“Good,” he said. “Then you’re allowed to ask me why I moved to what feels like another world.” His gaze broke away from me and traveled around the south end of town. The store, our local bar and grill, a handful of other shops and buildings. Then it drifted out to the docks and the sea beyond. “I needed an escape. Somewhere people didn’t know me.”
My heart hammered a little faster. “Why?”
He looked back at me. “Did you hear about the serial killer who was active in the tri-state area?”
I searched my memory for anything of the sort. I read the news here and there, but I mostly stayed away from the darker stories. I had enough of that in my own memories. But something tickled the back of my brain. I’d seen a CNN headline about a series of murders that appeared to be replicated works of art. I sucked in a sharp breath, my eyes darting to Brody. “Your paintings?”
He nodded, the look on his face grim. “It took the cops a while to figure out the connection. It wasn’t until the FBI got involved that they realized what was happening.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like for you.”
His jaw ticked. “It wasn’t a cake walk. It stayed under wraps for a while. But when the press got wind of it, I couldn’t escape. Even after they caught the guy, they didn’t let up. It was a sensational story. New York tabloids love that. And every week, I was reminded that my paintings had been weaponized. They’d been used to murder innocent people.”
“They were not,” I snapped. The ferocity of my tone took me by surprise, and I did my best to temper it. “Someone twisted your art. Turned it into something ugly. But that’s not what it is.”
Brody’s gaze locked with mine, an unidentifiable energy flowing between us. “What is it, then?”
“It’s truth. People through your eyes. Most of the world isn’t brave enough to expose that. But you are. And the truth can be painful to look at, but it’s also beautiful.”
Brody swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I’ve always said that my art is a glance into the darkness. I think you have to face it. In others. In yourself. It’s when you push it down, ignore it, that it swallows you whole.”
My eyes burned. How long had my parents pushed down and ignored the darkness in our home? The beast that was eating my brother alive, taking away a little more of the boy we all loved every day. It was that denial of the truth, the belief that everything would be okay, that Michael would heal, that’d meant our demise in the end. That’d made it too late to save Michael. Maybe if we would’ve looked into that darkness from the beginning, been honest about it, we wouldn’t be where we were now. Dead. Locked up. Hiding from the world.
“I’m glad you force people to look. It might be the wakeup call they need. But I’m sorry that some sick and twisted individual warped what you wanted to do.”
Brody picked up his soda and took a pull. “I am, too.”
“You can’t let him stop you.”
One of his brows rose in challenge. “I can’t?”
“No. You have to keep pushing. I’m not saying you need to do the exact same work. This experience has changed you, there’s no way around it. But you have to keep moving forward. Find your new voice.”
He set his soda on the table with a thunk. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. But it’s proving harder than expected. I’m all over the map, and Lara is about to throttle me.”
“Do you have to sell right now? Can you just take some time to figure out what you want to make? What you want to say?” I couldn’t imagine the pressure Brody must be under to not only create but also with knowing the world would judge whatever he put out there.
“It’s complicated. Art is a business. I’m just trying to find the happy medium between finding my truth again and having a career to come back to. But I think I bought myself a year by giving Lara the paintings she was boxing up today.”
I let out a low whistle. “A year is a good payday.”
“If she keeps to her end of the bargain. We’ll see if that happens.”
“Hold her to it,” I urged. “If she made a promise, she needs to stick to it.”
Brody grunted. “You don’t know Lara. The impression she gave today was polite and go-with-the-flow. She’s a bulldog when she wants something.”
“Then you’ll just have to be a bulldog right back.”
His lips twitched. “Maybe I’ll just sic you on her.”
“I am pretty ferocious.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Brody poured chips onto a napkin. “What about your music? You ever think about letting people hear it?”
My instinct was to clam up and change the subject. Instead, I took a deep breath before answering. This was a friendship. A back and forth. An opening up. “I used to. There was no greater high.”
“Why’d you stop?”
I rolled my lips together as I considered how to answer that without lying. “Life got…complicated. I lost the joy in playing. I stopped altogether for a while. And when I picked it back up again, I needed it to be for me. Someday, I’d like to play for other people again. But I’m not rushing it.”
Maybe that made me a wimp. Or perhaps it simply made me smart. Any time I played in front of another soul, it was a risk. The same as continuing to write letters to the aunt who had cared for me after my parents’ deaths. As calling Michael’s doctors to check on his progress for so many years, just to see how he was. But I couldn’t resist these small ties to my old life. Couldn’t give up the things that were as much a part of me as my own marrow.
“Maybe you could start by playing for me.”
I looked up from the napkin I’d begun to shred into little pieces. “Play for you?”
He broke the chip he was holding in half. “I’m not a crowd. You wouldn’t have to take a stage. But I’m someone to hear whatever you want to put out into the world. Whatever you need to say. It’s a place to start.”
It was. And another little risk to add to my pile. But I wasn’t sure I could turn away from Brody or his offer. The idea that he might be able to hear what I needed to say without words but through bow and strings and movement was too intriguing. “I’ll think about it.”
His lips tipped up. “I’ll keep asking.”
12
Shay
Brody bent over, his hands on his knees, heaving. “You’re a masochist. You know that, right?”
I grinned as I caught my breath. “You’re the one who wanted to join my morning workout hour.”
He fell back onto the sand, pulling one of his knees up to his chest in a stretch. “I’m really questioning my sanity for that move.”
“It’s good for the body and the soul. Plus, it might turn you into a morning person.”
“Six a.m. is still night.”
I folded over in a stretch. “By the time you’re up and ready, the sun is rising.”
“Barely.”
I shook my head as I stared down at my sneakers. Sunrise was my favorite part of the day. Everything was so still and serene. It felt as if I were the only person in the world. I’d thought having Brody along for the ride would make me twitchy. Annoyed that another person was invading this sacred space I’d created for myself. Instead, I loved it.