But Alice’s words and advice so closely mirrored some of the rationalizing thoughts I’d had, that I could just have fun with Griffin without it meaning something more, and it made me wonder whether I should consider that option more seriously.
I couldn’t discount the real possibility of there being problems. Even if he didn’t run and confess everything to the Crawfords, it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t accidentally say something when he saw them. Because he would see them. Especially if he was coming over with Sophie so that the kids could spend time together. I didn’t know how feasible it would be to keep the Crawfords and Griffin apart, but I was guessing it would be difficult. That wasn’t even taking into account them accidentally running into each other at a restaurant or on the slopes or some other rich-person place.
Maybe, if I told him everything, then there wouldn’t be any slipups. He was obviously good at keeping secrets. He’d kept Sophie a secret from his grandmother for the last five years. That, if nothing else, indicated his trustworthiness.
Although that could be evidence of his dedication to his brother, and not to general secret keeping.
Could I risk it? Should I? I didn’t want to do a bad job for Milo and the Crawfords. Well, a worse one than I was currently doing. Although I was trying my best. But would hanging out with Griffin make me unfocused? Distracted? Would it be completely selfish?
“Argh.” I gritted my teeth together in frustration. My conversation with Alice hadn’t made any of my choices clearer.
If anything, it was all muddier than before.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Milo and I used a rideshare service to get to the art museum. When we got inside signs pointed us in the right direction and we found a room with a bunch of kids and adults doing various projects. I had thought it would be more of a guided sort of class, but it looked like they’d just put out supplies and canvases. I initially felt uneasy at how many people were here, but given that most of them were kids, I figured I didn’t have to worry about feeling like anyone was watching me.
“Hi, I’m Betty.” A very pretty twentysomething blonde with a huge smile stopped in front of me and Milo. Confirming my evaluation she said, “There’s cubbies over there for your coats and we have smocks hanging up. We have a picture up front of yellow daisies in a blue vase to copy if you’d like, but please grab whatever you need and feel free to make whatever you want. We’re very informal here—we want to inspire as well as create. Let me know if you have any questions!”
Thanking her, I helped Milo get his coat off and we put them in our cubbies. The general chaos of the room seemed to overwhelm him a little bit, so I hurried up and grabbed our smocks and found a quiet table up near the front. I grabbed a couple of canvases and two easels, setting them up before going over to a nearby table to get our other supplies.
“What are you going to paint?” I asked Milo. Without thinking, I began to line up my brushes and paints in order. I grabbed a cardboard palette and decided I’d go ahead and paint the example. I didn’t want my rogue thoughts to paint a picture of Griffin without my permission. That’s all I needed him to see when he arrived.
Milo tapped a clean brush against his chin. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
“That’s the great thing about painting. You don’t have to make it look like something. There’s no rules. Just do whatever feels right to you.” I didn’t know a lot about the things I was teaching Milo, but here at least I had some level of expertise. All self-taught, but it was better than how I pronounced “Où se trouvent les toilettes,” which I believed to be French for “Where is the bathroom?” I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, though.
I began squeezing colors onto my palette while Milo pondered what his work of art should be. I saw the moment when inspiration struck his elfin face.
He turned the canvas toward me. “Look! I made mountains covered in snow!”
I smiled at him. “If you want to do that, there’s some white over here. You could probably add in some grays and blacks, too.”
“No. I think I’m going to paint the ocean and the sky together.”
“Good plan,” I told him, squeezing out some shades of blue. I tried to show him how he could lighten or darken the shades, but he wasn’t listening.
Instead he announced, “I’m pretty good at this. It’s surprising that I can paint so well even though I have dysentery.”
“If you had dysentery, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.” I didn’t add that he’d be stuck on a toilet—that was not something he needed to add to his repertoire.
I watched him paint for a bit, loving the look of concentration on his face as he covered an entire canvas in one shade of blue.
But I noticed something that seemed a little off. Milo frequently switched which hand he painted with. “Which hand do you prefer using? Like when you draw or eat?” I asked casually.
“I’m both-handed.”
“Like . . . you’re ambidextrous?”
Milo stopped what he was doing and looked at me in anticipation. “Is that a disease?”
“No, it means you can use both hands equally.” He went back to his short brushstrokes. I was probably worrying over nothing, so I thought I would take Griffin’s advice since Milo was occupied with something else, and ask him about the skiing thing.
“So, Milo, I was talking to Griffin about skiing. Sophie loves it. It might be fun to go with them.”
“No thanks.”
“What is it you don’t like about skiing?”
He shrugged. “I don’t like doing things I don’t know how to do. Or going fast.”
That dinged an alarm bell in my head. I’d already noticed that he struggled a bit with his writing and had tripped a few times over the rug, but I’d dismissed those moments. What if it was connected? “Going fast? Like when you ride a bike?”
“I don’t like bikes. My dad tried to teach me, but I hated it.”
“What about swings?”
“I don’t like those, either,” Milo said. “The slide’s okay, but only if I can see the end of it. I don’t like when I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
That made me think that roller coasters were something he wouldn’t enjoy, either. His explanations reminded me so much of my nephew that I wondered if there was something else going on besides simply disliking skiing. I didn’t want to rush to any conclusion without knowing more, but it was something I definitely wanted to bring up with Sheila the first chance I got.
“Miss me?” Griffin’s voice broke into my thoughts, scattering them like marbles.
It was weird seeing him again. I’d been thinking about him so much, talking about him with both Sheila and Alice, that it felt strange to have him standing there looking implausibly handsome. As if he hadn’t been consuming my thoughts and making it impossible to sleep.
But when I saw him, that muddied, confused feeling went away and I just wanted to be near him and talk to him.
Sophie had thrown her arms around Milo’s neck, nearly crushing the poor kid. Milo said, “You need a smock to paint,” and led her to the pegs near the cubbies to get one.