paint on a canvas. I was in the process of throwing my third effort against the wall when Mabel yelled at me.
She yelled about the dent in the wall, too. Then she touched my heart and left me alone with the first canvas in my life that has ever scared me into stillness.
Not because I didn’t know what to paint.
I knew what needed to be on it in the first hour. It took me another seventy-three to get brave enough to start.
I spent hour seventy-four dragging all of my gear down the stairs and outside and bribing Gruesome to keep the tourists away. I don’t know what he did, but people have been giving me a remarkably wide berth. Probably avoiding the crazy artist working in the dead of night, wielding his brushes and colors mostly by feel.
I set the last tube of paint into the disreputable duffle bag that doesn’t live in my bedroom closet anymore because it’s full of copper pipes. Then I turn to my easel and finally look on the collection of brush strokes that feel painted in my own blood.
It takes a long while to settle on how I feel.
When I finally do, I lean down and pat Gruesome’s head. My back winces as I straighten again, and a drop of rain lands on my nose.
I gather up the canvas—carefully, because the last of my brush strokes are still wet. I carry it across the street and under the broad overhang of the Shenanigans building, and set it very gently against Indigo’s door.
INDIGO
Silly man. It’s been raining since sunrise, and if Violet hadn’t banged on my door four hours ago, the gift on my doorstep might have gotten washed away.
Fortunately, she also knew the way to the windswept rocks in the painting. The ones with ghost flowers in their midst and a small boy sitting alone.
I come up behind Drew on the rock he’s seated on, staring out at the water. He doesn’t say anything as my arms come around his shoulders, but his hands reach up to cover mine.
I take a deep breath. Let it out again. I thought I would have words by the time I got here. I always have words. I set my chin on the top of his head instead. Feel the rain on my cheeks as it soaks into our parched cracks. “Is this date number four?”
He huffs out a laugh. “I maybe should have picked a drier location.”
I snort. “Or one where I didn’t have to ask Hamish for directions.”
I feel his wince. “Yikes. Did you have to tangle with the bear in his den?”
Hamish isn’t a morning person. “I didn’t. Violet knew where you were.”
A softer laugh. “Of course she did.”
I exhale softly. It took me a long time to come. Too long, maybe, but I stared at his painting for hours, just like I would at a chart. Looking at the small boy. Past him. Seeing his colors.
I’ll ask him about those. Not now, but soon. Maybe over soup.
I walk around slowly until I’m in front of him. I crouch down between his knees and look up at the man who took some of his most vulnerable pieces and left them on my doorstep.
He looks cold—and somehow serene.
I trace my finger down his cheek, following a drop of rain. “May I keep the painting?”
Sorrow. Uncertainty. Fear.
He left those on my doorstep, too. Along with something else. I reach into my pocket. “I brought you these.”
He stares at the packet of flower seeds.
I touch his cheek again. He is that small boy—but he’s also the grown man with the compassion and bravery to paint the child he once was, and I like that man very much. “I thought you could plant half in your window boxes and I could plant half in mine. Maybe between us we can manage not to kill them all.”
His lips curve up in a slow smile. “That might be optimistic.”
I get up off my knees and slide in beside him on his rock. “I”m feeling optimistic.”
He wraps his arms around me and cups his hands around mine. “What kind of flowers are they?”
I smile. “I don’t know.”
I just know that they’re the kind the small boy wished he could see.
Epilogue
“Why do they wait this long to tell us about coffee?” Indigo, age 14.
INDIGO
I expect the guy who’s standing on my doorstep when I open it. I don’t expect the adorable brown puppy in his arms.
I scratch a shaggy head and grin at