Every Day (Brush of Love 2)

But part of me also knew I did it because I wanted to and because there were too many people who needed help in this world who were cast out by people like my parents. People who turned their back on others when they thought the situation was hopeless and when they felt there was nothing else they could possibly do.

I wanted to show those people there was still hope because I knew what it was like to be truly, unabashedly hopeless, and I never wanted to make anyone feel like that again.

They were trying to manipulate me like Hailey had, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.

“Maybe part of my want to help the community is a bit selfish,” I said as I stepped away from the table. “But there’s still something that differentiates what I do from what the two of you want me to do.”

“Bryan, sit back down,” my mother said.

“And what is that?” my father asked. “What makes you so different from the people who raised you?”

“I’m not actively trying to write John out of my life,” I said. “In fact, I do this in his honor like the memorial services you two refuse to attend. I might be helping the community to try and keep my guilt at bay, but I’m also providing hope to those who need it most. There’s a difference between doing something in someone’s honor and doing something to discard someone’s honor.”

“And you think your brother had honor?” my father asked. “After shooting himself full of heroin and deserting his family? You think your brother had honor?”

“No,” I said breathlessly. “But he did have something the two of you never will.”

Their eyes were fully trained on me as I walked toward the door. I put my hand on the doorknob and twisted it, allowing myself to be hit with the soft smells of the salted ocean. I closed my eyes and reveled in it, thinking about how this would be the last time I would ever stand in my childhood home and relish in the memories that always made me smile.

Memories of me and John running around playing tag, irritating my mother while my father swung us around. They had been so different back then, so loving and so open and not yet jaded by the world and obsessed with their social calendars.

Not until my father made his first twenty million, anyway.

“He had decency,” I said. “And that’s something the two of you will never have.”

Then, before they could get a word in edgewise, I was out the door and headed for my truck. Except this time, I didn’t feel angry or saddened or defeated.

I felt lighter than I had felt in a long time, and that could only mean one thing.

Hailey was right. I needed to talk with her, but this time, I’d have to seek her out.

Chapter 10

Hailey

Anna was walking around the gallery while I sifted through the mail. I shut the gallery down on Sundays, so I could have a day to myself, but I also used that time to paint and hang up all the new editions on the walls. Anna was helping me pick out which paintings to put up next while I sifted through the mail. So many local artists wanted a slice of the space I had along with the audience I’d garnered, which was wonderful, but it also meant that some weren’t as popular as others. A few paintings from a local artist who hadn’t opened her own gallery yet were flying off my walls faster than she could paint them, but Max’s paintings were still hanging on the walls.

Which was tough, because the couple of paintings I’d given him at the beginning of the week had already sold.

I honestly wasn’t sure what to tell him, but I knew I’d hear from him eventually. The business cards he left were being drained every week, so there was some sort of interest in his artwork. Maybe I’d tell him that the paintings he hung here could be advertisement for his gallery. I’m sure the next time I saw him, he’d tell me his paintings were flying off his own wall.

There were a few people who were interested in advertising here. They wanted to pay me a small sum to put up flyers and emboss their logos and stuff all around my studio. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do something like that, though Anna thought it would be a good stream of revenue for the place. It took me a great deal of time and working with Bryan to get the feel of this place just right, and I felt like logos and flyers and some sort of cork board would throw everything off.

I set all those letters aside for now before I turned back to Anna.

She was hanging up a painting she’d found by one of my previous art therapy students. I could remember her face even as she hung it up on the wall. It was a ghostly scene of a cemetery, perfect for the Halloween season. It was a portrait of sorts. The woman in the photo standing in the middle of the foggy cemetery was herself. She was looking down at a gravestone with the name Florence Carlyle on it. From the outside, it simply looked like a woman in mourning.

What people didn’t understand was that the woman in the painting, my art therapy student, was Florence Carlyle. She’d painted the picture while she was going through her rehab classes to remind herself that’s where she was headed. If she didn’t stop the alcohol and the pills, she would end up in a grave like that one.

I had to swallow back my tears as I looked away from the painting.

“I think this one goes well with the Halloween thing you got going on,” Anna said.

“It’s perfect,” I said, nodding. “Way to go.”

“Hailey, you okay?” she asked.

“I’m still in shock a bit. You quit your job, Anna?”