The Moment of Letting Go - J. A. Redmerski Page 0,52

darkness.

“Luke?”

He snaps out of it and the smile returns quickly as if nothing at all had just invaded his mind.

“Are you ready?” he asks again.

I shake my head slowly. “No,” I tell him and turn to the painting again. Glancing in the far right corner, I see initials, Luke’s initials, I realize when I think back to his full name, which Paige had pulled out of him—Luke Michael Everett. LME stares back at me, so small I might never have seen it if I weren’t precisely looking for it.

“You painted this, didn’t you?”

FOURTEEN

Sienna

I can hardly believe this; I mean I can, but it’s so … No, this is unreal to me. I feel my lips spreading across my face, my eyes getting brighter. Absently, I reach out my hand and touch his wrist underneath my fingertips.

“Tell me,” I urge him, feeling like I’m going to burst with impatience. “Are these your paintings?”

He smiles gently and nods. “These two are”—he points to my left—“and that one is. A few smaller ones you already saw are mine.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I’m just so absolutely floored by his talent, and the fact that he didn’t tell me right away, that I’m beside myself over it.

“Well, I don’t really like people to know. I mean, it’s not a humble thing, per se.” He laughs. “It’s just that painting is very personal to me. I don’t do it much anymore. Not like I used to. But this here”—he waves a hand about the room, palm up—“being on display like this, it makes me uncomfortable.”

“But why?” My fingers are still on his wrist. “These are … I can’t even … Seriously, Luke, you have a gift.”

Suddenly his hand turns over and his fingers lock around mine tightly. I can’t breathe all of a sudden.

“Why, thank you,” he says and raises his chin, grinning, trying to inject a little humor in the moment. “But really it’s just a hobby.”

My chin draws back, and I shake my head at the absurdness of his comment. “Oh, this is more than a hobby, Luke. You don’t just wake up and paint something like this with this much detail and passion. No, this”—I point at the painting of the woman in the field and then at the one of the bottom of the world—“this is a part of you, like an arm or a leg, and you can’t convince me otherwise. How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I was nine,” he says, and instantly I begin to make the connection, but I let him explain it anyway. “Shortly after my brother got lost on that camping trip, somehow I picked up painting and it became my escape when I was afraid of everything else.”

I squeeze his hand this time, feeling awful for what he must’ve gone through even though it was so long ago. I have a personal relationship with fear and I can relate and understand what he went through. But hearing it come from someone else—especially from Luke—makes me wonder if sometimes I use photography to escape my own fears.

“So then what are these paintings doing here if it makes you uncomfortable?” Something dawns on me as I ask that question and then I glance up at the price tag dangling from a little piece of string taped to the canvas. Subconsciously my mouth falls open when I see $1,500 scribbled in blue ink on the little white tag.

“I sell them every now and then,” he says, and then nods in the direction of the platform floor where we stood earlier talking to Melinda. “Not usually this large, and just a few here and there. When I—well, we actually; Alicia’s helping too—agreed to organize the event, Alicia thought I should sell the larger ones, too.” He shrugs. “I thought, why not?”

My eyes grow wider as I look up at his paintings again.

“But why didn’t you want me to know?”

His smile fades a little. “Well, it’s not really that I didn’t want to show you, but—” He stops abruptly and instantly I get the feeling he’s going over in his mind what kind of answer he wants to give, even if it’s not the truth.

I step around in front of him and look at him with all the interest and curiosity and consideration that I can manage because it feels exactly like a moment in which it’s needed.

“Well,” he says, burying both of his hands deep in the pockets of his khakis, “if you knew they were mine