Page 67 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
Becket likes the busyness, he likes being the waystone at the corner of regular life and God life, he likes being the doorway to something more. He likes knowing that people leave his presence ready to see God everywhere, as he does.
And after the dinner, after all is cleaned and back in its place, he’ll get to see the others, he’ll get to tell them what he’s discovered in Blackcombe, he’ll get to climb up to the moors with the people dearest in the world to him, and they’ll watch the sun rise between the standing stones.
With a deep, anticipatory breath, the priest turns his back on the sheep and starts running down the ridge, back into the fog and toward the waiting day.
Chapter 20
Rebecca
Equinox
* * *
“Rebecca,” Samson Quartey says.
Rebecca looks up from her desk to see her father standing in the doorway to her office, his hands behind his back as if he’s about to step in for a formal conversation with a subordinate. He’s always formal in the office, always distant and cool and relentless, stinting with praise and liberal with correction, and so she braces herself as she nods for him to come in.
“Daddy,” she says.
“Shahil says you’re leaving early,” Samson says, coming over to stand by the window. He never sits in her office—whether that’s to keep the advantage of height or simply because he doesn’t want the appearance of family coziness—and therefore favoritism—she doesn’t know.
Both options depress her slightly.
“Shahil is right,” Rebecca confirms, sliding her gaze outside the glass wall of her office to see her assistant mouthing an apology to her. She only gives him a small shake of her head—no one can withstand the Quartey Stare, not from her and especially not from her father—and she’s not irritated with him, even though it would’ve undoubtedly made her day easier if she could have left without her father knowing.
“You know I’m pleased you’re working with the Guest boy,” Samson tells her. “But do you really need to spend so much time in Devon? I need you here, working.”
Rebecca has prepared for this exact line of questioning and she keeps her voice calm as she answers, “I’ve secured two more clients since beginning the Thornchapel project—as well as managing all the work I had before. I’m here three days of the week for client meetings and I’ve never turned down a request for a site visit. I’ve done more work—and it’s the best work I’ve ever done—this year. My contribution to the firm this year is beyond reproach, Daddy.”
Her father subjects her to the Quartey Stare now, studying her with the paradoxical remoteness and intensity that is the trademark of the Stare. “There’s always more you could be doing, Rebecca. Remember, unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be—”
“Much required,” she interrupts, even though it’s a terrible idea to interrupt her father, ever. “I know, Daddy.”
The Stare narrows ever so slightly; he’s not impressed by her display of impatience. “You’ve been given many gifts. I don’t want to see them thrown away.”
For a moment, she almost wants to push back, to ask what throwing her gifts away could possibly look like after she’s excelled in some of the best schools in the world, after she’s become a recognizable figure in the world of landscapes and architecture after only two short years. After she’s made her father’s firm enough to money to pay back all her educational expenses with interest.
Is having friends throwing my gifts away? she wants to demand. Spending even a single moment away from work? Is that truly such a sin?
But she doesn’t say this out loud because she knows exactly what her father will say.
Work is a privilege, daughter. Work is a gift.
He will remind her that they are the exception, that they’ve been blessed, that he built the Quartey Workshop under the doubly crushing gravity of being black and an immigrant. He will say that they can take nothing for granted, not now, not ever—no matter that QW is currently housed in a stylish Whitechapel office of curved glass, no matter that their client waitlist is years long. It all might evaporate tomorrow if they don’t keep working as if they have nothing.
Work is a gift. One of those many gifts she’s not allowed to throw away.
“Rebecca,” her father starts again, recognizing her silence for the tiny, pointless rebellion it was, “I know what a powerful place Thornchapel is. I know how it can . . . draw a person.” He turns away, looking out the window, but as he turns, Rebecca sees his eyes shut. As if he’s in pain. As if he’s remembering. “It’s dangerous, that draw. And it leads to nothing, Rebecca, it leads to nothing but grief in the end.”
Rebecca considers asking him about this grief. About what drew him and why, and why it all ended—but she also knows what he’ll say to that. The same curt explanation as he’s given her for years, that he was only there to assess a project for Ralph Guest and that Ralph happened to have everyone else there for a long visit.
But she saw the picture Poe and Delphine found, she saw her father laughing with all the other parents. She saw him holding Poe’s father’s hand . . .
Whatever her father was doing there, it wasn’t strictly professional, that much was apparent. So she refuses to feel guilty about diluting her own professional commitment to Thornchapel with—well, with whatever it is she’s doing there.
“I love Thornchapel, but I’m not being drawn into anything,” she says firmly. “It’s a project and it happens to be a project where my friends are. As long as I get my work done, does it matter where I spend my time? And with whom?” It was, she realizes with some weariness, the same sort of thing she might have said ten years ago when she was a student. And now here she is, an adult, trying to justify having a life and interests outside of the ones her father says she should have.
“I just want you to be careful,” he says, and his voice has modulated ever so slightly, changed from severe to something almost sorrowful. “Be careful with yourself.”
