Rainshadow Road (Friday Harbor #2)(81)

“No. I’d never want Lucy to make that kind of sacrifice. In fact, I’m glad she’s going. It’s good for both of us.”

Mark had given him a sardonic glance. “How exactly is it good for you?”

“I don’t do commitment.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t,” Sam had snapped. “I’m not like you.”

“You’re exactly like me, idiot. Trying like hell to avoid a repeat of what we went through growing up. Do you think it was easy for me, admitting that I was in love with Maggie? Asking her to marry me?”

“No.”

“Well, it was.” Mark smiled at Sam’s baffled expression. “Find the right person, Sam, and the most difficult thing in the world becomes the easiest thing in the world. I had the same problems as you. No escape from that, in the Nolan family. But I’ll tell you this—there’s no way I could let Maggie go without at least telling her I loved her. And once I did that … I had no choice but to hold my breath, and take the leap.”

* * *

Approximately eighty-five and a half hours after Sam had last seen Lucy—not that he was counting—a delivery was made to the house at Rainshadow Vineyard. A couple of guys with a pickup truck carefully unloaded a large flat object and brought it up the front steps. Coming in from the vineyard, Sam reached the house just as the men drove off. Alex was in the entrance hall, staring down at the partially uncrated object.

It was the tree window.

“Is there a note with it?” Sam asked.

“Nope.”

“Did the delivery guys say anything?”

“Only that it was going to be a bitch to install.” Alex lowered to his haunches, looking at the window. “Look at this thing. I expected something kind of flowery and Victorian. Not this.”

The window was strong and bold and delicate, layers of glass fused in natural colors and variegated textures. The tree trunk and branches, made of lead, had been incorporated into the window in a way Sam had never seen before. The moon seemed to glow as if from its own light source.

Alex stood and reached for the phone in his back pocket. “I’m going to call some of my guys to help me put the window in. Today if possible.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said.

“About what?”

“I don’t know if I want to install it.”

Alex responded with an impatient scowl. “Don’t give me that crap. This window has to go into this house. The place needs it. There was one just like it a long time ago.”

Sam gave him a quizzical glance. “How do you know that?”

Alex’s face went expressionless. “I just meant that it seems right for the place.” He walked away, dialing his phone. “I’ll take care of it.”

* * *

Thanks to the accuracy of Lucy’s measurements, Alex and his workmen were able to fit the stained-glass window against the existing panel, and seal the edges with clear silicone caulking. By late afternoon, the majority of the installation had been completed. After the silicone had had twenty-four hours to cure, they would finish the window with wood trim around the edges.

“Just installed the window,” Sam texted Lucy. “You should come see it.”

No reply.

* * *

Usually Sam was slow to emerge from sleep, but this morning his eyes flipped open and he sat bolt upright. He felt annoyed, uneasy, like he was about to jump out of his skin. Trudging into the bathroom, he shaved and took a shower. A routine check in the mirror revealed a taut, bitter expression that didn’t seem to belong to him, but was oddly familiar. Then he realized it was the expression Alex usually wore.

He dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, and headed down to the kitchen for coffee and breakfast. On the way, however, he saw the stained-glass window at the second-floor landing, and he went still.

The window had changed. The glass sky was now flushed with pink and apricot dawn, the dark branches covered with luxuriant green leaves. The restrained hues of the window had given way to radiant color. Brilliant colors had infused the glass, the sight entering his eyes like visual music, reaching a place in him where deepest instinct resided. It was more than beauty, the effect of this window. It was a form of truth that he couldn’t deny. Truth that broke apart his defenses, and left him blinking as if he’d just come from a dark room into sunlight.

Slowly Sam went outside into the quiet vineyard, to see what kind of magic Lucy had made for him. The air was perfumed from growing things, and salted by the ocean. To Sam’s heightened senses, the vines were greener than usual, the soil richer. Before his eyes, the sky turned a shade of blue so radiant that he had to squint against the sting of tears. The land was idealized as a painter might have conceived it, except that it was real, art you could walk through and touch and taste.

Something was at work in the vineyard … some force of nature or enchantment, a wordless language that summoned the vines in a canticle of respiration.

Dreamlike, Sam wandered to the transplanted vine that no one had been able to identify. He felt its energy before he even touched it, the trunk and vines thrumming, flourishing with life. He sensed how deeply the rootstock had delved into the ground, anchoring the plant until nothing could have moved it. Passing his hands across the leaves, he felt them whispering to him, felt the vine’s secret being absorbed into his skin. Picking one of the blue-black grapes, Sam put it between his teeth and bit down. The flavor was deep and complex, evoking the bittersweet shallows of the past, then rolling into the rich dark mystery of things still just beyond his reach.