Thea gave me a dry look. “She wants your head on a platter, James,” she said. “As if I have zero ability to think for myself.”
She tossed the phone into her backpack with a disgusted snort, then hopped to her feet, her blue eyes alit from within. She wore her jean shorts and a maroon tank top with a drawing of a turtle on the front in white. She’d tied her hair up into a high ponytail that showed off the curve of her neck and small ears pierced with tiny silver hoops.
“First on my list,” she said. “The Met.”
“The Mets?” I asked, hiding my smile while pulling on a boot. “You want to watch baseball?”
“You’re so cute. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I checked on my phone while you were in the shower, and they have a ton of amazing exhibitions right now. One is a collection of paintings by the classic Dutch masters, and the Drawing and Prints Department is showing a bunch of stuff from my boy, Leo DaVinci. Not to mention they have one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiquities eh-vah.”
“Sounds good.”
“You sure? You won’t be totally bored? I remember you said art wasn’t your thing.”
“But it’s your thing,” I said. “This is your trip.”
“It’s our trip. I only have a few must-sees on my list. Anything else you want to do is gravy.”
“I’m good with whatever, Thea.”
She pursed her lips at me. “Okay, well, I was thinking we should probably check out of here. The Met is up in Central Park. I found this cute hotel nearby that looks perfect, and the parking isn’t going to wipe us out. Check-in at the new place isn’t until four. I figure we can get out of here, drive up to the park, and grab some breakfast before the museum. Sound good?”
“Great.”
We checked out and drove a slow crawl from the Times Square area, up the West Side of Manhattan, parked the truck at a public garage, then walked to a café for breakfast. Thea chatted animatedly the entire time, telling me about her life before the accident.
“I was a year away from graduating from the VCU School of Art in Richmond,” she said over eggs, bacon, and coffee. “I was hoping I was good enough for a scholarship for the Academy of Art here for my grad studies. Then a truck smashed my parents’ car and smashed all my plans too.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But so what? I’d never paint again if it brought them back.”
I reached across the small table and held her hand as she sniffed and dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “But I’m going to start over again. Go back to school. I think that’s what they’d want me to do.”
“I’m sure they do.”
“What about you? Have you thought at all about going back to school for speech therapy?”
I shrugged. “Not much.”
“If it’s something you really want to do, you should do it. I think you’d be amazing at it.”
She dropped the subject, but I turned it around and around in my head. Being with Thea was a doorway to a real life opening and possibilities pouring through. A future vision unfurled in my mind: Thea in a studio painting, a ring glinting on her left hand, and me sitting with a little boy who couldn’t talk, and I was telling him things were going to be okay. Because they’d turned out okay for me. More than okay.
You’re going to tell him he can have everything he’s ever wanted? Doris sneered. Bullshit and lies. Life doesn’t work that way and you know it.
I tried to ignore the insidious thoughts, but they were ingrained in me. Part of the fiber of my being, woven by years of abuse and neglect in a fucked-up system.
I looked at Thea across from me, radiant and beautiful and full of love. Love was a stranger. Fear had been my constant companion.
Take care of her. Give her this trip. That’s your job. Your only job.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look sad.”
“I’m good,” I said.
The waiter came by and dropped the check.
Thea made a grab for it, but I was faster. “I got it.”
“Jimmy—”
“I got it, Thea.” I forced a smile to soften the harsh tone. “Come on. Let’s get you to that museum.”
Chapter 30
Thea
Jimmy and I walked through Central Park, from the Upper West side to the Upper East Side, under a brilliant sun and thick humidity. The city still smelled of the rain that came through last night, but the sky was a perfect blue, empty of clouds
“It’s beautiful,” I said as we strolled along a path. “I love this piece of the green in the midst of all the concrete and steel.”
Jimmy made a sound in his chest but said nothing else. He’d snapped at me pretty hard over the check in the restaurant, and now a hard glint was in his dark eyes, a thousand unspoken thoughts lurking behind them.
All morning, I talked about myself and my past. Telling him was remembering and remembering felt like a gift I got to open every second.
But maybe Jim wanted—or needed—to talk about his own childhood. I could hardly fathom eighteen years in the foster care system with no good memories to show for it.
Remembering might not be such a gift for him.
Still, Mom and Dad always said talking about the bad stuff was a way of taking away some of its power.
“Hey,” I said, slipping my hand into his and giving it a squeeze. “You okay?”
“Sure.” He squeezed back. “Tired, maybe.” He gave me a knowing look. “Not much sleep last night.”
“Spoiler alert: you’re not going to get much sleep tonight either.”
He let out a laugh that softened the hard edges of his features.
He’s okay. We’re okay and we’re in New York. Not everything is everything.
As we strolled the museum galleries, my art school education came back to me, along with my love of painting. We stood in front of Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, and I stared in awe at its beauty.
“It’s the sunlight,” I said. “See how he floods the room with it? How it glints on the pitcher and the glass in the window. All that blue and gold…” I shook my head, drinking it in. “It’s such a simple moment, it becomes almost spiritual. Something divine about that young woman, in her home, opening a window to let the morning in.”
I filled my eyes with the painting until I felt Jimmy’s on me, a strange, nostalgic expression on his face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I was remembering our first conversation,” he said. “Standing in front of the painting at Blue Ridge. You described how the light touched the fruit.”
“I remember.”
“Even then?”
He nodded. “But it didn’t last. That perfect moment.”
“Not then,” I said. “But I’m here now.”
His eyes took me in the way I’d gazed at the Vermeer, the strange nostalgia returning. He nodded and moved on to the next painting.
We continued through the museum and to the Egyptian galleries I’d been so excited to see. But once there, I wasn’t as moved as I’d been by the Vermeer.
“I love the artifacts,” I said as we passed a bright blue hippo in its glass case. “I love the history and rituals. That’s all still there but…”