The kettle whistled, and she grabbed it quieting the high-pitched screech and filling two mugs before dumping in two powder packets of hot chocolate mix with miniature marshmallows that dissolved on contact.
“Here we are,” she said, bringing them to her coffee table and taking a seat next to me. “If this doesn’t warm us up, we’re screwed. Super hot. Be careful.”
I palmed the warm mug. “How’s that ankle?”
She rolled her eyes. “If you must know, Dr. Jamison, it’s fine now. Doesn’t hurt at all.”
“You’re lucky,” I said, blowing on the steaming liquid under my lips.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked.
“Just moved in last year,” I said. “I’m from Kansas, originally. Went to school at Johns Hopkins. Moved here for work.”
“Kansas, eh?” She looked me up and down. “Nothing about you screams ‘Kansas’ to me.”
I smiled. “That’s a good thing, right?”
She held up a hand. “Your words.”
“What about you?” I asked, bringing the mug to my lips for another careful sip.
“I’ve lived here a couple of years,” she said. “I rent this place from Mia. She gave me a hell of a deal, or else I’d never be able to afford it in a million years. I graduated from Taylor Art School in Upstate New York.”
“What brought you here?”
“Art,” she sighed dreamily. “Thought I was going to make it big. Sell a bunch of paintings and live the life.”
“You’ve still got plenty of time,” I chuckled. “You’re young. Nothing’s stopping you.”
Her eyes dropped to the floor, and for a moment she appeared lost in thought. “My future’s unwritten at this point. Anything could happen.”
“Your paintings are beautiful,” I said, eyeing them from across the room. Even from the street at night, they were beautiful. Abstract. Colorful. Dreamy.
“Thanks,” she said humbly.
“You ever try to sell them?”
She blushed. “I thought it’d be easy to ask people to buy my work. I mean, I studied art in college. I went to art school. I’ve been painting since I could hold a brush, but… here, in this city, it’s hard.”
I scrunched my face. “Your paintings are beautiful, Sophie. I don’t say things I don’t mean. You have real talent.”
“I used to paint things,” she said. “Still lifes. Portraits. Now I just paint those.” Her eyes drifted to throngs of abstract canvases leaning against the brick walls. “Somewhere along the line, I lost my ability to paint anything real. No one wants to buy shit that looks like the stuff their three-year-old brings home from preschool every day.”
I shook my head. “You’re selling yourself short.”
She stood up, mug in hand, and headed to her makeshift art studio. I followed. “Mia’s renovating her store, adding a high-end gallery to the front and moving the supplies to the back. We’re going to put our stuff on display and see what happens.”
“Are these for sale?” My gaze honed in on a piece covered in streaks of grays, blacks, and blues reminding me of a stormy Kansas summer night. “This piece was made for my living room.”
“Seriously?” she said, peering at me from the corner of her eye. “Make me an offer.”
“A thousand dollars enough?” I asked.
Her jaw dropped, and she tried to stifle a smile. She reached down and pulled it out from the wall. “On the house.”
“On the house?”
“Since you helped me the other night,” she said, biting her lip. “With my ankle and the paint and everything. And you walked me home tonight. Just… please. You can have it.”
“I can’t,” I objected.
“Your money’s no good here.” Her eyes gazed over my shoulder peering out the windows that led directly to a view of my place. “Storm’s getting worse. Listen, I’ll keep this here, and next time the weather’s better, I can drop it off at your place.”
“There’s no arguing with you, is there?”
She set the painting against the wall and traipsed back to the living room, plopping down on the cushy sofa. “Never.”
I followed her, opting not to sit back down as I stared into the bottom of my empty hot chocolate mug.
“I’ve got to work early tomorrow morning,” I said, walking my cup to her kitchen and rinsing it in the sink before returning to her living room. “We can’t all be bohemian painters.”
“Funny,” she said with a wink as she scrunched her nose at me. She stood to walk me to her door, lingering in the doorway for a moment as I buttoned my coat. Her brown eyes drank me in whether or not she knew she was doing it. “Which apartment is yours over there?”
“3A,” I told her, knotting my thick scarf around my neck and tucking the tails into the front of my coat.
“You doing anything this weekend? I can drop it off sometime,” she said.
I shrugged. “I should be around.”
My proper upbringing told me I should kiss her cheek as we parted ways, but I had a feeling we had two completely different upbringings, and she would find my gesture awkward and hollow.
I reached my hand out, brushing it against hers. “I’ll see you around.”
5
SOPHIE
“I’m glad you decided to come back,” Dr. Strong said as I took a seat in her office that Friday afternoon. “You’re doing the right thing, Sophie.”
Of course, I was. At three-hundred bucks an hour, she was delighted to have another client to fill her schedule. Those pretty diamond earrings dangling from her ears weren’t cheap, and someone had to pay for those red-bottomed shoes. As much as certain things about her annoyed me, I promised Dr. Bledsoe I’d give therapy a try, and since Mia was my only sounding board, sometimes it was nice to bounce things off other people for a change. I wasn’t paying for a friend, and I certainly didn’t have to like her.
“I’m feeling good about things,” I started. “For the first time in years, I can honestly say I love my life.”
My fingers tugged at my gold chain, pressing the charms into the flesh of my neck. I was beginning to feel the way I’d felt when I still had my sisters around. Alive. Hopeful. Content.
“Well, that’s wonderful to hear, Sophie,” she said. She always had to say my name, as if it helped her keep me straight amongst the throngs of patients who filled her day. “Anything, in particular, happen since the last time we met?”
I leaned back on the loveseat draping my hair over the arm. “I’ve just decided to do everything I love, all the time, no questions, no matter what.”
The light scraping of her pen against her legal pad played against the ticking of the annoyingly loud clock on the wall grating on my peaceful mood.
“And I met a boy,” I said coyly, watching her reaction from the corner of my eye. Her blue eyes gazed up from her paper to meet mine. “Well, he’s not really a boy. He’s a man. He’s older than me. Maybe early thirties, I don’t know. He’s gorgeous. That’s about all I know for sure about him.”
“How’d you meet?”
“He lives in my neighborhood,” I said. “This past week, we just kept running into each other. We’ve talked a few times.”
“Have you dated much in the past?” she asked, eyes averted to her legal pad again.
“I had a boyfriend in college,” I said, voice trailing as I recalled Alex. We dated up until The Incident, when my emotional burdens became too much for him to bear, though if you asked him, I was the one who had pushed him away. It was probably for the best, anyway. He wasn’t strong enough for me.
“What happened to him?”
I didn’t want to tell her about my sisters or how they died or that pitch-black period of my life. I wanted to talk about Jamison. About painting. About happy things. About living.
“Do we need to go there?” I asked. “That’s in the past. We were young. It just didn’t work out.”
“All right. Then tell me about this new guy,” she
said, drawing in a deep breath. I pretended not to notice when she nonchalantly checked the rose gold watch on her wrist.
“He’s so not my type,” I said, staring up at the ceiling. “He’s all proper and buttoned-up. He has this thick head of dark hair and this meticulously trimmed five o’clock shadow. Eyes the color of blue ice. Piercing stare. Doesn’t talk much.”
Her head jerked up, and her pen stopped moving. “What did you say his name was?”
“Does it matter?” I said with an amused laugh. “This could be something fun. Something to channel my energy. A distraction from the ticking time bomb in my head.”
“Mmm hmm,” she said, nibbling her lip and staring at the coffee table in front of me.
“Should I tell him about my aneurysm?” I asked, sitting up. “I mean, what’s the appropriate thing to do here? Okay, maybe I’m jumping the gun, but I’ve never dealt with this kind of thing before.”
“Sophie, you’re not dying,” she said, her tone rather curt and uncharacteristically impatient.
“This thing could rupture tonight while I sleep,” I said with a huff, brushing my hair from my eyes. “Let’s agree to disagree on the whole dying thing.”
She scribbled more notes.
“So, do I tell this guy about me or what?” I asked, praying she’d give me the perfect answer.
“I can’t tell you what to do,” she said, tugging her thick glasses off and setting them aside. She uncrossed and crossed her long legs. “I can only help you work through things and figure out the answers on your own.”
Sounded like a bullshit answer to me. Why was I coming here? “Oh.”
“So, let’s figure this out,” she said, sensing my disappointment. “You like him, but have you gone on a date yet?”
“No.”
“Sounds like a crush. An innocent crush.”
“So I shouldn’t drop the bomb yet.”
She smiled. “You said you didn’t know his last name, right? No need to go delving into your medical history with him. He’s not a doctor, is he?”
I scrunched my nose. “I have no idea what he does for a living. Okay. You’re right. I’m getting way ahead of myself. I won’t worry about it.”
She offered a gentle smile, studying me. Analyzing me. “How have you been feeling, Sophie? Physically?”
“I’ve had some headaches this last week, but my vision’s okay. Nothing I can’t tolerate.”
“Are you taking the medications Dr. Bledsoe prescribed?”
“I am. I forgot once, but I haven’t forgotten since.”
“Good, good. How have you been feeling emotionally since your diagnosis?”
“Trying to keep a positive attitude,” I said, eyebrows lifted.
“What do your parents think about all of this?”
My parents had no clue. They were still shell-shocked from The Incident. Nori and Rossi had died two years ago, and I wasn’t about to tell them I might be next. My parents were ghosts of their former selves, and I did the only thing I thought might help them by giving them plenty of space.
“They don’t know,” I answered, voice low. “I can’t tell them yet.”
“Why do you feel you can’t tell them?” she asked, flipping to the next page in her legal pad.
“It would be too much for them,” I said.
“Why don’t we put yourself in their shoes for a moment, shall we? Imagine you have a daughter who’s been given a very serious diagnosis. She’s about to have surgeries and procedures. Wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want to be there for your daughter?”
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my dry throat as the walls began to close in around me. It was my fault Nori and Rossi were killed. My parents never came out and said it, but we all knew. I saw it in their eyes. I couldn’t go home without feeling weighed down by a thousand pounds of shame. I couldn’t brag about accomplishments. I couldn’t tell them what I was up to.
Words unspoken consumed the silence between what remained of the Salinger family. If I said I got a new job or sold some art, we’d have all thought, ‘Rossi and Nori would’ve graduated from college by now.’ If I said I’d been commissioned to do a painting, we’d have all thought, ‘Rossi would’ve landed a contract with a ballet company by now.’
It’d been two years, and my parents were still stuck reliving that awful night over and over again refusing to let go. They carried burdens of sadness and longing, disappointed in themselves for raising good daughters who made bad choices. In their eyes, they had failed us. My father drowned his sorrows in a fifth of whiskey every night while my mother hid hers under the fifty pounds she’d gained in the last two years. My burdens were far heavier than any of theirs—never-ending guilt, shame, remorse, and anger. It all came to a head that night I swallowed those pills.
“They’re not ready,” I said, snapping back into the present.
“Is that for you to decide, though?” She carefully thought with her words before speaking. “Can we talk about why you feel they’re not ready? I’m sensing there’s something more we need to dig into.”
My fingers drummed against my knee as I stared at the off-white wall behind Dr. Strong’s perfect head of ash-blonde hair. If I told my parents I might die, it could really hurt them. Set them back. But if I told them I might die, and they didn’t care, that would hurt me even more. Either way, things were easier for all of us if they didn’t know.
“I need to go.” I stood up, slipping my purse over my shoulder.
“Sophie, you okay?” she asked, confusion washing over her expression. “What’s going on?”
“I shouldn’t have come today.” I pulled her door open and raced down the hall, praying she wouldn’t chase after me and make a scene.
She didn’t.
6
JAMISON
I climbed the stairs from the subway station at Franklin and headed toward Hudson Street. I stopped into Great China and picked up my usual Friday night order and a bottle of red and rounded the corner to my apartment.
“What are you doing tonight?” Daphne had asked me at work earlier that afternoon. We’d ended things months ago, but she refused to let me go. An unwavering hope wouldn’t allow it.
“The usual,” I told her.
“Want company?” she’d asked.
“No.”
She’d lingered in the doorway of my office studying my face with her arms crossed. I’d known Daphne since we were kids. Our mothers were sorority sisters at Dartmouth. Imagine my surprise when I realized Daphne followed me to Johns Hopkins to pursue her psychology degrees. We dated, and she eventually followed me to the city, blaming it on a job offer she couldn’t refuse as if I wouldn’t see through her. She was clear as cellophane. She wanted me, and she was doing everything in her power to make me hers. Only she failed miserably. I wasn’t interested in shallow companionship. We only ever looked good on paper and in pictures. That was it.
“You’re just going to spend Friday night all by yourself?” She pouted her red lips, the very same ones I used to kiss back when I thought I loved her—before I knew what love was.
I’d spent my entire twenties going to school and working, and when I had a free night in my schedule, Daphne would expect to be wined and dined, or she’d plan weekend getaways or beg me to escort her to every little party she could find. A decade of dating Daphne had been exhausting.
“I enjoy the peace and quiet.” I’d glanced up at the clock. It was time to get back to work. “If you’ll excuse me.” I brushed past her. “Don’t you have an appointment or something?”
“Yeah.” She had rolled her eyes. “This girl Bledsoe referred. I don’t know why she wants to talk to me. She argues with everything I say. If you ask me, she’s suicidal, but she won’t admit it.”
“You think everyone’s suicidal,” I’d said as I slipped my hands into my pockets. Daphne was paid to listen for a living, but when it came to us, her self-serving nature only ever allowed her to hear what she wanted t
o hear, especially when I’d told her for years how unhappy I was with our relationship. In the end, I had realized we were both fooling ourselves. I’d never experienced true, unconditional love in all of my life, and she was more than happy to settle for something that only looked good on the outside.
I had raised my hand in the air, giving her a quick wave as I walked down the corridor.
By six-thirty that night, I’d rounded the corner to my apartment only to be met with the saddest brown eyes I’d ever seen.
“Sophie?” I called out as she walked toward me, her eyes darting toward the street as she attempted to cross. She turned toward my voice searching until I caught up with her. “You okay?”
Her doe eyes watered as she forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. How are you?”
The fur lining of her hood framed her face perfectly as her dark hair spilled down her chest. The blizzard we’d had the night before had morphed into a mild, sunny December day, melting almost everything in a matter of hours. Sophie was still bundled up as if she were heading into a torrential snowstorm.
“I’m good,” I said, not buying her smile for two seconds. “What are you up to tonight?”
She shrugged, a faux smile still plastered on her face as she tried to pretend she wasn’t fighting off tears. Her feet danced in place as if she couldn’t stand still for too long. “You heading home right now? Why don’t I grab that painting for you?”
“Sure,” I said, holding up my double-wrapped bag of takeout. “You hungry?”
She nodded. “I’ll be right over. Give me a few minutes, okay?”
I hurried up to my apartment grabbing a couple of plates and divvying up my General Tso’s chicken into two equal portions and placing my fortune cookie at her seat at the kitchen island. By the time I uncorked the bottle of red, Sophie was knocking at my door.
“Come in,” I said, grabbing the giant canvas from her arms. She stepped in and carefully removed her jacket and shoes, hanging her coat on the rack by the door as her eyes scanned the room.
The Promise of Everything - Garner-Willoughby Brothers Book Three Page 3
