Christmas Star Sapphire (Inspirational Romance): A Second Generation Jewel Series Novella (The Jewel Series Book 6) Page 5

  “I don’t know if that’s in the Bible,” Joe replied with a smile.

  “Paraphrasing. Read Proverbs, boy. Half that book backs up that quote. Heck, so does Genesis, come to think of it.” He settled back into his chair and Joe knew that the chess game was not going to continue tonight. “Tell me about this girl that troubles you so.”

  Her face swam before his vision. “Well, she’s beautiful. Like, there aren’t even words, beautiful. Her beauty takes my breath away.” With a small laugh, he shook his head. “I’ve never imagined myself saying that before.”

  “Every man should be lucky enough to say that.” He gestured toward the kitchen. “My Ana, let me tell you. Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He cleared his throat. “When you goin’ to bring her to church?”

  “I wouldn’t hold your breath if I were you.”

  “Say again?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever bring her to church.”

  “Oh. She some kind of atheist?”

  “No. She’s a Christian ... a very strong Christian.”

  “Then bring her to church. I can’t wait to see what kind of girl can get you in trouble.”

  With a sigh, he said, “I can’t be with her.”

  Larry’s shaggy gray eyebrows came together in a frown. “Why? She married?”

  “No.”

  “Engaged, then.”

  “No.”

  “Is she a blood relative of yours or something?”

  Joe just raised his eyebrow.

  “They won’t let her out on work release or grant time off for good behavior?”

  “She’s not in prison.”

  “Well, then I am at a loss. What’s the problem, son?”

  His heart twisted when he thought about her asking him the same question yesterday. “She’s richer than dirt. She’s just here going to school, then she’ll head back to her Boston penthouse to run her father’s company.”

  Larry let out a long sigh. “Joe, you know that I have always been impressed with your alleged intelligence.”

  “‘Alleged’, now, is it?”

  “Money didn’t cause your problems, son.”

  It was Joe’s turn to laugh. “You have no idea.”

  “What do you think the Bible says about money?”

  Impatience made his voice sound terse. “I know what it says.”

  Larry raised an eyebrow. “Enlighten me with your biblical scholarship.”

  “Money is the root of all evil.”

  With a shake of his head, the older man replied. “Not exactly. It says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” He leaned forward and put a hand on Joe’s knee. “I think it’s very clear that not every kind of evil has roots in the love of money. I think you and I both know perfectly well that there’s all kinds of evil in the world other than the love of money.”

  Images of a large garden bathtub and a pool of blood covering black and white tiles flashed through his mind. “Yes,” he conceded with gritted teeth.

  “Just because this girl comes from money doesn’t necessarily mean she has an evil love of money. Do you think she does?”

  Joe thought about how Madeline drove herself and flew commercial, about how she cooked her own meals and dressed simply. She had access to wealth, but she chose to live alone in a town house instead of in a penthouse apartment with servants and a chauffeur on call. “I don’t know.”

  Larry cleared his throat with a harumph sound. “I don’t think her money has much to do with anything at all. I think you’re just afraid.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “First of all, you’re afraid you might love money too much or in a sinful way yourself. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Joe sat up straighter and tried not to sound defensive. “You and I already talked – and prayed – about that.”

  Larry nodded. “Exactly. So that’s one thing.” He leaned forward and wagged a finger in Joe’s direction. “Even more, though, I think you’re afraid of what you might become. I think you’re afraid you’ll snap again one day and end up just like him. I think you’re forgetting just who you are in God’s eyes and Who lives inside of you.” He leaned back again and picked up his own coffee cup. “You, young man of God, are redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb. Whatever you might have once feared lived inside you – whether it ever even existed – is long gone. You’ve run from it your entire life, but it ain’t there, boy. You can’t hide something like that in a heart that’s possessed by the Holy Spirit.”

  “I don’t think that’s it.” Joe held up a finger to forestall his friend from speaking again right away. He sat forward and very seriously considered his friend’s words. In his mind’s eye, the lovely face of Madeline Viscolli evaporated, replaced by unwanted memories. The back of his mind echoed with harsh screams, sick panic, and bellowed orders. Mostly, he remembered pain, and rage, and those sick feelings of helplessness and frustration that accompanied the pain and rage. He remembered his mother weeping. He remembered loneliness and despair. He forced his mind back to the present.

  After he reflected upon it, he took a breath, then announced, “Honestly, I don’t feel like I’m afraid. I haven’t been afraid of anything or anyone in a very long time.”

  “But, Joe, this one scares you, doesn’t she? She sees all the way inside your heart and makes you feel all sorts of gooey and vulnerable. She makes you feel like you can’t be near her without her seeing all that pain from your childhood that you simply want to leave in the past. It’s like she can reach around all your thorny defenses and expose that soft little underbelly you try so hard to never let the world see. That scares you. Admit it.”

  Joe thought about how he felt whenever he spent more than a few minutes with Madeline Viscolli. “That sounds right. I don’t know if it scares me, exactly, but I don’t like it. I don’t like feeling like she can see everything about me.”

  Larry smiled. It was, perhaps, a smile of understanding. “Son, you know what that makes you? It makes you a man, and a normal man at that. You had trauma in your life? Most men have. Not everyone can live a life of leisure, especially if you hear the call and follow it to do God’s work.

  “I know what it’s like. You know I was a young Chaplain in the war. Sent a lot of our boys home in boxes. When I finally came back from overseas, Ana and I had a hard time. It went on longer than it should have because I was stubborn and stupid. I didn’t trust her to understand what I had been through and I didn’t fully trust God for putting the two of us together. The fact is she’s the only person I could fully trust with all that stuff, all the terrible things in life that are too much for just one man to bear alone.

  “It took a while to realize that God made her – listen to me, son – God made her to help me put all that stuff where it goes. He designed her specifically and especially for me, and likewise me for her. Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. One flesh. One. I just had to learn how to fully trust God and trust her again.”

  Joe had never heard Larry speak so frankly about these kinds of emotions. The sincerity of the words made him realize that his own feelings probably weren’t so alien. “I really don’t trust her, Larry. Her family is too wealthy,” he confessed.

  “Actually, it sounds like her money is just your excuse. You won’t let yourself trust her because you don’t trust yourself around her. And you don’t fully trust God for bringing the two of you together. You had your own plan for your life and you’d rather God just listen to your instructions and follow your plan, right? But it doesn’t work that way. This isn’t your world and you are not God. You are not in charge here, Joe. He is.

  “God has plans for you and his plans for you are good. You have to fully trust Him and surrender to His plan. And you don’t want to. I can see it in your eyes. The very thought of it scares you to death, son. You’re fooling yourself if you believe otherwise.”

  The words from his overly insightful friend swirled around in his mind. Could he be right? Had he been ru
nning? Had he been afraid? “What if you’re wrong?”

  “You think I’m wrong? Tell you what.” The seriousness and the concern left Larry’s eyes. He had said his say and he knew that the younger man had ears to hear. He grinned and said, “If I’m wrong, I’ll wear a Patriots jersey to preach in on Sunday. You have my word. That should tell you how serious this conversation is to me.”

  With his lips twitching back into a smile, Joe replied, “You realize, don’t you, that despite how broken and shattered my life will be, I’ll call you on that.”

  “Oh, I’ll be ready. Now. What if I’m right, son?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Larry chuckled. “If I’m right, I think you really are in serious trouble with this girl and I look forward to seeing her in church one Sunday.”

  CHAPTER 5

  WHEN the doorbell rang for the second time, Madeline pushed herself away from her desk and made her way to the door. She cringed a bit when she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror by the entrance. She’d pulled her hair into two braids, and some of the hair ends poked out of the once-smooth plaits. She wore an oversized blue and black flannel shirt over a pair of black yoga pants.

  After the scene at the end of dinner the night before, she’d come home and spent several hours having a conversation with God. She ended the conversation with the same understanding she’d had going into it – that the reason He had brought her to Mobile to work on her Master’s degree lived on a 50-foot sailboat named Star Sapphire docked at slip number 67. That reason just didn’t realize it yet, and Madeline wasn’t to feel defeated.

  Accepting that, she’d cracked the books for her paper. Much later, she’d managed to sleep a few hours before getting back to it. While the rest of the country poured into shopping malls and discount stores for after Thanksgiving sales, Madeline buried herself in Economic Theory. She made, and then let two pots of tea cool one after another without even touching them, so when the doorbell rang, she ignored it the first time, assuming it was a delivery that could be left on her stoop. But with the persistent second ring, she thought maybe she ought to at least see who was at the door.

  When she opened the door and saw Joe Westcott, she felt her jaw drop open and her eyes widen. His rejection of her had felt so incredibly, well, final, that she had decided to give him a bit of space before seeking him out again. Now, here he stood in her doorway.

  In contrast to her disheveled appearance, he wore loose khaki pants and a sweater the color of a stormy sea. He’d trimmed his beard and she could smell the light musky scent of his aftershave. With a smile, she held the door wider. “Hi, Joe. Please come in.” As he stepped into her home, she plucked at her shirt. “Sorry for the way I’m dressed. I was working on my paper.”

  He glanced toward the study, clearly taking in the desk piled with books, then back at her. She couldn’t help thinking about the stark order of his living conditions contrasted with her own organized chaos. “Can we sit and talk somewhere?”

  “Of course.” She gestured with her hand. “Come upstairs.”

  He stared at his feet. Was he blushing?

  She suddenly realized what was making him uncomfortable and felt a little bit flattered. “Joe, the bedrooms are both on the third floor. Come on up to the second floor. I won’t bite.”

  At the top of the second floor landing, she gestured toward the couch, “Make yourself at home.” He walked to the sectional couch and sat on the edge of the cushion. “Can I get you anything?” She put her hand on the back of the couch and leaned forward while she grinned. “I still have that pecan pie we never touched yesterday, and I have ice cream.”

  He smiled in return. “That sounds wonderful. Maybe later?”

  Later worked for her. Later meant he didn’t plan to bolt. Thankful she’d spent all night working on the paper so she could sit here guilt free until whatever later meant, she perched on the curve of the couch and crossed her legs. “What’s up?”

  He hooked his foot on his knee and stared at the tip of his shoe. “I apologize for being so rude yesterday.” With a sigh, he looked at her. “With your kind permission, I would like to start over, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure thing, Harvard.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands. “I mean, unless we’re going all the way back to August of last year. I’d rather not start that far back.”

  He chuckled. “I think I know what you mean.” Without warning, he surged to his feet and crossed over to stare out the window. “This is a cool place. When I was at Harvard, I had a pretty similar setup.”

  There he was with some random thought that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Following his lead, she stood and crossed over to stand next to him. It still pleased her that she had to look up at him. “Is this the starting over gig? Or are you working your nerve up to giving me some insight?”

  As he turned to face her, he slipped his hands into his pockets. “Do you know why I was sent to a military boarding school?”

  She grinned mischeviously. “Because you needed some extra discipline? Were you a bad boy, Joe?”

  With a shake of his head, he replied, “No. I wasn’t. I got sent away because my father, who regularly beat my mother, had finally turned on me. The first time he beat me up I was ten.” He rubbed at his chin. “I wear a beard to hide a scar I received when he threw me down a flight of stairs. I had apparently given him a look he didn’t like, though I have no recollection of doing so.”

  Madeline gasped and reached forward with her hand. Reflexively, he grabbed her wrist to freeze her motion. His grip was both firm and gentle at once and she stared at the way his thumb and fingers overlapped on her wrist. “Two years and many terrible incidents later, my mom packed me up and sent me away. I stayed at school with the International students through the holidays, and during the summer, a team of nannies and traveling companions took me all over the world. I’d see her occasionally, and always begged her to leave my dad so we could just be together somewhere until I got older and got a job, but she wouldn’t do it.”

  Madeline watched him fall silent, watched the storm raging behind his eyes, and tried not to even breathe so that she would not distract him from his coming words.

  “She told me he really wasn’t so bad. She told me his temper was her fault, too, and that she provoked him sometimes. She told me how great the school was and how much better off I would be when it came time for college. She told me a lot of things that make absolutely no sense in hindsight. Mostly, she told me we couldn’t have the kind of life we enjoyed if she left him.”

  He gently released her wrist and silent tears fell from her eyes as she thought of the lonely, beaten boy who came before the man standing next to her.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Sniffling, she frowned. “In what way?”

  “What I’m saying is that if it hadn’t been for her desire for material possessions and all the trappings of wealth, she could have left him at any time and we could have just lived a simple life together. But those possessions meant more to her than I did. Than her own life did.”

  With a gasp, Madeline put her arms around him. He stiffened at first, but then put his right arm around her, too. “That’s awful.” Her voice sounded muffled against his sweater.

  “They didn’t show up for any of my awards or graduation ceremonies. She called me right after I’d graduated from college. He’d found another woman and was leaving her. I hadn’t seen him in a decade and I hadn’t seen her in about three years. She sounded so terrible on the phone, so I went to go help her pack and move out. So…” His voice abruptly stopped and Madeline somehow knew not to speak or move, just to wait until the racing thoughts and memories in his mind found their way to his next words.

  Eventually he said, “So I was the one who found her.”

  Madeline heard the words and tried to make them not make sense; tried to make them mean something other than what she knew they meant. He disengaged from her and cross
ed his arms in front of his chest. For several moments he stood silently staring out the window toward a point on the horizon a thousand miles from where they stood. She felt his breath shudder and he cleared his throat. “She’d left a note that said she couldn’t live without him.”

  After a long pause, she asked, “What happened next?”

  His jaw twitched. “Right before the funeral, I heard him say to his girlfriend that she’d saved him the cost of a divorce by offing herself. And, Madeline, that was absolutely the last straw. I just snapped. I flat out snapped. Saw red. Heard a ringing in my ears and felt an all-consuming rage that drove me forward.”

  His eyes slowly found hers and he confessed, “I attacked him and hurt him as much as I could. It took both my uncles to pull me off of him. Honestly, I think I would have killed him if they hadn’t. I was that far gone.”

  He stepped away from her and took two steps backward, his left hand massaging his right fist as if his knuckles still ached from years old blows. “I felt no remorse for what I had done to him. Not one molecule of regret for the pain I brought to him. Instead, I felt sickened to my very bones that I had done it at all; that I had it in me to do something like that to any other living person, no matter who or how deserving. But I realized something. I realized that part of him lived inside me, too.”

  She considered his words. Her mind rejected his notion of who he thought he was in light of the Joe she knew who taught, preached, prayed, and loved the students.

  He looked back out at the yard. “You know what every living person needs? We need love. The only love I had ever really experienced was the love of Christ. So I decided I would just love Him back. For the rest of my life, I would just immerse myself in God, in my work, and in the students who served in the ministry. I decided I could live my life alone, and celibate even, if that’s what God wanted. I completely resigned myself to just being alone. I’ve been alone up until now, so what difference could it possibly make?”