. He was starting to snap and lose his temper. Ignoring the anger was no longer working. When he tried, the pressure built up inside, and then a minor offense could cause the dam to break. He'd inherited his father's impulsiveness and passion, a magnificent gift from God, but a terrible compass. He'd probably wrestle with the rash streak for the rest of his life. But if he quit pretending that he could ignore the anger, perhaps he could learn to tame it.

Anna's words from long ago came back to him.
“We are all beautiful but broken
people. Jesus forgives us, even when we don't deserve
it. That's a pretty good reason to be forgiving.”

He bowed his head, acknowledging the truth of her words. God sent His only begotten Son so that the world might witness a pure form of love and forgiveness. It was a gift, a grace, and a blessing beyond all measure. It wasn't a sin to feel anger, but it must be tempered by love and compassion. And until he could follow the loving example of Jesus in handling these truly human emotions, he wasn't worthy of having Anna or Philip or anyone else depend upon him.

That week seemed like the longest in Anna's life. The negotiations in Saint Augustine were being held in secret, and nothing was reported in the press, so it was impossible to know if the diplomats were making progress or if war was closer than ever. There were no meetings of the special committee during the Florida negotiations, and Anna was grateful to return to her normal role in the map room.

On the Friday following Luke's departure, she had the most unusual reference request in all her years at the library. A stunning woman with a young man beside her strolled into the map room, her willowy figure dressed entirely in black that matched the ebony upsweep of her hair.

“You must be Anna, the librarian,” the woman said. “I'm Julia Callahan, Luke's sister.”

Anna gaped. Julia didn't look like a scarlet woman. She looked as refined and elegant as the cameo pinned to her high-throated blouse.

“Our questions aren't related to government business, but I was hoping you could lend your assistance as a personal favor,” Julia said. “My son believes you can help with a project he wishes to complete.”

Anna was still struck mute by the beauty whose ostracism put the taunting Anna had endured to shame. Philip stepped forward.

“I need to know how to paint a fresco,” Philip said. “A
real
fresco. The one time I tried, I messed it up pretty bad.”

Luke had told her about his nephew's infamous midnight experiment in fresco painting, so she was sympathetic as Philip outlined his problem.

“I want to prove to my uncle Luke that I can tackle a job and finish it. I've already gotten permission from the hotel manager to try again on a wall in the laundry room. The manager wants
a garden scene that the women who work in the laundry will like, but I don't know how to go about it.”

Anna finally found her voice. “You've come to the right place.”