Harper. I need to talk to you about something important. Could you give me a call back as soon as possible? Thanks.”
Hanging up with a palpable sense of relief, she dropped the phone on the arm of the chair.
There’d never really been a time when she and her father were close. He had been away working a lot when she was young. His absence had made her relationship with her mother more important. And her death even more wrenching.
In the immediate aftermath of the murder, he’d tried to be a parent to her. He’d rented a house in the suburbs and moved her into it from her grandmother’s house outside the city. But it had backfired. The house was miles from Bonnie. Far from her grandmother. At twelve, bereaved and lonely, she’d found herself isolated.
When he tried to introduce her to the paralegal he’d been having an affair with before her mother died, Harper withdrew further. One night when he was working late, she’d called a taxi. She used the money he’d left for a pizza to pay the fare to her grandmother’s house.
“I’m never going back,” she’d announced, when her grandmother opened the door to find her standing on the porch with a suitcase.
She never lived with her father again. Within months, he’d taken a job in Connecticut, married the paralegal, and moved away. Leaving her an orphan of sorts at thirteen.
After that she was raised by her grandmother, Bonnie’s mother, and about half the Savannah police force.
At the time she’d felt sorry for herself that she hadn’t had a “normal” family. But, then, other kids didn’t get picked up from camp in a patrol car, blue lights flashing. They didn’t get to ride on the traffic cops’ motorcycles on the way home from school.
The thought made her smile, and she pulled her feet up onto the chair. Her eyes drifted shut. She must have drifted off, because when she opened her eyes, Bonnie was walking out on the porch barefoot with a cup of coffee.
“Christ,” Bonnie said, hoarsely, “how late did we stay up?”
Neither of them felt much like cooking, so they walked twenty minutes down the beach to a local joint called The Breakfast Club.
For some reason, the churning ocean didn’t feel like Harper’s enemy today. She didn’t mind the hiss of the waves, or the mournful cries of the seabirds overhead. In fact, looking out at the container ships plowing determinedly through the rough seas was oddly comforting.
The restaurant was packed and they had to wait twenty minutes for a table. They didn’t talk much until they were ensconced in a booth and had placed their orders. Even then they avoided serious subjects, focusing instead on Bonnie’s work—she had been painting a new collection, and she was excited about it.
“It’s mostly little kids dressed as royalty, holding stuffed birds and wearing crowns I make myself,” she explained. Seeing Harper’s blank face, she pulled out her phone to show her. In the painting, a rosy-cheeked girl stared into the distance, her face expressionless. On her head was a crown of willow branches painted gold. On her arm, she held a small, hooded hawk.
“Where did you find the kids?” Harper asked, scrolling through several photos of similar paintings.
“Friends.” Bonnie leaned over to see which one she was looking at. “I just take their pictures holding a stuffed animal and make up the rest.”
“These are so striking,” Harper marveled. “I like these even more than the angels you did last year.”
“They’re sure selling better. I’ve only finished four and I’ve already sold them. I’m raising my prices. I should have painted kids before. People are throwing money at me. If this keeps up I can stop bartending.” Bonnie’s eyes were bright with excitement.
Some part of Harper didn’t want her to leave the Library. She loved going there after work for a drink and decompression. But it was Bonnie’s dream to live off her art and the classes she taught at the art college. And yet, ever since Bonnie had left Savannah when they were teenagers to go to Boston to study, Harper had been secretly afraid that her work would take her away someday.
The thought was melancholy, and she was relieved when a waitress appeared at the table, bearing plates of food, and providing a natural end to that conversation.
An hour later they were walking back down the beach, full of food and talking about where Harper could live if she moved back to the city.