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Mark struggled to steady his breathing. What Claire admitted—blurting out that her husband died because of her—knocked the wind from him.
She resumed pacing back and forth in front of him, faster this time.
“Why would you say such a thing, Claire? You told me Richard drowned.”
The pacing stopped and she stared at him, her eyes overflowing. “He did.”
“Then tell me what happened. I need to understand.”
“I’ve never told anyone but my family.”
Mark handed her a handkerchief. There was an explanation and he must hear it. Now.
She wiped the tears away, then began to talk about an anniversary celebration with a picnic at the river. “We’d had a lovely time until”—she shrugged—“until I ruined everything.”
Like prey paralyzed by a cobra, he couldn’t look away, couldn’t move, so he waited for her to gather herself and continue.
“Numerous times, I’d asked Richard why George wouldn’t recognize my work in the office. Why he refused to increase my role or even admit it before colleagues and clients. I asked why he’d taught me so much only to refuse me the opportunity to show others what I’d learned.
“Richard wasn’t one to lose his temper easily, but when I asked again that day, he shouted at me. We’d been over and over the situation, he said, and I should be grateful George tolerated me in the office at all. We carried on a lengthy argument that ended with him apologizing. Still angry, I couldn’t find the words to respond in kind. A few minutes later, he said he was too warm, and a swim would cool him off. He invited me to join him, but I was hurt because he refused to stand up to George on my account.
“I pulled out my sketch pad and lost myself in drawing interior pieces for a new project. I wanted to try once more to impress both men with my work. Putting the images in my head down on paper calmed me, but eventually, I realized that Richard had never returned. I went to find him.”
When Claire pressed her eyes shut and her lips trembled, Mark forced himself to keep from reaching for her.
Her fingers curled into a fist and her eyes closed. “Richard was nowhere to be found. I knew he wouldn’t just leave me, so I dove into the water. By the time I located him, it was too late.”
“Claire—”
“My selfishness and anger led me to pay more attention to my sketch than to my dying husband.” Finally, she opened her eyes. Her voice shook. “I could have saved him, Mark. He wouldn’t have died with no one to realize the trouble he was in. He wouldn’t have died with my anger standing between us. If I’d been less concerned about myself, my husband would be alive today.”
“We all lose our tempers at times. We all become distracted by our own interests. You did nothing wrong, Claire.”
“Going against the constraints of society cost my husband his life and you an important client.”
Mark stepped closer and cupped her cheek—warm and soft and wet on his palm. “I remember a day not long ago when you answered the request to meet with Mr. Dover. You suspected his purpose but went because that goal to be an architect still called to you. Do you remember what happened on the way to his office?”
She whispered, “I saw Cissy playing in the street.”
“No. You pulled Cissy from the street. You kept her from harm when her mother had other things on her mind. Because you followed your heart—your dream—you were there at the right moment to save a child from injury...or worse.”
She didn’t answer, so he said, “If you blame yourself for Richard’s death, then I must blame myself for my father’s injury and eventual death.”
She shuddered. “How are the two alike?”
His thoughts reverted to the day eleven-year-old Marek Grzegorczyk had finally had enough of being picked on for his size and his name. The memory of the day his father broke up a fight between Mark and an older boy.
“I was small growing up. Others used to tease me, one boy particularly. There came a day when I fought back with my fists. My father found us and intervened. The boy, who was older and larger than me, shoved my father as he grabbed me to pull me away. We broke through the weak rail of a low fence. He landed on his back in a ditch fifteen feet below, taking me with him. I broke my arm, but my father never fully recovered from his injuries.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “No.”
“The point is, he never blamed me or the boy I fought. He blamed the builder’s design for his injury. He said if the barrier had been built higher and of better materials, if the ground had been leveled, it wouldn’t have happened. I’d already chosen architecture for my future, so before he died a year later, I promised him I would design buildings that he, as a construction worker, would be proud to build.”
“I’m sorry about your father, but the situation is not the same.”
Before he could think of an argument, she disappeared into the front hall. A moment later, the door opened and shut. Cookie sat in the middle of the floor with her pups gathered around her. The dog eyed the entrance to the house, then turned her brown-eyed gaze to him, her cocked head asking him for an explanation.
Mark lowered his body onto the seat of the chair. His insides were tangled in knots. Somehow, he must convince Claire she was not a liability to him—professionally or personally. At the same time, he must convince himself.
He slapped the arm of the chair, then suppressed a howl from the pain that ripped through his injured hand and tore a hole through the fabric of his own dreams.
***
AS PROMISED, CLAIRE picked up the mail at the post office, then stopped at Mark’s office to gather the account book and anything she thought he might need while he continued to recuperate.
After a full day of letting her story sink in, surely, he would realize the wisdom in her leaving his employ. She’d hardly slept a wink last night while wondering what he thought of her. How relieved he must be that she no longer worked for him.
And she hadn’t told him the rest—the true reason she and Richard argued that day by the river.
Though neither man would know, Mr. Arbuckle had done Mark a favor.
Claire put the key in the lock of the office door but found it already open. She stared at the knob. Had she forgotten to lock it before leaving on Wednesday?
With a slow twist of the knob, she pushed the door open and wary steps carried her inside. Light shone from inside the drafting room. “Hello?”
“I’m back here.”
Her breath hissed with relief, and she followed Mark’s voice to the large back room. How had he managed to walk to the office and up a flight of stairs? Stubborn man.
He stood near a stool at the drafting easel, a fresh sheet of the costly Whatman paper tacked to the board. The case with its blocks of watercolor paints she had used to finish the rendering sat on the nearby table, brushes alongside it.
“What are you doing here, Mark? You should be resting at home.”
His excited grin covered the pinched eyebrows that told her, despite standing straight, he still felt the consequences of his injury. “I’ve been waiting for you. I have an idea.”
She set her purse and the mail on the table, his tone tensing her muscles. “What kind of idea?”
“We’ll do the rendering over, and I’ll take it to Arbuckle myself. We have a couple of days. It should get there in time.”
“What good will that do? I told you, he won’t accept it.”
“He wouldn’t accept it with your name on it.” Mark turned away from her. “This time, leave off your name.”
Claire’s breath stalled. He wanted her to redo the rendering without acknowledgment? The first time he’d been adamant that she put her name on it, even when she resisted. Now her name wasn’t good enough? He wouldn’t support her?
“Why would you think Mr. Arbuckle would accept a new rendering when he already knows you employ a woman?”
His mouth tightened. “You quit, remember? I don’t employ a woman anymore.”
“Yet you want me to do the work. What is the difference?” She gripped his arm, digging her fingers into the material of his suit coat. “I’m sorry you lost the opportunity for the commission, but there will be others. Leave your future in God’s hands and carry on from here.”
He gazed out the window. “I won’t give Him the control.”
“Because you’re afraid of what God will or will not do with it? Then you’ll never fully live the life He wants for you.”
He whipped around to face her. “And what does He want for you, Claire? Where has He led you? To widowhood. To a department store when you should be using your talent designing buildings. Where did He lead Richard? To an early grave?”
Claire gasped. As the seconds passed, she worked to control the hurt over his words and the rise of the old resentment from her time at Kingsley and Brant.
Yet, according to Mr. Arbuckle, Richard had lost an important project because of her. He’d never told her. He’d been an honorable man. She wished to say the same for Mark but couldn’t. He hadn’t measured up to Richard after all, and certainly not in the matter of his faith.
Mark’s body sagged. “I’m trying to save my business.”
“I understand, but I can’t do what you’re asking of me.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, it’s insulting. For another, it’s dishonest.” She grabbed her purse from the table and walked out of the drafting room.
“Claire, come back. I’m sorry for what I said. It was thoughtless.”
On the sidewalk outside the building, she paused and leaned against the brick wall to collect herself. Peering up at the turret’s second-floor windows provided a bittersweet moment.
She’d thought Mark an honorable man. Apparently, she didn’t know him at all.
***
IT WAS TOO QUIET. CLAIRE might have occupied space in the office only a few hours a week, but knowing she wouldn’t return gave the place the atmosphere of a graveyard.
Mark fidgeted in the chair at the table in the drafting room. Two hours and not a line drawn on the paper in front of him. He’d tried, but who could grip a pencil with two trussed up fingers? If only he’d broken the fingers of his left hand instead. How was he to complete any of his work this way?
All he’d accomplished this morning was to stare at Claire’s handwriting in the ledger. It had summoned the memory of the last time he saw her on Friday, perhaps the last time he’d ever see her.
Regret corkscrewed in his chest. He hadn’t meant to say those dreadful things. He hadn’t meant to shock her by dragging her husband’s death into their discussion. He hadn’t meant to offend her with his plan to remove her name from the rendering.
Both actions were wrong. Both demeaning and cruel. And she was right. His idea was dishonest.
Mark considered himself an intelligent man, talented, and able to run his own future, but had he ever had a worse idea?
Possibly the day he signed that paper for the loan without allowing for unforeseen events.
Then again, his worst idea probably originated with his boast to Claire and others of his ability to accomplish everything on his own. How pompous that sounded. How tired he was of shouting his own efforts with the pride of a raucous peacock.
Being trapped by his own superiority was a new experience, as if he’d designed a structure around himself—one with no door, no window, no way out.
He’d lost control.
Mark crossed the room to look out on the town he had come to think of as his home and saw something he hadn’t noticed before. He’d stood at this window numerous times, ignorant of the steeple that rose above the rooftops of the businesses along Commerce, a cross at its pinnacle. Likely, he’d never noticed because he hadn’t cared to notice.
Now, it was all he could see. A cross at which he could lay his troubles, his failures, his self-centered attitude, and lack of faith.
A door with a way out.
He shut his eyes and sat motionless until the words—more a nonverbal yearning—took shape within him and blossomed like the petals of a lily into his first prayer in years. He didn’t even know why he bothered. He only knew that, if he didn’t pray, he’d burst into a thousand tiny, miserable pieces.
I’ve tried it my way, God. Now, I’m willing to try yours. I’m not asking for success or an easy way out of the mess I’ve created. I’m asking for forgiveness in thinking I knew best. I still don’t understand why good men and women die young. Maybe I never will, but I’m asking for guidance and the growth of my faith while I’m here on this earth.
Mark opened his eyes. The threat of shattering had gone, replaced by a subtle sense of belonging and peace the swept over him with the depth of an incoming tide. He was prepared for the necessity to guard against slipping back into old habits, but for now, he felt accepted and loved once more by a father—the Father.