demanded care and concentration. She welcomed both, drawing them around her like a balm, minutes flickering by, uncounted.
Beneath the concentration, the deepest levels of Angel’s mind continued to seethe toward some kind of resolution, some balance that would eventually allow her to live more than a minute at a time.
Working with glass brought a kind of peace, a breathing space, to Angel. It had helped her deal with all the small disappointments of her childhood – and with the devastating death of her parents and Grant and his mother in the flaming wreck. It would help her deal with Hawk. Her work would let her live in each minute as it came, nothing beyond this minute, this instant of brilliant glass taking shape beneath her fingers.
Working in silence but for the tiny, high song of glass shearing away, Angel finished cutting the pieces for Mrs. Carey’s gift. When the kiln was hot, the leaves went in. While they baked she continued cutting, working this time on the piece of pale muff. It was a large piece, irregularly shaped yet oddly graceful. She cut with confidence, years of experience showing in each elegant stroke, each sure motion.
After a time, Angel slipped a piece of plywood over the translucent panel in the table. Then she went to the bead stretcher, a simple vise that held one end of a length of soft, H-shaped lead beading while she pulled on the other, taking out any kinks. She used the thinnest possible bead that was consistent with the structural integrity of the finished piece.
After the lead beading was pulled and a piece had been tamped into the rustic frame, she began to assemble the glass, beginning in the bottom right-hand corner of the frame. Horseshoe nails held the glass in place until the next piece of bead was ready to be laid.
As Angel selected each piece of glass, she polished it until she could see nothing but the beauty of the glass itself. Piece after piece, color after color, a fragile jigsaw puzzle held together by black lead stretched into suppleness. The sounds of small nails being tacked down replaced the tiny cry of glass.
Angel worked through the darkest hours of the night, pausing only to wipe away the tears that came without warning, a transparent up-welling from a wound too fresh and deep to be quickly healed.
She noticed the tears only at a distance, a blurring of sight that prevented her from seeing clearly the jeweled shards of color slowly becoming whole beneath her hands. Fragments of the past forged into a new pattern, beauty where only breakage and loss had been, sanity rebuilt piece by piece.
Ebony night paled to pewter dawn. Crimson flushed the studio. Angel didn’t notice the light any more than she noticed that her back muscles were burning and knotted or that the shoulders of her blouse were dark from the tears she had wiped away. She was focused wholly on the puzzle she had just completed.
She mixed the cement that would be the final touch, the last assurance that the puzzle would not come undone in an hour or a year.
With a stiff brush, Angel worked the thick cement over both sides of the finished stained glass piece until there was no more space between glass and beading and frame. She poured sawdust over the finished surfaces, absorbing the excess cement. Then, before the cement dried, she took a pointed wooden tool and began to go over each join of lead and glass, picking up extra cement, making sure that the lines of her creation would be as clean and elegant as the glass itself.
Crimson faded into the softer colors of day. Angel didn’t notice. There was no sound but that of wood squeaking over glass until Derry came in, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Angie? What’s wrong? Why aren’t you out fishing?”
Chapter 15
Angel looked up, surprised to find that so many minutes had passed.
It was morning.
A little of the tension in Angel eased. The first night was the hardest.
Blinking slowly, she focused for the first time in hours on something that was farther away than the surface of a worktable.
Derry came closer, swinging easily between the crutches.
“Angie? How long have you been working?”
“A while,” Angel said evasively, returning her attention to the stained glass. “I’m almost finished.”
Actually she had been finished an hour ago. She was simply using the wooden scraper to retrace the lines of what she had created. She enjoyed the colors and shapes, the wholeness where only dreams and lethal fragments of glass had been.
Derry frowned. “You must have been at it all night.”
She made a neutral sound.
“Angie?”
She sighed and put the wooden scraper aside, knowing she couldn’t evade the issue of why she was home rather than out guiding Hawk.
“Yes, I worked all night.”
“You haven’t done that for a long time.”
“Yes.”
“Angie,” Derry said softly, “what’s wrong? Is it because last night was the night of the wreck? Four years… ”
Angel hesitated. It would be easier to let Derry believe that she was mourning the past.
Easier, but hardly the whole truth.
“That’s part of it,” Angel said, looking up and meeting Derry’s eyes for the first time. “But most of it is that your Mr. Hawkins and I don’t get along worth a damn.”
Blue eyes widened in surprise.
“What happened?” Then Derry’s eyes narrowed. “He didn’t make a pass at you, did he?”
Derry’s voice was suddenly hard, much older.
Angel’s mouth turned down at one corner, a sardonic echo of the man called Hawk.
“A pass?” she echoed. “Nothing that personal. There isn’t a personal bone in Hawk’s body.”
Angel’s voice carried conviction, for she didn’t feel that she was lying. A pass implied unwanted attentions. Hawk’s touch hadn’t been unwanted, not at first. Nor had there been anything personal between them, not in the deepest sense of the word.
They didn’t know each other well enough to be personal. They had proved it when they had so badly misjudged one another.
Derry relaxed slowly. “Then what happened?”
“We don’t speak the same language,” Angel said succinctly.
Puzzled, Derry waited.
Angel said no more.
“What do you mean?” Derry persisted.
“Does the word misogynist ring any bells?” asked Angel, fiddling absently with the wooden scraper.
“It’s too early in the morning for dictionary games,” retorted Derry.
“Mr. Miles Hawkins is a misogynist. He distrusts and hates women. I am a woman. Therefore, he distrusts and hates me. That,” Angel said quietly, looking up at Derry with dark green eyes, “makes it very uncomfortable for me to be around him. He feels just as unhappy to be around me.”
There was shocked silence for a moment while Derry tried to imagine anyone hating and distrusting the pale, tired woman who stood before him, her eyes haunted by too many sad memories.
“I can’t believe that,” Derry said.
“I can.”
Angel set aside the scraper with a weary gesture.
“Call Carlson on the radio phone,” she said. “When we ran into him at Brown’s Bay, he offered to take Hawk fishing.”
“He did? They must have gotten along great.”
“Why shouldn’t they? Carlson’s all man.”
