Rainshadow Road(62)

Sam smiled slightly, releasing the lock of hair. “I don’t know if I like you hanging out with another guy in my house.”

“He lived here a long time ago. His clothes were … old-fashioned.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No. But he led me on a tour. The house was different. Darker. The furniture was antique, and there was fussy wallpaper everywhere. In this room, it was green-striped. And the ceiling was papered, and there was a square with a bird in it at each corner.”

Sam stared at her alertly. There was no way Lucy could have known that when he and Alex had removed an ugly drop ceiling that had been installed in this room, they had found the original ceiling, papered exactly as Lucy had just described. “What else did he show you?”

“We went to the third-floor attic, the one with the slanted ceiling and the dormer windows. Children used to play in there. And the stained-glass window that used to be at the second-floor landing … I told you about it yesterday, remember…?”

“The tree and the moon.”

“Yes.” Lucy’s gaze was earnest. “It was there. The same one I saw before. A design of a tree with bare branches, and the moon behind them. It was beautiful, but not what you would expect for a house like this. But it was right, somehow. Sam…” She grimaced as she leveraged herself to a sitting position. “Could I have a pencil and some paper?”

“Easy,” he said, trying to help her. “Don’t move too fast.”

“I need to sketch it before I forget it.”

“I’ll find something.” Sam went to a cabinet where they kept Holly’s art materials. Retrieving some pencils and a spiral pad of art paper, he asked, “Will these do?”

Lucy nodded, reaching eagerly for the supplies.

For a half hour or so, Lucy worked on the sketch. When Sam brought a lunch tray to her, she showed the design to him. “It’s not finished yet,” she said. “But this is basically what I saw.” The drawing was striking, the trunk and the branches of the tree spreading across the paper in a pattern like black lace. A moon appeared to be caught in the grasp of the upper branches.

“The tree would be done in lead?” Sam asked, studying the image, and Lucy nodded.

Imagining the picture as a stained-glass window for the front of the house, Sam felt a chill of rightness, of certainty too strong to be questioned. The house would never be complete until this was replaced.

“What would it take,” he asked slowly, “for you to make this window? Exactly the way you saw it in the dream.”

“I would do it for nothing,” came Lucy’s emphatic reply. “After the way you’ve taken care of me…”

Sam shook his head decisively. “This window’s going to take some work. The design is intricate. What do you usually charge for something like that?”

“It depends on the type of glass, and how much detailing I would do … gilding and beveling, things like that. And that’s not including the installation, especially since you would need it to be weather-sealed—”

“Ballpark guess.”

Lucy gave a little grimace. “Three thousand dollars for everything. But I could skimp in some areas to bring down the cost—”

“No skimping. This is worth doing right.” Sam reached over and tucked a paper napkin at the top of Lucy’s shirt. “What do you think about making this window at your own pace, and in return we’ll lower the monthly rent for the Friday Harbor condo? That way it’s fair for both sides.”

Lucy hesitated, and Sam smiled. “You know you’re going to say yes,” he said. “You know that window has to be made. By you.”





Sixteen



Over the next two days, Sam treated Lucy with implacable friendliness. In conversation, he steered away from personal matters, and whenever he came into physical contact with her, he was carefully impersonal. Understanding his decision to establish a safe distance between them, Lucy tried her best to accommodate him.

Sam took obvious enjoyment in his vineyard work, hand-tilling the soil, caring for the vines with a mixture of backbreaking effort and patience. As he explained the grape-growing process to Lucy, she began to understand more about the sophistication of terroir, the matching of the right grape varietal to the specific plot of land and its unique character. There was a difference, Sam had explained, between treating grape growing as a purely technical process, or having real communication with the land, a true give-and-take.

Living in proximity with the Nolans, Lucy saw that the three of them were a close and loving family unit. They had well-established routines and regular times for eating and sleeping, and it was clear that Holly’s well-being was her uncles’ primary concern. Although Mark was the father figure, Sam had his own place in Holly’s affections. Every day after school the little girl chattered endlessly to him about her activities and her friends, and what had happened during recess that day, and she listed the contents of her friends’ lunch bags in an effort to convince him to let her have some junk food. It both amused and touched Lucy to see how patiently Sam listened to Holly’s concerns.