“Where’s Daddy?” his kid said. “I want Daddy to say goodnight to me, too.”
Brent closed his eyes briefly. The scene was too much to hold onto. Too much to let go of. Because he couldn’t even put himself in the scene. He was seeing Shannon and his phantom son, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t saying goodnight to the boy he didn’t have. He hadn’t been there to help his son’s mother.
Guilt clawed at him. His chest ached as if it had been carved up and hollowed out. He was left with a strange new feeling—missing.
He missed someone he never knew. This kind of missing was hard like a fist, its knuckles pushing up against skin and bones. He missed a person he’d never met, and would never know. A person who was a part of him, and a part of the woman he loved madly.
Tate and James were asking him questions, but they might as well be speaking Swahili. Hell, everyone was speaking in foreign tongues today. Sanskrit and Latin and Greek rained down on him. He had no clue what anyone was saying, and he had no notion of how to speak. It was as if his voice had been snatched away. His voice—his goddamn instrument, the tool he’d relied on when on stage, and now in business—was gone, turned into the ash that was coating his throat.
“Sounds great,” he somehow managed to say, finding those words deep within some primordial part of him that remembered how to communicate.
After the attorneys left, Brent stood too, but James sat him back down. Concern was etched in his eyes. “Never seen you like this.” James gestured heavenward. “It’s not even like you weren’t here. It’s like you were on another planet.”
Brent rubbed his hand over his jaw, the day-old stubble reminding him that he hadn’t even bothered to shave this morning. He glanced down at his outfit, making sure he’d remembered to put on clothes. The jeans and button-down he wore were the only reassurance that he hadn’t gone completely insane. He’d remembered to dress.
“Sorry,” he said, because that was the only thing he could say.
James patted him on the shoulder. “Hey, no worries. I’m here for you. This is your ship, and you run this baby,” James said, and Brent cringed at that word—baby. “You sure you’re okay? Why don’t you take the day off?”
Before Brent could answer, James’s phone rang. He looked at it quizzically. “New York number. Let me grab it.”
As James talked on the phone, Brent tuned it all out, parking his chin in his hand, and staring at an abstract piece of art that hung on the wall—a series of red, gray and yellow geometric shapes jutted across the canvas at harsh angles. He studied it, as if he could make out the meaning, but he saw nothing. He let his eyes go blurry, let the shapes melt into each other, into one jumble of colors. The one color he could still make out was yellow.
Like those damn sunflowers.
What was up with those sunflowers? That was the part he didn’t get. Why did she have all those pictures of sunflowers? Where they were taken?
“Earth to Brent.”
He looked up.
James pointed to his phone. “That’s Tanner Davies in New York. It’s on mute. He said he’s been calling you all morning, but your phone is just ringing and ringing. He emailed you too, but got no response. He wanted to confirm the time of the picnic in New York,” he said, then rattled off a date the next week. “Can you make that date? He wants to let the association know you’ll be there and are looking forward to it. Said to bring your girlfriend if you want. You got one you want to tell me about?”
“Sure, sounds good,” he said, in a dead voice. He had no clue what he’d just agreed to. He didn’t answer anything else.
James finished his call, then cocked his head to the side, and waved his hand in front of Brent’s face. “Where’s your phone? Did someone drug you last night or something, man? I have never seen you like this.”
His phone was in the dishwasher.
He’d left it there on purpose that morning before he took off for work. If he had it with him, he’d cave. He’d call. He’d text. He’d try to contact her, to make her laugh, make her smile, and turn her on. But those weren’t the things that