At His Command

The law offices of Hopkins and Wylie were just three blocks from the green space at the center of town. Maddie had never been inside the graceful white house, a lone example of Greek Revival architecture in a neighborhood of Victorians, but she’d marked its location after Anna Terenkov had pointed it out one day.

She parked on the street. Leaving her own sack of groceries in the car, she hefted Jake’s and started up his front walk, which led her past a massive crape myrtle thrusting its exuberant purple blossoms skyward. Looking higher, she scanned the long, green-shuttered windows of the house’s second story. According to Anna, Jake had knocked down most of the interior walls on that floor and converted the space to a beautiful loft apartment.

Maddie climbed the steps between four stately white columns, noting with approval the flagstaffs jutting from the two innermost columns. In the hot, dry breeze, the Stars and Stripes and Texas’s Lone Star flag snapped softly behind her as she shifted the grocery bag to her left hip and pressed the intercom button beside the door.

“Is that you, Madeline?” Jake’s voice floated out of the little brass grille.

She couldn’t resist teasing him. “Were you expecting the pizza delivery boy?”

“Not hardly,” he drawled. “You promised me a home-cooked meal.” A buzz followed by a metallic thunk told her he’d just remotely disengaged the door’s lock. “I’ll meet you at the top of the stairs.”

She stepped into a spacious foyer redolent of old leather and lemon furniture oil. A polished reception desk presided over a semicircle of wing chairs and a few small tables holding brass lamps, all resting on the biggest oriental rug Maddie had ever seen. The furniture appeared well used, but very good; according to Anna, the pieces were castoffs from the family home of Jake’s partner, whose father owned one of the largest cattle ranches in Texas.

The focal point of the large space was a gracefully curved oak staircase. It was truly a thing of beauty, but the room’s tall ceiling made it a long climb to the second floor.

“Jake, I hate to think of you negotiating all these stairs,” Maddie called as she tripped lightly up them.

“I don’t.” He appeared at the top landing, leaning on his cane. “There’s an elevator at the back of the house. All we had to do was enlarge the hole for the old dumb waiter in the kitchen.”

As Maddie reached his side, he extended his free arm for the groceries. It was a gentlemanly move, but Maddie was army-strong and Jake had enough work to do simply keeping both legs under him, so she shook her head and assured him the bag wasn’t heavy. He nodded briefly, accepting that.

His hair was wet, and he smelled of the same outdoorsy soap Noah had favored. He’d changed into black running shorts and a burnt-orange Texas Longhorns T-shirt.

Unable to contain her curiosity, Maddie looked down. Beginning at Jake’s knee and disappearing under the hem of his shorts, angry pink scars covered his misshapen left thigh.

“Sorry.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a self-deprecating smile. “My leg was feeling tender, and sometimes shorts are more comfortable than jeans.”

He could hardly imagine that a nurse would be shocked by his scars, so Maddie assumed he was apologizing for his casual attire and bare feet. “I’m wearing shorts, too,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, I noticed.” His voice sounded pinched. Maddie figured it was because his leg hurt.

He couldn’t seem to hold her gaze for more than a second or two before his dark eyes shifted away. Maddie ascribed that to the pain, too, because Jake couldn’t possibly be nervous in the company of someone he’d known since she was a child.

But she was nervous, and to cover that up, she indicated the brass umbrella stand next to her. It appeared to hold at least a dozen walking sticks. “You sure do have a lot of these things.”

Jake braced his feet and held up the cane he’d been leaning on. “This handle’s carved from olive wood. Look at the grain.”

Maddie skimmed her fingertips over the honey-colored swirls in the smooth wood, which was still warm from Jake’s grasp. “It’s beautiful.”

He nodded. “My first cane was one of those clunky aluminum-and-rubber things. The day Dad saw it, he went out and bought a cypress stick with a brass handle. He challenged me to find a cane more beautiful than the one he’d discovered, and it became something of a competition between us.” Jake returned the cane’s tip to the floor and shifted his weight to his stronger leg. “I think it was his way of helping me come to terms with the fact that while I’ve come a long way, I’ll never walk without help.”

Knowing Jake wouldn’t appreciate the compassionate tears that had begun to gather in her eyes, Maddie turned away from him and surveyed his apartment.

The sparsely furnished loft featured glowing maple floors and worn but still beautiful oriental rugs. Between the long bare windows, the white walls were hung with oil paintings, most of them Texas Hill Country landscapes.

“Who did all of these?” Maddie wondered aloud.

“Mama. She took up painting after we lost Dad.”

“Your dad?” Shocked, Maddie turned to look at him. “When?”

Jake’s gaze dropped like a stone, hiding his irises behind thick, dark lashes. “Almost two years ago.”

“Oh, Jake, I’m sorry.”

Noah had known Connor Hopkins, a district attorney, quite well. Both he and Jake had always spoken of the man with the utmost admiration. But Maddie and her mama hadn’t met either of Jake’s parents until Noah’s funeral. On that day Maddie had been too upset to converse with Connor and Alma Jean, although she’d been gratified to know they were deeply affected by Noah’s death.

The families met again at Rita’s funeral, and when Jake was finally brought home to Texas, they met a few more times at the hospital, where Jake continued to refuse all visitors except his parents. In the year that followed, Maddie’s mother and Jake’s exchanged occasional phone calls. But soon after Jake entered law school, they’d lost touch.

Thinking of all Jake had endured—losing his career, his ability to walk, his best friend, his wife and his father—made Maddie’s heart ache. She knew it wasn’t right to question God, but why had Jake been made to suffer so much in so short a time?

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “How’s your mother doing?”

“She misses him something fierce.”

As did Jake, judging by his bowed shoulders and the quiet intensity of his words. But as much as she pitied him, Maddie was glad they were finally communicating on something other than a superficial level. In the past month Jake had shied away from discussing any subject that might be construed as remotely personal, which made no sense, given their history. He wouldn’t even talk to her about Noah.

She moved closer and put her hand on his shoulder. It was a gesture of sympathy, nothing more, but he stiffened at her touch, so she withdrew. She covered her embarrassment by walking across the room to admire one of the paintings.

She loved bluebonnets, and here were endless, undulating drifts of them under a broad sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds. A well-traveled dirt road ran up the middle of the picture and past a bunch of scrubby cedar trees before disappearing over a hill, making Maddie wonder what lay on the other side.

She heard the muffled thuds of Jake’s cane and footsteps on the carpet behind her and was just about to turn when something brushed against her bare leg. Startled, she looked down and saw a large orange cat with ugly brown and black splotches arching against her. When the animal raised its head, she noticed its eyes were crossed. It was also missing a hind leg.

“Meet Tripod,” Jake said.

“Oh, the poor thing.” Maddie shifted the grocery bag to her hip and stooped to pet the unfortunate cat. “I never knew you were a cat person, Jake.”

“I’m not. Travis, my partner, found him on the back doorstep one morning. When we learned our office manager had been feeding him, Travis bought a litter box and invited him to move in. I objected on the grounds that a law office is no place for pets. But Travis presented a convincing argument that nobody could possibly hate a pair of attorneys who provided a home for an ugly, crippled cat.”

Maddie chuckled as she scratched behind Tripod’s ears. “I hate to tell you, Jake, but there are actually people in this world who don’t like lawyers or cats.”

She looked up in time to see him surrender a brief smile, but the humor that lit his brown eyes faded quickly and he averted his gaze. Maddie wanted to shake him and demand to know why he found it so impossible to look at her for more than two seconds at a time.

Sighing inwardly, she smoothed the fur on Tripod’s head with her cupped hand. The cat held still, bearing her attentions with a distinctly uncatlike patience, and Maddie couldn’t help comparing his behavior to that of his master. Jake could give lessons in aloofness to even the most catlike of cats.

He shifted his weight, unconsciously drawing Maddie’s attention to his scars, which were now at eye level. Considering the extent of the damage to his leg, she could only marvel at the courage and determination it must have taken for Jake to learn to walk again.

He noticed the direction of her gaze. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?”

She nodded slowly, then gave Tripod one last caress and stood up. “But God was merciful. You didn’t lose the leg, and you learned to walk again.”

“Merciful?” Jake’s mouth twisted as though the word tasted bad. “Your brother died, Madeline. Excuse me if I don’t see anything ‘merciful’ about what happened that night.”

His belligerent tone and the harsh light in his eyes shocked her, but she reminded herself that a world of pain lay behind them. And this was actually a breakthrough, because it was the first time Jake had mentioned Noah. In the past month Maddie had tried several times to bring her brother into their conversations, but Jake had always been quick to change the subject. It was abundantly clear that he had never accepted Noah’s death.

Maddie sent up a silent, urgent prayer that God would give her the words Jake most needed to hear.

“It still hurts when I think about Noah,” she began carefully. “But I don’t wish him back here, Jake, because he’s with God.” She hesitated. “You believe that, don’t you?”