Free Emerald Windows by Terri Blackstock Page A

you’ll leave your name and number I’ll get back to you.”
    A recording!
Nick realized with some relief. He heard the beep and hesitated a moment. “Uh…it’s Nick,” he said. “I called the motel and you’d checked out. I hope you haven’t gone home, Brooke. This is too important to give up on that easily. The windows, I mean. Don’t give up, Brooke. It’s worth whatever it takes to see it through. I really hope you haven’t gone home.”
    Then, unable to think of anything else to say, he dropped the phone back into its cradle and rested his forehead on his palm.
    He’d said too much. He hadn’t said enough.
    Well, there was no way to know for sure if she’d gone home until tomorrow.
    The trick, he thought, would be getting through the rest of the night.
    His question answered itself the next morning when Nick looked up to see Brooke standing in his office doorway, shining like a ray of sunlight on a stormy day.
    “I don’t believe it,” he said, falling back against his chair with relief. “You’re here.”
    Brooke smiled. “Well, that’s some greeting.”
    He came to his feet and leaned haggardly over his desk. He imagined that the dark circles he’d seen beneath his eyes in the mirror that morning were still there and that his anxieties were written in every gesture he made. “Where were you?” he asked, schooling his voice to sound calm. “I called you last night. They said you’d checked out.”
    Brooke dropped her portfolio onto a chair. “My parents came by after I talked to you,” she said. “We sort of made peace, so I decided to go back.”
    He stared at her for a moment longer, but as the simple truth registered, a slow grin spread across his face. “I thought you’d gone home to Columbia,” he said. “I thought you’d given up again.”
    A poignant expression softened Brooke’s features, and she shook her head. “I wouldn’t abandon my partner without telling him.”
    “Good,” he said finally. “We’d better get to work before the Hysterical Society gets here.”
    Brooke’s smile died a little. “Too late. A few of them were driving up when I got here.”
    “Terrific,” he said, coming around the desk.
    He glanced out the door, shrugging. “Well, at least it can’t go on forever. They’re bound to run out of things to do soon.”
    A few of the women walked by and tried to look as if they weren’t intentionally staring into the office as they passed.
    “Morning, ladies,” Nick called in a pseudo-cheerful voice.
    The women mumbled various greetings that their tones negated and walked on, looking for work to be done.
    For the next hour, both Nick and Brooke tried to concentrate, but even with the door closed they could hear the incessant humming of power saws and electric sanders, of banging and crashing, of cursing and yelling over the noise. The office was becoming cramped and hot as they tried to spread out, and with each new panel they sketched, it became more cluttered.
    When they’d been at it for over two hours, Brooke threw down her charcoal. “This is never going to work,” she said. “We need our workroom. That’s what it’s there for.”
    “They should be finished today,” Nick said. “Things will be more normal tomorrow.”
    “In the meantime, we aren’t really getting anything done. It’s a mess in here. I don’t know what I’ve done and what I haven’t.”
    Nick leaned forward on his desk and propped his chin in his hand. “Look, why don’t we just use the time to go to St. Louis to start getting bids for the glass and lead?”
    Brooke looked at the stacks of papers that depicted some, but not all, of the panels. Even the ones they had roughed out didn’t have details or exact colors—just the basic themes and ideas. “How can you order glass and lead when you don’t know how much you need yet?”
    “I can give them a ball-park figure and get some bids going, and when we’re ready, we can give them exact amounts. Today’s as