by Nash, Willa
After it brewed, my daughter went to the fridge and took out the milk, filling the mug to the brim so the coffee was more beige than black.
“Want some sugar?” Everly asked, going to the cabinet where it was kept. She’d learned quickly where everything in the kitchen was. Not that it was a huge feat. Nothing in this house was big and Everly was observant.
“I know where it is,” Savannah barked before Everly could even round the island.
“Okay.” Everly held up her hands and backed away.
Savannah searched through three cupboards before she found the container of sugar. “You rearranged.”
No, I hadn’t. But I wasn’t going to argue and point out that Ev knew the kitchen better than Savannah. She was probably here to stake her claim. We’d let her.
“Did you have fun at the game?” Everly asked.
Savannah shrugged as she heaped five spoonfuls of sugar into her mug. “I guess.”
“We didn’t stay. Did the Cowboys win?”
My daughter’s answer was a cold stare. Was that a yes or a no?
Everly, the wise woman, simply smiled and drank her coffee. Question time was over.
Silence descended on the kitchen, the atmosphere heavy and tense. Even my breathing seemed too loud.
Savannah slurped her coffee. If she was trying to do it loudly, she was succeeding. She refused to look at me or Everly. She found different objects in the kitchen—the microwave, the fridge, the bowl I kept on the countertop for my keys—to stare at until finally her cup was empty and she went for a refill.
The kid was going to be bouncing off the damn walls. Thank God it was a Saturday and she didn’t have to sit through school.
“I’m going to, um”—Everly pointed to the ceiling—“get a load of laundry going.”
There was no laundry. She’d done it all yesterday and the only items in the hamper were the towels we’d used this morning after sex in the shower.
Everly disappeared upstairs, leaving me and Savannah alone. And after her second mug of coffee was as milky and sugared as the first, my daughter’s blue eyes finally met mine. The pain there broke my heart.
Fuck. I sucked as a father.
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.
She lifted a shoulder. “Whatever.”
“Not whatever. This thing with Ev happened fast. I should have told you sooner, and I’m not trying to make excuses, but I’m not used to explaining myself. To anyone.”
“I’m not anyone.”
“No, you’re not. I’m sorry, Savannah.”
I hadn’t gotten to help name her, but I did love her name. All three syllables. I think some of her friends called her Sav, but I’d never shortened it. I didn’t want to miss out on a single piece of her.
She shrugged again, her gaze dropping to her mug.
“I’m trying. Swear, I’m trying. But I’m going to mess up. Don’t write me off when it happens. Give me a chance to apologize and try again.”
Savannah looked up. “Why did you get married? Do you even know her?”
“Yeah. I do know her.” Not a total lie. Everly seemed like a nice person. No matter what her reasons were for agreeing to marry me, she was in this partly for Savannah. That was good enough for me.
“Mom said you did it to make her jealous. And that Everly is using you for money.”
I scoffed. Of course April would see this as about her. “This has nothing to do with your mother or money.”
Well, not exactly. This had everything to do with getting Savannah away from April, but any lingering affection I’d had for my ex-wife had disappeared the day I’d learned that she’d had our baby and kept her from me.
“Do you even like her? Or is this about sex?”
“Please don’t say the word sex.” I grimaced. That was not a topic I wanted anywhere near my girl.
“I’m sixteen,” she muttered.
And had better be a virgin. “Love you, baby girl. But that’s not any of your business.”
“You’re my dad. She’s my stepmother.” Her lip curled. “It’s my business.”
“No, it’s not. What happens between Ev and me, that’s between us. She’s my wife.”
Savannah spun for the sink, dumping out the rest of her coffee. Her shoulders were tense and bunched toward her ears.
Oh, hell. I slid off my stool and went to her, putting my hands on her arms and turning her to face me. “Gotta trust me.”
She stared at me, searching for more answers than I could give her. For a brief moment, the strain in her muscles eased beneath my hands. But then that wall she hid behind snapped into place.
It was a wall built from years of pain and disappointment. It was strong as steel. Impenetrable without a tank. It hid the weeping, broken girl inside. The girl who just wanted to be loved.
Savannah’s wall was a mirror image of mine.
I’d given up hope of someone breaking through and coming to my rescue. But not Savannah. I wouldn’t let that wall get so thick that she’d be lost behind it forever.
“Whatever, Dad.” Savannah jerked out of my hold and marched to the door. She flung it open with too much force, then stormed outside.
She wasn’t wearing a jacket. Her shoes crunched on the snow as she crossed the yard for the alley that ran behind the house. I walked to the door, watching as she climbed into a car that had been idling out there.
Travis.
He jerked up his chin as she buckled her seat belt.
I didn’t like how much time those two spent together. Not because he wasn’t a good kid. But he was a teenage boy. If I could keep the whole species from my daughter, I would.
But Savannah needed a friend. Maybe Travis would be the one to get through to her.
Though what she needed more than anything wasn’t a boyfriend, it was a father. A real father.
Hold on, baby girl. I’m trying.
“How’d it go?” Everly appeared at my side, the cold air streaming past us into the house. Neither of us moved from the doorway. We stood and watched as Travis’s taillights disappeared around a corner.
“I fucked that up.”
“Maybe you should tell her the truth.”
“No.” I shook my head. “This only works if people think it’s real. I don’t want to take any chances.”
Savannah might slip up and tell one of her friends. And once one person knew this was a hoax, the entire town would know. If Everly wasn’t even trusting this to Lucy, I wasn’t going to take a chance on my side either.
“Gonna head out to the studio for a while.” I stepped into the cold, not sparing Everly another glance.
She watched me as I crossed the yard, her gaze tethered to my shoulders. It wasn’t until I’d reached the studio that she closed the door.
The smell of paint beckoned me inside. I breathed it in, letting it smooth the jagged edges. Then I walked to the canvases I’d laid out on my worktable yesterday. Three projects, each started but in various stages.
One I’d sketched and put the base layer down. Another was on the second layer. Another was nearly done but needed some finesse.
My process was fairly straightforward. I used paint—a lot of paint—until I got it right. It had been that way from the start.
I’d taken two art classes in prison, each taught by a different instructor. The first had been a skinny man who always wore black jeans and a black turtleneck, even in the heat of summer in a prison workroom with no air conditioning. He’d been wary of us inmates. I wasn’t sure why he’d even taught the class. The man wouldn’t come within five feet of a student, and he always kept one eye on the guard stationed in the corner.
He taught a class on charcoal sketches. Maybe that was the reason for the black wardrobe, so he wouldn’t stain his clothes. Some people were weird about that—not me.
The charcoals were easy. I’d liked drawing since I was a kid. The teacher would stand at the front of the room with his own page and sketch out a face or
an animal. We’d all copy his movements, but that got boring fast, so I ignored him and drew whatever the hell I wanted.
At first, it was faces. Other inmates from the prison. That guard. Even the teacher. But I struggled to get their eyes right. Eyes had always been difficult.
I guess that instructor wasn’t all bad. He gave me some decent advice.
Near the end of that class, he’d grown more comfortable with a few of us and would come closer to inspect our sketchbooks. When I showed him what I had and admitted I sucked at drawing eyes, he broke it down for me.
He showed me how to outline them within a spherical space. He gave me tips on the thickness of the eyelid and the placement of the iris. He showed me how to shade the pupils and whites and how to add eyelashes.
He’d turned out to be an okay teacher, but the second one, she had held my golden ticket.
She’d been a hippy. Her gray-brown hair had always been in tangles, swept away from her face in a colorful bandana. Sparkles. Neither teacher had given us their real names, just nicknames.
Sparkles would show up every day with more colors than I’d ever thought possible in a single outfit. Like Kelly-green pants paired with a plum blouse and a sky-blue velvet vest. She’d wear jack-o-lantern-orange clogs on her feet and a canary-yellow sash at her waist. Every day her appearance had brightened up the gray workroom.
In a way, her wardrobe had inspired my art.
Her course had only been about two months, but I’d learned a lot in that time. She’d called me a natural. She’d encouraged me to experiment and deviate from the class if I was feeling inspired.
Sparkles lived by impulse and inspiration.
I stumbled upon my style after hating a watercolor exercise we’d been doing as a group. There were only five of us in that class, but the pace dragged.
I’d done my mountain and sky scene. It was boring and flat. So I took a tube of blue oil and streaked it on the sky in bold, thick chunks. I ran out of time that class to smooth it out. By the next class, it had dried, so I added more, a different shade of blue to the sky. Indigo and green to the mountains and trees. Sparkles came by and gave me a nod to keep going.
That first painting had been a disaster. Later, after more practice, I’d decided to try it again. By then, I’d been painting more frequently, even if it was just at Katie’s kitchen table. The second attempt had been better.
Good enough for me to turn it into a tattoo.
The paintings on my worktable were much more refined than that initial piece or the early ones that had followed. I’d found my style. My groove.
There’d been a time when I could only work on one piece at a time. I hadn’t been able to separate paintings in my head. These days, I had four or five going, giving one or two a chance to dry while I switched it up. It was the only way I could crank out over a hundred paintings a year.
At the moment, these three on my workbench were the only ones I had in progress. There was the commission piece. Every time I looked at it, I frowned because what it really needed was some goddamn blue.
Then there was the stallion bust I was doing for the gallery. I tried to go into the summer with a good stockpile of paintings so I wouldn’t have to scramble to replenish inventory.
And then there was the third canvas. A piece slowly taking shape.
A piece that was different than anything I’d done in years.
A piece that scared the shit out of me.
The lavender strokes I’d added two days ago had dried, so I took it off the table and leaned it to face the wall.
Today was not the day for a passion project. What I really needed was to work on the money pieces, so I took up the custom landscape and set it on my easel. Then I went to the slotted shelves where I kept all of my oils.
I pulled out a burnt umber and a marmalade. They’d get layered with some ruby red in the trees. I still hadn’t decided exactly what color to make the river. Maybe black with some golden ripples. Whether this lady liked it or not, there was going to be a hint of blue in that water. There had to be. It would be subtle and extremely dark, but a few navy undercurrents would go a long way to adding balance.
With my supplies ready, I found a fine-tipped brush and went to work, dotting and shading and feathering. It wasn’t rushed work. That was what I loved most about painting. Every stroke was deliberate. Every minute spent was earned. There were no shortcuts in this. As a man who’d once believed in shortcuts, who’d once been punished severely for a shortcut, I avoided them at all costs.
Some might call this marriage to Everly a shortcut.
They’d probably be right. But considering it was a two-year commitment—a marriage—nothing about it seemed like a fast and easy solution.
Marriage. Something I’d vowed never to do again.
But I wanted Savannah enough to break an old vow in exchange for new ones. I wanted my daughter. And just this once, I hoped the shortcut wouldn’t completely fuck up my life.
Hours passed as I worked, and with them the tension faded. Painting was my escape. When I was here, brush in hand, the outside world was a blur. All that mattered was me, my brush and watching my mental image come to life on the canvas.
When a knock came at the door, I jerked at the darkness coming through the windows. Last time I’d looked outside, the sun had been up. But while I’d been painting a river, it had become night.
Everly twisted the knob and peeked inside. “Are you alive?”
“Yeah.” I waved her inside out of the cold. “Sorry. Kinda lose track of time when I’m out here.”
“No problem. Sorry to bother you. Just thought I’d see if you wanted dinner.”
My stomach growled.
She smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
I walked to the table and checked the time on my phone. It was just after six but the days were short this time of year. In the summers, when it didn’t get dark until after nine, I’d paint until after midnight. “What do you want to eat?”
Everly shrugged, crossing the room to the easel. “This is so pretty.”
“It’s all right.”
“Do you not like compliments on your work? Or are you never satisfied with the end result?”
“Both.”
She shot me a grin over her shoulder. “I can always count on you to be blunt.”
“Always.” I wasn’t going to lie to her. Not with what we had ahead of us. She deserved honesty, no matter how harsh.
I stepped closer, taking a look at the piece. I’d made a lot of progress today. A few highlights tomorrow after the darker colors had dried and it would be done. “This is a custom piece. The lady requested a landscape without blue.”
Everly’s forehead furrowed. “What’s she got against blue?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. But it’s been a pain in the ass. I should have told her no.” Boundaries in art pissed me off. I had enough of those in real life.
“You should consider it a test of your skill. Even with limitations, it’s stunning.”
I studied Ev’s profile as she continued to study the piece. She was right. It had turned out okay. But as she’d guessed, I didn’t like compliments. I sure as hell didn’t need them. Though from Everly, the appreciation felt . . . nice. It wasn’t flattery for flattery’s sake.
“What have you been doing?” I asked, leaning against the worktable.
“I wasted most of the day.” She stood tall and walked around the room, scanning the empty canvases and globs of dropped paint. “I read for a while. Then I tidied up the office. I hope you don’t mind that I commandeered a couple of shelves.”
“Like I told you, do whatever you want. It’s your house now.”
She went to the shelves at my back, opening and closing one of the drawers with some oils. “Before I came out here, I was actually looking for a job. I’ve almost drained my savings since moving here. There’s not a lot of openings in Calamity, so I think it’ll be the grocery store for a while. But it’s a
paycheck so I can chip in here.”
I waved her off. “No need.”
“No, no. I’d like to contribute. I insist.”
“’Kay. Then contribute at the gallery. I could use some help in the office.” The receipts weren’t going to organize themselves and I wasn’t going to do it anytime soon.
She tapped her chin. “Do you think that’s smart? Working together?”
“Would help show we’re serious. The more people who see us together, the better.”
She nodded. “True.”
“I know what it’s like searching for a job in Calamity. It sucks. Not a lot of decent work comes open, especially in the winter. Summer is different when tourism brings in more traffic. In the meantime, you can spare me time in the office. I hate bookkeeping shit.”
“It’s not my favorite thing in the world but my parents are accountants so . . .” She grimaced. “What about Katie? Isn’t she the official manager? How’s she going to feel about your new wife invading her space?”
“She won’t care.”
Everly hummed. “If you say so.”
“She won’t.” Katie might be pissed that I hadn’t told her about Everly, but she hated the bookkeeping stuff as much as I did. If Everly had some experience, she’d save us all a headache.
I swiped up a rag from the table and used it to get a few streaks off my hands. There was always a mess after a long day with the brush.
“You have paint on your cheek.” Everly touched the spot, and when she pulled her hand away, there was a dot of hunter green on her fingertip.
I captured her wrist, dragging my thumb across the green to smear it over her skin. Everly had perfect skin. Smooth. Flawless. It tasted like honey. My fingers traced up her forearm, leaving faint black lines.
The palette I’d been using was between us. With my free hand, I dipped a finger in the red.
“What are you doing?” Ev whispered.
I raised my finger to her face, brushing the color across the angle of her cheekbone. “Your skin is perfect. I want to see what it would be like if I . . .”
The words fell away as I went back to the palette for a drop of orange. It went along the curve of her chin.
Fuck, but she was beautiful. The warm tones of the paint swirled with the caramel and cinnamon flecks in her eyes. The chocolate of her hair. Everly was a piece of living art.
