Rainshadow Road

ago.”

Sam gave him a quizzical glance. “How do you know that?”

Alex’s face went expressionless. “I just meant that it seems right for the place.” He walked away, dialing his phone. “I’ll take care of it.”

* * *

Thanks to the accuracy of Lucy’s measurements, Alex and his workmen were able to fit the stained-glass window against the existing panel, and seal the edges with clear silicone caulking. By late afternoon, the majority of the installation had been completed. After the silicone had had twenty-four hours to cure, they would finish the window with wood trim around the edges.

“Just installed the window,” Sam texted Lucy. “You should come see it.”

No reply.

* * *

Usually Sam was slow to emerge from sleep, but this morning his eyes flipped open and he sat bolt upright. He felt annoyed, uneasy, like he was about to jump out of his skin. Trudging into the bathroom, he shaved and took a shower. A routine check in the mirror revealed a taut, bitter expression that didn’t seem to belong to him, but was oddly familiar. Then he realized it was the expression Alex usually wore.

He dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, and headed down to the kitchen for coffee and breakfast. On the way, however, he saw the stained-glass window at the second-floor landing, and he went still.

The window had changed. The glass sky was now flushed with pink and apricot dawn, the dark branches covered with luxuriant green leaves. The restrained hues of the window had given way to radiant color. Brilliant colors had infused the glass, the sight entering his eyes like visual music, reaching a place in him where deepest instinct resided. It was more than beauty, the effect of this window. It was a form of truth that he couldn’t deny. Truth that broke apart his defenses, and left him blinking as if he’d just come from a dark room into sunlight.

Slowly Sam went outside into the quiet vineyard, to see what kind of magic Lucy had made for him. The air was perfumed from growing things, and salted by the ocean. To Sam’s heightened senses, the vines were greener than usual, the soil richer. Before his eyes, the sky turned a shade of blue so radiant that he had to squint against the sting of tears. The land was idealized as a painter might have conceived it, except that it was real, art you could walk through and touch and taste.

Something was at work in the vineyard … some force of nature or enchantment, a wordless language that summoned the vines in a canticle of respiration.

Dreamlike, Sam wandered to the transplanted vine that no one had been able to identify. He felt its energy before he even touched it, the trunk and vines thrumming, flourishing with life. He sensed how deeply the rootstock had delved into the ground, anchoring the plant until nothing could have moved it. Passing his hands across the leaves, he felt them whispering to him, felt the vine’s secret being absorbed into his skin. Picking one of the blue-black grapes, Sam put it between his teeth and bit down. The flavor was deep and complex, evoking the bittersweet shallows of the past, then rolling into the rich dark mystery of things still just beyond his reach.

Hearing the sounds of an approaching car, he turned to see Alex’s BMW proceeding along the drive. Alex never came to the house this early. Slowing, Alex rolled down the car window and asked, “Want a lift?”

In a trance, Sam shook his head and motioned for him to go on. He couldn’t explain what had happened, couldn’t begin to find words … and Alex would discover it soon enough.

By the time Sam made it back to the house, Alex had already reached the second-floor landing.

Sam went upstairs and found his brother staring fixedly at the window. There was no wonder in his face, only the baffled tension of a man who related to the world on his own visceral and literal terms. Alex wanted an explanation when there clearly was none. Or at least none that he would accept.

“What did you do to it?” Alex asked.

“Nothing.”

“How did—”

“I don’t know.”

They both gazed at the stained glass, which had continued to alter as Sam had walked outside … the burnt-ash moon had disappeared, and the glass sky had turned gold and blue, intoxicated with sun. The leaves were even more profuse, emeralds embedded in spindrifts that nearly obscured the branches.

“What does it mean?” Alex wondered aloud.

Emotion made visible, Lucy had once said about her stained glass.

This, Sam thought, was love made visible. All of it. The vineyard, the house, the window, the vine.

The realization was so simple that many people would dismiss it as being beneath more sophisticated minds. Only those with some remnant potential for wonder would understand. Love was the secret behind everything … love was what made vineyards grow and filled the spaces between the stars, and fixed the ground beneath his feet. It didn’t matter if you acknowledged it or not. You couldn’t stop the motion of the earth or hold back the ocean tides, or break the pull of the moon. You couldn’t stop the rain or pull a shade over the sun. And one human heart was no less a force than any of the rest.

The past had always surrounded him like the bars of a prison cell, and he’d never understood that he’d had the power to walk out at any time. He’d not only suffered the consequences of his parents’ sins, he had voluntarily carried them with him. But why should he spend the rest of his life being weighted down by fears, hurts, secrets, when if he just let go, he would be free to reach for what he wanted most? He could have Lucy. He could love her madly, joyfully, without limit.

All he had to do was hold his breath and take the leap.

Without a word to his brother, Sam bounded downstairs and grabbed the keys to his truck.

* * *

Both the condo and Lucy’s studio were ominously still and dark, the way a place looked when it would be vacant for a long time.

A cold feeling settled into Sam’s chest and at the back of his neck. The urgency that had driven him to town had gathered in a desperate knot that constricted his heart.

Lucy couldn’t have left already. It was too soon.

On impulse Sam went to Artist’s Point, looking for Justine. As he entered the inn, comforting breakfast smells wafted around him, hot flour-dusted biscuits, pastries, applewood-smoked bacon, fried eggs.

Justine was in the dining room, carrying a stack of used plates and flatware. She smiled when she saw him. “Hi, Sam.”

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure.” After carrying the plates to the kitchen, Justine returned and went with him to a corner of the reception area. “How’s it going?”

Sam shook his head impatiently. “I’m looking for Lucy. She wasn’t at the condo or the studio. I was wondering if you had any idea where she was.”

“She’s gone to New York,” Justine said.

“It’s too soon,” Sam said tersely. “It wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow.”

“I know, but her professor called, and they wanted her there for a meeting and