“Going so early?” my mother asked.
“I am. Got an early morning on the job site,” I said.
“We’re proud of you son,” my father said.
“I know you are,” I said as I pushed my chair in. “Mom, however, still needs a bit more work on her script.”
I heard her scoff as I headed for the door. I threw it open and didn’t bother shutting it behind me, making my way to my truck. I wanted to get to the site early in the morning to test out a few of my theories for the outer design of the gallery. It would help to get my mind off all the things that had been said tonight and all the emotions that rattled my stomach.
It would help me rid my mind of the fact that my parents were actively trying to remove all memories of John from that house and from their lives.
I drove away from the house with my father’s face receding in my rearview mirror. I knew he wanted to fix things. I knew he wanted to make things right. John had been his baby boy. The prematurely born child he sat in the NICU with for weeks. The first time John had ever wrapped his finger around my father’s hand, it was while my father was wearing gloves.
He had been so fragile then, and my father had tried to protect him as much as possible.
He wanted to fix our family and fix what was left of it before he lost his only other son too.
He just didn’t know how to do it, and quite frankly, neither did I.
Chapter 12
Hailey
I ended up making the most of the storage space out back. The guys had been out here working for two solid weeks, and things were coming along nicely. Bryan didn’t seem to have any other issues with the men he’d employed, and the guy he brought in to replace the one he fired was an absolute sweetheart. He always made sure he was doing the right thing and would talk about his wife every chance he got.
It wasn’t until later I found out his wife had passed on the streets, and my heart bled for him.
I was able to fit a little chair into the storage space in the corner. I had tossed a blanket over the boxes of paintings, putting another little barrier between them and the elements. One by one, I started looking through them. They were paintings I had done of things that had inspired me on my journey to find this place. There was a picture of an open field with a horse running in the background while a man chased after it. The greens and yellows all bled together, painting an autumn landscape as the man shouted at his horse to come back.
The freedom of the horse made me smile, even if the man was in such distress trying to get the stallion back into his stall.
The fluid muscles of the brown and white stallion had caught my stare. I had been walking along the road, making my way back to the small town where I’d rented an attic for a while. To this day, that was my favorite stretch of road to walk, a barren road in Texas with nothing but farmland, animals, and gravel roads to lead you home.
Then there was another painting I’d done of a row of three-story townhomes in the middle of Nevada. They had all been painted different colors. One was pink. Another was blue. One was halfway between purple and green, and to this day I’m still not sure what color they were painting over. Some of the windows were busted out and the concrete in front of the houses was cracked and growing with weeds, but there was a beauty in all of it. The beauty wasn’t only in the colors but in the fact that the ground had been slowly penetrating through one of the harder, manmade substances, a foundation we seem to trust with our road systems and our driveways, our homes and even our biking curbs.
And yet, those weeds had found their way through its vulnerabilities to climb into the light and claw their way to the sunshine.
There was a beauty in its strength I couldn’t ignore.
Then, there was the one I hadn’t finished yet. It was the pose I simply couldn’t get out of my head. The one with Bryan holding up his beer. I was able to perfect his tattoos, mimicking the shading and geometric shapes just right. I was able to do more detailing on the beautiful muscles that covered his body, now that I’d seen him up close and hugged him against my skin. I ran my fingertips over the crude outline, my eyes focusing on the searching, wandering look in his eye I remembered from that night. I still wanted to know what he had been searching for as he scanned out over that memorial service.
I felt a hitch in my throat, and I tried to swallow back my tears.
When this gallery was finished, everyone would be able to witness this beauty. They could appreciate the strength of the weeds and the colors of the neglected buildings. The freedom of the horse despite its owner yelling at it to come back. The vulnerability behind Bryan’s eyes. The sensuality of the curves of his muscles. The mesmerizing aura of his tattoos.
Their truth, both beautiful and sad, would be able to influence anyone who came in to witness them.
I heard someone approaching the storage unit, and I quickly covered everything back up. I slid the paintings back into their boxes before I pulled the sheet back over them. A knock came at the door, heavy but still tentative with curiosity. I stood up and threw it open, smiling when I saw Bryan’s eyes come into view.
And then I noticed he was sweating.
In a tank top.
“Hey there, I was looking for you. I’ve got some ideas I want to run by you for the outer design of the building. You got a moment?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Sure. Um, could you help me, though, for a second? You said that little back room is ready, right?” I asked.
“Yep. Got the light and switch installed like you wished. We finished up that sheetrock yesterday. It’ll have to be painted, but—”