CHAPTER 39
Corin watched Nicole sit as if carved in stone on a park bench too close to the waters of Woodmoor Lake. Only ten yards between her and the lapping waves. Had she sat that close to the lake with intent?
The sun lit her hair and turned its white shades whiter in spots and made her profile stand out in stark contrast to the gold and red shades of a November afternoon behind her. It looked like her eyes were closed.
As he stared at her all doubts Mark Jefferies had stirred the night before were swept away by the breeze meandering off the lake.
He was still staring at her three minutes later when she turned and spied him. She smiled, blinked, then closed her eyes again and resumed her imitation of Lady Liberty.
As Corin approached Nicole, he studied the undulations in his nemesis and for the millionth time tried to make peace. You survived. You were a kid. Let the fear go! But the roar of his heart said never.
“We have to stop meeting like this. People will start to talk,” Corin said when he reached Nicole and sat beside her.
“Let them.” Nicole turned and rested her elbow on the back of the bench. “How have you been, Corin?”
“The chair continues to make life interesting.”
“That I don’t doubt.” She smiled. “Did you keep your commitment? Did you call your brother?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“We had the longest conversation we’ve had since the accident.”
“Did he give an answer to your invitation?”
“Yes.” Corin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers intertwined. “He will never sit in the chair. And probably will never speak to me again. I took my shot.”
“So what do you do now?”
“You don’t have that answer for me?” Corin tried to smile, sat back, and folded his arms. The sun spread diamonds across the surface of the lake, which made him squint against their power. But their power was nothing compared to the hold the water held over him. It squeezed him in the middle of the night when the nightmares came and he drowned again and again. It pummeled his mind as if he were in a washing machine.
Why hadn’t the chair healed him of that fear?
“And what about you, Corin. Did you sit in the chair again?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It healed me.”
“Of what?”
“My claustrophobia.”
“I’m glad.” Nicole nodded as if she had been expecting him to tell her that. “Do you believe now?”
“It’s crazy to say this, but I’m still not sure, even after being healed. Maybe Tori is right and all the healings came from our minds.” Corin kicked at the stones at his feet. “Do you really believe this chair was made by the Son of God?”
“I’m not sure it matters what I believe as much as what you believe.”
“I believe there’s some type of power attached to it.”
“Then you have your answer.”
“But it’s not the way you would answer the question.”
Nicole shook her head. “No.”
“Then what type of power do you think is in the chair?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet, what?”
“It’s not time to answer.” Nicole reached in her pocket, took out a handful of seeds, and tossed them toward a sparrow that flitted on the grass on the other side of the path.
“Why not?” Corin gritted his teeth. All she ever seemed to give was nonanswers or cryptic replies that only led to more questions.
She smiled at Corin but didn’t answer.
“Tell me!” He leaned toward her. “If I’d convinced Shasta to sit in the chair, would it have healed him?”
She patted his hand in the same way Tesser often did. “I do not know. I am not God.” She threw more seeds for another sparrow that had joined the first. “I listen to His voice. I follow where He leads me. I hope I am listening with ears to hear.”
“What does that mean?”
“That’s it’s not yet time to tell you what I believe to be true about the chair.”
“When will it be time?”
“When it’s time.”
Corin let his gaze follow the shoreline from the far left of the lake to the far right. There was beauty in the water. Part of him could reach back to a time where he loved the water, when he longed for summer afternoons full of cascading down a river in inner tubes too big for him or any of his friends, of finding tree branches over the water strong enough to handle a rope and a swinging boy. And of racing through the water in swim meets, pinning another blue ribbon to the wall of his room.
“The chair didn’t heal me of my fear of the water.”
“No.” Nicole clasped and unclasped her hands.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced at him with her piercing blue eyes. “He knows.”
The look in her eyes unnerved him. So confident. So knowing. So . . . “Who are you?”
“A friend.”
“You’re more than that.”
“Do you think Tesser believes the chair holds the power of God?”
“How do you know I’ve been talking to Tesser? Have you been spying on me?”
“Most assuredly. We’ve already talked about this.” She laughed like liquid light. “That chair is too much of a lightning rod not to keep tabs on the person it’s been given to.”
“What about the chair itself? Aren’t you worried about it?”
“Not as much. It doesn’t match my concern for you.”
Corin turned to her with a question she might not answer, but he’d be able to learn something from how she responded. “Are you a descendant of the order that swore to protect the chair?”
Nicole smiled and slid her eyeteeth over her lower lip. “It sounds like your studies with the professor have enlightened you.”
“True.”
“And have you enjoyed what you’ve learned?”
“You’re not avoiding the question, are you?”
“Most assuredly.”
“But if you were to answer the question, how would you respond?”
Nicole smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles in her pleated slacks. “I would tell you if the fantastical legends purported in Tesser’s book were true, that yes, I would likely fit the profile.”
“Mark Jefferies wants to meet the legend.”
“He does, hmm?”
“Badly.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Why?”
Nicole didn’t answer.
Two boys, eight, maybe nine years old, stumbled past them, one with an old NFL Junior Football grasped in his arms, the other tugging on it with his arms and the full weight of his body.
“Give it up!” The boy without yanked hard on the ball.
“Make me!” the other said, twisting to pull away.
“I will!”
Corin grimaced as the war raged between the two boys. Had he and Shasta fought the same war thousands of times as they’d grown up? Or was it ten thousand? He smiled. Their fights always ended in them making up and building a jump for their bicycles or climbing the tallest tree in the woods across the street from their house.
But their war ended ten years ago, after he’d made his brother ski off a ledge into a world where one side had retreated beyond the battlefield to a realm Corin couldn’t reach.
The pain of yesterday’s conversation continued to echo in his mind as loud as summer thunder. Corin gave a quick shake of his head, as if to purge his mind, and then turned to Nicole. “Are you the lady from the legend?”
“Corin, you don’t need to ask me that question again. You know who I am. You need to choose to believe or not believe. In me. In the chair. In yourself.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Choose to believe you are the one the chair is to go to. That you will write the next chapter in the legend, because I think deep inside, you believe fully in the chair and are coming to believe in its Maker.”
She was right; he had taken the idea of the chair deep into his heart. Strongly. It gave him a purpose. Something of lore, of legend. Not a comic book, but real life.
“But you were supposed to give the book to a daughter, a direct descendant, not some stranger.” Corin hesitated and rubbed the bench with the palms of his hands. “Did you never marry? Didn’t you have a daughter to pass the chair to?”
“Yes, I married.” Nicole pursed her lips and stared at the lake.
“And?”
“And yes, I had a daughter.”
Corin wasn’t sure how to ask the next question so he simply stated it. “And is she alive?”
“She is not.”
“I’m sorry.”
“As am I.” She patted his hand then. “Thank you, Corin.”
For the first time, Nicole’s eyes clouded and moisture filled them. She tried to laugh as she wiped her cheek with the back of her fingers. “It was a long time ago.”
“What was?”
“Nothing.” Nicole blinked back more tears.
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
She smoothed back her hair and didn’t speak till at least a minute had passed. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She wouldn’t let me. She thought my belief in the chair was crazy.” Nicole massaged the top of her hand with the other. “She didn’t want me talking to her children about it and made me swear I would never contact them.”
“Did you keep your promise?”
She turned and offered Corin a sad smile. “No, I did not.”
“Do you regret breaking that promise?”
“No.”
“Why—?”
“Have you decided if you’ll follow the One who made the chair?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“When you’ve made your decision, I think it will be time to tell you why I gave the chair to you.” Nicole stood and held her hands out to Corin and he took them. “This was a delight, but I must go. Those clouds look like rain and I want to get home before the skies open up.” She squeezed his hands twice, then turned to go. “Don’t worry,” she called out over her shoulder as she clipped away, “we’ll chat again soon.”
“When?”
“Sooner or later.”
Corin puffed out a long sigh and decided to head for the cemetery. He needed to talk to his parents.