Page 152 of Share with Me

Chapter Forty-Seven

That night Brinleydreamed that she was a little girl sitting on Jesus’ lap in a wide open field. All around them, white fluffy flakes fell from the sky, covering the ground in a sea of creamy white. Before the question reached her lips, the answer came to her heart.

Manna.

Brinley woke up so full she wasn’t hungry for breakfast.

Manna.

God will provide.

Over a cup of coffee in her parents’ sunroom against a backdrop of distant ocean waves and gulls, Brinley replayed the entire conversation with Ivan in his studio the day before.

His words burned in her ears. His censure of her was confusing. All she could think of was what Yun had said to her.

We’ll need patience with him.

Lots of patience and prayer.

She opened the Bible Yun had given her. Yun had suggested she start reading the New Testament and she had tried to do so almost every day. She wanted to develop the habit of daily Bible reading.

Yun had also suggested that Brinley join the Seaside Chapel Women’s Bible Study Group. Even though they met Tuesday evenings at the Pastor’s house and Pastor Gonzalez's wife usually taught, Brinley didn’t have to be a church member at Seaside Chapel to attend the Bible Study. Good to know. In fact, she was hoping to get some more information at church this morning.

She glanced at her iPhone. It was only eight o’clock. Sunday School didn’t start until ten, and the service until eleven. She had an hour or so to putter around. Next week she would move into her new home, only two blocks from Seaside Chapel. She could walk on the beach to church if she wanted to.

Ping!

Startled, she checked her messages. Yun McMillan had texted her, wanting to meet her at church at 9:45 a.m. to introduce her to the different Sunday School classes she could go to. Yun told her that Ivan wasn’t feeling well and he was skipping church that morning. The way Yun phrased it made Brinley wonder what was happening in Ivan’s mind and heart. It was as if he was playing truant from God. Brinley texted Yun back to arrange a place inside the church to meet.

Well, at least she wasn’t going to be alone at church.

It dawned on Brinley that perhaps one reason God had saved her at this time was to provide her a shield before her budding relationship with Ivan collapsed. In the deep recess of her heart, she was surprised and glad to be at rest. Her rest baffled her a bit. She began to understand what Paul meant by incomprehensible, unexplainable peace.

I have it now.

The peace of God I’ve been looking for all my life.

Without a boyfriend. Without a fiancé.

She’d be lying to herself if she said Ivan’s rejection didn’t affect her even a little bit. After she had left Yun’s house the afternoon before, the rest of her Saturday was ruined. She had been too numb to eat supper, and she’d gone to bed early.

And woke up full of the comfort of God.

I have to forgive Ivan.

Brinley blinked away the sting in her eyes, turned to the book of John and began reading the next chapter.

* * *

Brinley steppedinto the quiet hallway, cold and old, a grim reminder of Grandpa Brooks’s failed lifetime attempt to recover his family’s Damaris Brooks Stradivarius. A short walk led her to a locked steel door. She placed her hands on the biometrics panel, stared into the retina scanner, and punched in the ten-digit code she had memorized and changed every year.

The steel door opened to a lost world of woe. There were twelve of them here, various instruments hand-crafted by the luthier Antonio Stradivari himself. Not by his students, but by his own hands. From the 1700 guitar hidden away in a Tuscany farmhouse for three hundred years, undocumented until it had ended up at Christie’s auction house before Grandpa whisked it away to be reburied here, to the violas and cellos that Grandpa had spent an enormous fortune securing, the entire collection was a silent tomb.

No music filled the air except the ping of the elevator door outside the vault, and only when Brinley came down here.

All stringed instruments, all silent voices never to be heard again unless Brinley did something about it. Standing there in her silk pajamas, she wondered what she could do to speed up the opening of the SISO Museum of Musical Instruments. Like Ivan had said, these Stradivari-made instruments were meant to be seen, displayed, exhibited, shared.

Brinley moved among dustless glass cases toward a wall that held a row of Stradivarius violins. Right in the middle was an empty case. Hung on the wall, it had been empty since 1972 when Grandpa Brooks started this underground private museum. Nailed to the wall next to the case were the words, “1698 Damaris Brooks.”

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