Julie drops her fork in her empty carton. Sweetie’s cleaning her whiskers. I put away my sketchbook, and now the hard part begins.
“I saw Florence today,” I tell her. “She told me your sister wants you to come live with her in Arizona.”
“You interfering in my business?” Julie sits up tall and Sweetie runs up her arm like she’s been called. Then they both glare at me.
“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to interfere, but—”
“But what?”
“Don’t you want to be with your family?”
She strokes Sweetie between the ears. “I got my family right here.”
“I don’t get it. If I had someone who wanted me—”
“You’re not me. You don’t know what I want or what I deserve. You don’t know my story.” Julie swings her legs around the bench and gets up. “Thank you for my lunch.”
I scramble to my feet, but she’s already walking away. “You’re right, I don’t know your story, but I bet that whatever the ‘old you’ did that you’re so ashamed of, you’ve already paid for it.”
She stops for a moment but doesn’t turn around.
I wait, sensing either Julie’s going to take down the wall she’s put up or she’s going to walk away.
She walks away. Damn.
I snatch our trash off the table and head for a nearby can when my phone rings. It’s Tara. Terrific. Wasps circle the mouth of the trash can, so I stand back to toss my garbage. “Hi, Tara. What’s up?”
“Good news. Iona’s accepted your offer to paint her portrait.”
A week ago, I’d have jumped for joy, but today the thought of a month spent gazing at Iona’s overly made-up face as I paint her is almost more than I can bear.
There’s an easy way out and that’s to hand Iona the six grand Adam gave me. All I have to do is tell her: I sold a painting, so I can send you the money.
It’s so damn tempting, but I’m not stupid enough to believe it was an accident that Adam gave me six grand, the exact amount I owe her. He wants me to pay Iona back, and I’m betting it’s because if I get arrested for stealing her dress, any reasons I have to stay silent about my part in Duncan’s theft won’t matter anymore.
If I offer Iona the money, I play right into Adam’s hands again.
“I’m waiting, Sabine.”
“Sorry, I got distracted. That’s great, Tara. Thanks for arranging this with Iona.” And even though I toy with saying I bet it wasn’t easy, I don’t.
“Iona starts shooting the new season the first week in February. Can you get the portrait done by then?”
It will suck up every free minute I have over winter break, but I guess that only matters if I’m not arrested for art theft. “Yes, I can.”
“You sure?”
“I promise,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Talk soon.” Tara hangs up and I head for my car.
Krell’s coming back tomorrow, and all I’ve got to show him is a drawing of Adam and a poor description of his truck. I wish I had more, but if Krell recognizes Adam from the drawing, it might be enough.
Adam insisted Krell wouldn’t want to know Duncan was a fake, but with everything that’s happened, I have to believe that he would appreciate learning the truth.
Wouldn’t it be better to know your masterpiece was stolen and not destroyed, so you could hold on to a sliver of hope that you could get it back? And wouldn’t you want information that could help find the person who stole it and used it to attack you?
It’s even possible Krell would be so grateful I came forward that he wouldn’t insist CALINVA kick me out.
Yeah, that’s likely.
Julie’s friend the Jesus poet is splayed out on the bench nearest my car, so I circle back around, hoping he doesn’t turn and look my way. He may be an expert on redemption, but apparently I’m going to learn those lessons the hard way.
When Kevin comes over tonight, we don’t even pretend that we want to talk. We kiss, and grope, and stumble all the way from the kitchen door to my room, where we fall on my bed. We are buttons and zippers and sleeves, a mess and tumble. And later, when we are panting and fumbling to uncap a water bottle, the water douses our faces and necks, and we can’t stop grinning.
We lie back, hands clasped, and Kevin’s curls tickle my forehead. His arm is hot and damp against mine. He draws up the sheet, and I push it down with my foot.
“I have a surprise,” I tell him.
“Yeah?”
I reach into my messenger bag and pull out the two tickets. “Will you be my date?”
“A gala.” He tosses his head back and forth like he’s weighing whether or not to say yes.
“Oh stop,” I say, giving him a shove.
He laughs as he rolls into the wall. “Of course I’ll be your date,” he says, and sits back up. His elbow rests on his bent knee, and his face is tilted toward me.
He’s so beautiful right now, his features relaxed and his long limbs stretched out. In the soft yellow light of my room, he looks otherworldly, like a Greek hero in a Maxfield Parrish painting. I reach for my sketch pad.
“What are you doing?” he says when I flip to a clean page.
“Capturing you.”
“You’ve already captured me,” he says.
I can’t help smiling. “Not this way.”
I start to sketch, but even though his body is still, the angle of his head keeps shifting as his eyes explore my room. “Okay, you need to focus on one spot.”
He settles down and at last I pencil in his profile: the tilt of his head, the slope of his nose and cheeks, the lidded oval of his eye. I shadow Kevin’s cheek, and squiggle in the beard he’s growing.
As I work the details around his eyes, my skin starts to prickle. There’s an intensity in his focus as if he’s questioning what he’s seeing.
I shift my gaze until it aligns with his. My completed self-portrait. He’s disturbed by it just as Mrs. Mednikov was. I reach for a softer pencil to deepen the shadows. “What do you think about my self-portrait?” I keep sketching like it’s no big deal.
“The bluebird, that’s your mom, right?”
My breath catches and my eyes meet his. “How did you know?”
He shrugs. “Look around.”
My room is half hers. Her portrait with the embroidered birds, the dead songbird of Appetite, THE SMALLEST BIRD SINGS THE PRETTIEST SONGS trailing down her guitar case.
My eyes spill and I swipe my cheeks with my hands. Kevin lays his hand on my knee and a minute goes by where neither of us speak. We both know I’m lost.
When he finally breaks the silence, his voice is so gentle I almost don’t catch what he’s saying. “Why is the house on fire, Sabine? Please tell me what’s going on with you.”
I want to confide in him, to tell him everything, but this, what we have, is so new it could snap under the weight of my confession. “Everything’s so hard without her. I don’t know who I am, if I’m making the right choices, if I’m reading people right.”
“Does this”—Kevin lifts his hand off my knee and it hovers over my skin—“have anything to do with me…us?”