Emerald Windows by Terri Blackstock Page A

everything. That’s why she was here earlier today.”
    He led her out of the office, through the darkly lit hall, and into the large workroom where he had set up their tables. Several middle-aged women crouched over a box of artifacts, disagreeing about the proper way to wrap each piece.
    He knew Brooke recognized some of them. How could she have forgotten the women who’d sat together at town picnics, picking away at the juiciest grapevine morsels. She jammed her hands back into her pockets.
    “What do you think?” Nick asked her, drawing her attention from the women back to their work space. “Is this going to be okay?”
    Brooke surveyed the large worktable, just tall enough to stand up at without putting strain on the back. To the left of it was a light table made of several pieces of frosted glass with fluorescent bulbs beneath to simulate sunlight through the stained glass. On the wall hung a large pegboard with Nick’s tools hooked neatly from it, and beneath that sat a stack of storage bins of various sizes for glass. “It’ll work,” Brooke said. “Might need a few modifications.”
    “The thing is,” Nick said, “we really need to work onsite to keep from having to move the panels much. They’ll be too big.”
    Her face tightened again, and he wondered if the project would overwhelm her. “There’s so much to be done,” she said. “It’ll take weeks to do the cartoons, and then all the cutting and leading…I don’t see how we can do this without help.”
    “Oh, we won’t be doing it alone,” Nick said, pulling out a drawer of the worktable and removing a stack of sketches. “We’ll have to hire more people experienced in cutting glass. I was going to ask if you knew of anyone who might be interested in helping us out when we get to that point.”
    Brooke sat on a tall stool and thought for a moment. “I know a few people we could subcontract. But do we have enough in our budget to pay them?”
    Nick shrugged and began to spread his sketches out across the table. “We have plenty, unless Abby Hemphill pulls the rug out from under us. I don’t know for sure what our budget’s going to be yet. Abby Hemphill was right. It hasn’t completely been approved. But, yeah, they’ll have to put it in the budget. If we did this ourselves, it would take years.”
    “Maybe we could hire some high school kids to help with some of the other things,” she said. “Like tracing the patterns, coloring them, cutting them out…”
    “My nephew has agreed to help,” Nick said. “And I’ll call the high school and see if we could get some help from the art department.”
    The chattering women got quiet behind them, and Nick knew at once what they were thinking. Brooke only voiced it. “Do you think they’d really let some of their students work here with you—us?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
    Nick glanced back at the women, noting the distasteful looks on their faces. He released a heavy sigh. “Well, maybe not,” he mumbled. “Maybe we’ll have to find help another way.”
    The women behind them began to whisper again, and Brooke’s eyes connected with his, sharing the common bond of regret.
    “These are some of my preliminary sketches,” Nick said finally. “I don’t want it to be something that you see in a thousand other churches. I want it to be more unique. Fresher and more exciting. Are you familiar with the covenants in the Bible, Brooke?”
    She looked up at him and shook her head. “No, not really.”
    Nick reached onto his stack of sketches, crude puzzle-piece drawings that translated well to glass. “Look at this,” he said.
    It was a picture of an old, wizened man, holding a child on his bony lap.
    “That’s beautiful,” she whispered. “But what’s your theme? Age? Family? Love?”
    The sound of activity behind them ceased, and she knew that the women were listening intently, though they couldn’t see the drawings. “Covenant,” he said. “I want the