that Carter’s faith was what led him to leave the stage lights and his band far behind. If not for his friend’s guidance, he would have put down his guitar permanently, but Andy convinced him to try singing in churches instead of in clubs.
Nothing had been quite the same since.
“If you aren’t nervous about performing Thursday night at my church, then what gives? And don’t pull the jet-lag card on me—you only drove about five hours to get here.”
“I ran into someone today I wasn’t expecting.” Carter took another gulp from his soda can. “It didn’t go so well.” To put it mildly. He waited at the aquarium for Gracie until closing time, when he was politely asked to leave by a security guard who needed to lock up. Gracie had successfully avoided him after the penguin’s showing—not that he really blamed her.
“Must have been a woman.” Andy’s eyes darkened with understanding as he leaned forward to rest his drink on the coffee table. “Ex-girlfriend?”
“Sort of.” He and Gracie had never dated, thanks to him. But if he could go back…
Carter couldn’t sit anymore, not with the weight of the past pressing against his shoulders. He stood and moved to the window in the living room, shoving aside the curtain to look down onto the road below. A streetcar stopped at the corner and passengers filed out—a tall brunette in a long, camel-colored jacket, a potbellied man in overalls, a teen boy with spiked hair and a studded dog collar. The rest of the patrons followed behind, adjusting their jackets and purses, some talking, others holding hands. A few walked with their heads down, arms crossed, as if the city or maybe the world itself were out to get them.
He recognized that stance. Carter rested his shoulder against the wall, eyes fixed on the fading golden sunlight spilling over the streets. He knew how it felt to hide, to grow tired of the mask. He walked around with his own arms crossed in a protective gesture for most of his life—the result of a fishbowl existence, lost within the murky waters of his father’s church. People thought they saw everything, but they only saw what they wanted. Never the truth.
The streetcar moved away from the corner and continued down the block, out of his line of vision. He let the curtain fall and turned back to Andy.
His friend studied him with narrowed eyes. “I’m not sure if I should offer to pray with you or give you the remote control.”
Carter snorted and sat back on the couch. “Now I know you pity me. You never shared the remote in college.”
“You were hardly there, anyway.” Andy’s eyebrow quirked. “Day or night.”
“Don’t remind me,” Carter groaned. “The life of a rockstar.” His guitar, propped in the corner of the room near the fireplace hearth, caught his eye and he winced at the memories. How many screaming fans and busted strings and bright lights had it seen? Too many to count—though those days were all but over. Church crowds didn’t react quite the same way to his music.
“Sacrifices are never simple.” Andy nodded. “You had a big one to make.”
“Funny thing is I don’t miss it.”
“Not even a little?”
Carter shrugged. “Maybe a little.” He’d been lead singer of Cajun Friday for years. He never would have thought a high school band could have lasted so long and gained so much popularity in college and beyond. But if he was serious about honoring God with his life, he was more than willing to start from scratch and do things right this time, do something big and meaningful with his future as his parents always hoped he might—even if his dad wasn’t around to see it happen now. Bitterness clogged his throat and he coughed.
“I can’t wait to hear you play again.” Andy edged the recliner back a notch and stretched out. “Those kids wear me out, but they’re pretty awesome. Some of them have come in off the street with the hardest hearts you can imagine, and done complete one-eighties.”
“I’ll bet.” The description sounded like Carter himself not too many years ago. “I hope I’m able to reach them.”
“I’m sure you will. Don’t sweat it.” Andy pointed toward the ceiling. “That’s His job, right?”
“Right.”
Silence stretched across the room, save for the ticking of the coffee mug shaped clock on the living room wall. Could Andy tell he was still thinking about Gracie? Carter shifted on the couch, not sure whether to bring up the past on his first evening in New Orleans or let it ride for now. He pressed his lips together.
Andy made the decision for him. “Okay, I’ll take one guess and then leave you alone. Is this about Blue Eyes?”
Carter’s breath caught. His nickname for Gracie in high school, after that wide, naively alluring gaze—not practiced, as most of the women who kept him company—and the inspiration behind one of his band’s hit songs. If she wanted nothing to do with Carter now, that was her choice, and an understandable one—a few years ago, he would have felt the same. But the swells of pride and stubbornness had washed him away from what his heart knew to be right, tugging him further out to the sea of bitterness and denial. How could he have been so blind to what was right before his face for literally a decade? But he’d ridden that circular method of thinking for years now, with no more clarity than before.
He needed to answer Andy’s question, though he was sure by then his friend could read the truth on his face. “Yes.”
“Then here you go, man.” Andy tossed the remote at Carter from across the room. “That’s all you had to say.”
On Wednesday morning, Gracie poised her pencil over the paper in front of her, wrote a figure, then erased it. She grimaced. It was no use. Regardless of what she scribbled in the margins, the money simply wasn’t there. The gala budget was already stretched to the max, and she had yet to fund the decorations.
You have to spend money to make money. The words of her boss, curator of birds Michael Dupree, echoed in her mind from last week’s meeting. That might be true, but she couldn’t create something from nothing.
Gracie kneaded her forehead with her knuckles. The framed picture on her desk of Ernie and Huey caught her eye and she grinned in spite of her circumstances. They were waddling toward the camera, chests puffed out and beaks open as if smiling. “Guys, remind me why I volunteered to head this fund-raiser again?”
But the photo was evidence enough in itself. She was doing this for the penguins upstate who wouldn’t have a home come March. The Louisiana Aquarium, after struggling to recover financially from the results of Hurricane Katrina, would be shutting its doors in the spring. Because the other aquariums in the state were at full capacity, the Aquarium of the Americas was the only possible solution for the little birds that would soon be homeless.
If she could raise the money. The board of advisors firmly stated they were willing to expand the current exhibit if the funds were provided. It wasn’t in the yearly budget otherwise—not after their own financial hit from the storms.
Gracie tapped her pencil on the sheet before her. She would have to call in some favors unless she could move money from another category. But most of what she needed had already been purchased, or required a set amount she couldn’t budge. For instance, the caterer and the band. If she was better at begging, she might play up the charity angle and attempt to get a price cut from either—but at the
