I shivered again and said a silent prayer for anyone else who’d suffered assault or abuse or bullying—little boys on playgrounds or women trapped in their own beds—who felt they didn’t have a voice left.
I see you, I thought and knew Jimmy did too. He’d made it his life’s purpose to give kids their voices back.
“Thea?”
I blinked out of my thoughts.
Then came “Transition.” Here were the Jackson Pollock-like paintings from after the first procedure. A different kind of cry for help lay in the composition. To be free to experience the world and all its colors. Not be contained to a single canvas.
A dimly lit alcove housed the paintings I made after I went back into the amnesia. All the paintings of New York at night as seen from the Arthouse Hotel. A few other canvases showing Times Square in geometric planes of color. Abstract, like photographic flares.
“This,” Eme said dramatically, “is called ‘Dreamscape.’”
I grinned. “Subtle.”
“Shh, they love it.”
Finally, the last room, brightly lit and the most colorful, was hung with the paintings I made after the second procedure. My best work from the last ten years. No more vast deserts or cityscapes, these canvases were all scenes from our little home in Boones Mill.
Jimmy on a Saturday morning, sleeping with our infant son on his chest. The two of them with their mouths open in identical expressions.
Our living room coffee table cluttered with Jack’s toys and my sketches.
Jimmy’s guitar in the corner of a room, the light streaming in from the window. Always with sunlight pouring in from every window.
The tour concluded, and the group murmured and perused and snapped photos.
“Do you hear that?” Eme said. “That’s the sound of your art reaching them and making them want it to reach even further. Well done, my dear. Not that I’m surprised. I have an eye for these things.”
“Thank you, Eme. For everything.”
She beamed and took two flutes of champagne off a passing tray. “Cheers, darling.” We clinked glasses, and she took a sip. “Now go find your people while I talk business with mine.”
I took my glass and rejoined Jimmy, still holding Jack, who stood talking with Delia and Roger.
I’d long since forgiven my sister. Jimmy took a little bit longer, but he’d come around. Still, the residual guilt was etched into the lines of Delia’s face. Evident in her tentative approach and the stiff peck on my cheek.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “I’m so proud of you. And I know Mom and Dad would be too.”
“Thanks, Deel,” I said. “I think so too. Roger, thanks for coming.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, a little absently.
“How’s the business in Vancouver?”
He didn’t answer. He turned in a small circle, hands in his pockets, staring at the paintings.
“Roger, honey,” Delia said mildly. “My sister asked you a question.”
“Hm? Oh. Sorry, I’m just… It’s mesmerizing. Just… incredible. The evolution of it… It’s as if different people painted them at the different stages, yet it’s entirely unified.”
“Wow, Roger.” I pecked him on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you so much.”
“It’s all true. Your work is—”
“I meant for making my sister happy.” I itched to joke that it was a Herculean task, but I was too full of happiness myself to make bad jokes.
“Jack’s getting so big,” Delia said. By choice, she’d never had children of her own, but I sometimes wondered if she regretted it. Especially when she was looking at Jack with such longing.
“Here.” I handed Jimmy my champagne and lifted Jack out of his arms to pass him to Delia. “Would you and Roger watch this little bugger? I need to talk to my handsome husband for a sec.”
Delia bounced Jack on her hip. “You want to see Mommy’s paintings? Come on. Uncle Roger and I will show you our favorites.”
She put Jack down and held his hand as they walked toward the “Transition” display. Only a few steps, then Jack was reaching arms up to Roger, wanting to be carried again.
“We made him,” I said to Jimmy.
“Yeah, we did,” Jim said. “He’s a little miracle.”
I nodded, my heart crashing against my chest. “Our life has been filled with miracles.”
“It has.” Jimmy tried to hand me the champagne. “To you, baby. They love it, don’t they?”
“They do. But I don’t want the booze.” I sucked in a breath. “Or, moreover, I can’t have it.”
“Why not?” he asked and then stared, his eyes widening.
I nodded, tears springing to my eyes that I could finally say the words. “I’m pregnant.”
He still didn’t move. “What?”
I bit back a laugh at his dumbfounded expression. “I’m going to have another baby.”
Jimmy’s brows came together, the struggle of having Jack passing behind his eyes. The glass in his hand shook, and I took it and set it down before he dropped it.
“How…?” He swallowed. “How did that happen?”
“Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much, the man—you, in this case—puts his enormous penis inside the woman—”
Jimmy shook his head, caught halfway between laughter and shock. “Wait, wait, wait. Stop. Go back. Say it again.”
“I’m pregnant, honey.”
“But how? And you can skip the X-rated biology lesson.”
“I don’t know how,” I said. “They said it was next to impossible.”
“Next to impossible.”
“That probably wasn’t the official medical diagnosis, but yes… Not impossible.”
He stared. “I just… I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither. Although, now that I think about it… Remember that afternoon you came home from work? Jack was napping, and you stormed into the house with hardly a word and took me right then and there against the kitchen counter?” Pleasant shivers danced all over me. “God, just thinking about it…”
“I remember…” Jim said. “One of my better afternoons.”
“The best, it turns out.”
Jimmy’s brows furrowed, and he held my gaze intently, no more jokes. “You’re really pregnant?”
“Eight weeks. Are you happy?”
“I’m somewhere beyond happy. But…”
“I know. I’m scared too. But I have a feeling, down deep, she’s going to be okay.”
“She?”
“I think so,” I said. “I think I’m having your baby girl.”
Jim stared a moment longer, then pulled me to him, holding me with his strong arms. An embrace that never failed to tell me I was protected, safe, and loved. So much love.
“God, Thea,” he whispered against my hair.
I pulled away and held his strong jaw in my hand. “You gave my life back to me. Everything I have is because of you.”
“I can say the same, Thea. You gave me my life back when I’d stopped living it.”