Country Roads

by Nancy Herkness

  Popular equine artist Julia Castillo has resurfaced with a new style, one that appears to have more depth and interest than her pleasantly bucolic earlier work.

  “Ouch!” She wasn’t happy about the condescending description of her older paintings, but it didn’t destroy her, either. Maybe it was because she’d left that period behind, or maybe she had more confidence in herself, thanks to her new friends in Sanctuary.

  The new work, which Castillo calls her “Night Mares,” offers psychological layering and a disturbing power that was absent from the idyllic landscapes she has created up until now. While this critic has always acknowledged its technical virtuosity, the painter’s earlier work invited no further analysis.

  “And here I thought you were an art critic, not a psychiatrist.” Julia was starting to enjoy herself. The man was so pretentiously nasty it was impossible to take him seriously.

  Hayes briefly recapped her career up to this point, inserting photos of Claire’s treasured painting and a couple of others that were especially well-known. There were references to pastoral pleasantness and her youth with an implication of immaturity, all subtle denigrations of the work, but it bounced off her newfound armor.

  She frowned at his discussion of the run-up in prices of her work since the supply had been cut off two years ago. Hayes speculated about it being a deliberate ploy to create pent-up demand for her new and different style. He chose to ignore the carefully crafted explanation she and Claire had come up with: that she didn’t want to bring her new work to the market until she was satisfied with its quality.

  “Jerk,” she said, but more in irritation than anger.

  He quoted her a couple of times, accurately but out of context, so she came across as a combination of naive and airheaded. She skimmed through those.

  Finally she got to the all-important paragraph.

  Those interested in Castillo’s new work will have the opportunity to reach their own conclusions this Friday when the Gallery at Sanctuary will show five of the “Night Mares.” Despite the gallery’s remote location among the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, this blogger confesses to having his curiosity piqued and plans to attend.

  Julia whooped in triumph. Not only was Hayes coming, he had announced it to the entire art world!

  “Everything okay?” Lyle Lee, one of the inn’s two owners, poked his head in the office door.

  Julia knew she was grinning like an idiot. “I’ve been insulted up, down, and sideways, but the jerk is coming to my show.”

  The man raised his eyebrows. “He must be an important jerk.”

  “He’s influential in the circles we needed to reach on short notice.” She stood up, mentally congratulating herself on being unaffected by Hayes’s criticisms.

  Julia’s cell phone vibrated in her jeans pocket. “Excuse me, that must be Claire,” she said, pulling out the phone and putting it to her ear as she walked to a secluded corner of the lobby. “It worked!”

  “Julia! Why did you speak to Paxton Hayes?” Her uncle’s voice was taut with anger. “I agreed to this show of yours because it was in a country gallery no one would hear of. Now word of it will be spread all over the place.”

  Just like that, her balloon of confidence deflated. She thought Carlos was finally allowing her to make her own decisions, but he was just humoring her because he thought the show wouldn’t matter. His words pushed her back into the well of insecurity he’d dug over the past two years. She felt apologies rising up in her throat.

  Her uncle didn’t give her a chance to speak. “This is a catastrophe. I cannot come today, but I will be there tomorrow to speak with Ms. Parker—”

  “Arbuckle,” Julia corrected with petty satisfaction. “There is no point to your coming before Friday.”

  “We must decide how to control this mess,” Carlos said. “We’ll find a reason to cancel the show.”

  Julia thought of Claire’s carefully laid plans for the exhibit and forced herself to speak with conviction. “Paxton Hayes is coming. There’s no way we’re canceling.”

  He muttered an unflattering epithet about Hayes in Spanish. “He called your paintings ‘bucolic’ and ‘pleasant.’ He knows nothing about what is good art.”

  Her uncle’s partisanship lit a tiny glow of affection inside her. Even if Carlos didn’t like her Night Mares, he wasn’t going to allow Paxton Hayes to attack her work. “Thanks, Tío,” she said softly.

  Her uncle sighed. “Mi querida, you must come home with me tomorrow. You cannot be exposed to what might happen.”

  “What? No!” Every fiber of Julia’s body shrieked a refusal. She needed more time with Paul. She had to figure out whether he wanted her to stay or not. “I’m not walking out on the show. People are counting on me.”

  “We will discuss it tomorrow, face-to-face,” he said. “I am only trying to protect you, Julia.”

  “And I love you for it, but the time when I needed that has passed.” She hung up and slumped onto a hard wooden bench set beside the wall. It didn’t matter what she said, because Carlos refused to believe her. She slammed a fist into the bench as tears of frustration burned in her eyes.

  Another thought made her sit up straight in horror. Would Carlos try to use her epilepsy as leverage to convince Claire to cancel the show?

  Chapter 21

  AS JULIA’S BRAIN reeled at the possibility, her phone pinged, signaling a voice mail. Her hands shook slightly as she punched the buttons to play it. It was Claire, her voice vibrating with excitement as she conveyed the good news about Hayes’s promised attendance and dismissed the rest of the blog as not worth reading. “He’s a pretentious ass, but we already knew that.”

  Julia frowned. Why did everyone think she was so fragile she couldn’t handle a bad review? Yes, she had driven all the way to Sanctuary to get a second opinion on her new paintings, but that seemed more pigheaded than feeble to her.

  She stared down at the phone in her hand. Claire deserved an excited, congratulatory return phone call for the coup she had pulled off, but Carlos had destroyed Julia’s jubilant mood.

  She forced the muscles at the corners of her mouth upward and dialed the phone. “Claire, you’re a genius.”

  “Did you read it?” Claire sounded worried.

  Julia shoved down a spark of irritation. “Yes, and he’s a jerk, but he walked right into our trap.”

  “It really wasn’t bad for Paxton,” Claire said, her relief sounding clearly through the phone. “Not everyone considers ‘bucolic’ and ‘pastoral’ undesirable qualities in a painting.”

  “He sure makes them sound repulsive, though.”

  “You’ll have to talk to him at the show, but I don’t think he’ll have the nerve to be quite as awful face-to-face.”

  “Paxton Hayes doesn’t scare me.” It was her uncle she didn’t know what to do about. She chewed on her lip before she decided she had to warn Claire. “My uncle Carlos saw the blog too.”

  There was a pause. “How did he feel about it?”

  “He’s coming here tomorrow.” Julia felt reduced to the status of a wayward child.

  “What is he planning to do?” Claire sounded puzzled.

  “He wants to talk you into canceling the show. Failing that, he wants to drag me home with him.” Julia kept her tone light. “He wasn’t happy about Paxton Hayes attending.”

  “I guess you and your uncle lock horns frequently,” Claire said.

  Gratification warmed Julia at Claire’s assumption that she had the strength to stand up to her uncle. “I felt I should warn you, in case he goes to the gallery first.” Julia hesitated. Should she risk making Claire suspicious that she was trying to hide something? She just couldn’t bear the thought of Paul hearing about her epilepsy from someone other than herself. “I know I can trust you to keep what he tells you in the heat of the moment confidential.”

  “Of course you can.” The puzzled note was back in Claire’s voice but she continued, “Don’t worry about your uncle.
We’ll convert him, just like we did Paxton.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you,” Julia said before she thanked Claire for all of her efforts and hung up.

  She dropped the phone on the wooden bench with a bang and stared in front of her at the wall hung with antique farm implements. The surface part of her brain traced the curves and lines of the metal and wood shapes, but her focus was on the impending collision of her two worlds.

  As long as Carlos was several hundred miles away in North Carolina, her courage burned bright and strong. The minute he threatened to come here, all that shiny new bravado shriveled up and blew away like ashes. Dread swelled into a lump in her stomach. What would her new and treasured friends think of her when they saw her in relation to her overpowering uncle? Would they think more or less of her for standing up to someone she owed so much to?

  What if he informed them she couldn’t handle all this publicity and pressure because of her epilepsy? They would all agree with him and tiptoe around her as though she were a bomb that could explode at any time.

  She pictured Claire’s brown eyes going soft with pity and Tim treating her with all the medical kindness her doctors always showed.

  And Paul. He would believe he had endangered her by taking her on his motorcycle and making love to her in a river. He would be angry with her for not warning him about the possible consequences, and she couldn’t blame him.

  Even worse, he would refuse to do any of those things with her again. He would treat her like a china doll, not like a living, breathing woman. He would treat her like Carlos did.

  She clamped her hands on either side of her head. She could barely draw a breath into her lungs and her vision began to blur. Oh dear God, she wasn’t going to have a seizure here in the lobby of the inn. That would be the ultimate humiliation.

  It wasn’t a seizure.

  It was the pain of loss, a gut-punching, oxygen-depriving, throat-closing agony she’d never felt with such intensity before. When she was a teenager and her mother and stepfather moved to Spain, she’d been sad and lonely, but the relationship between her and her parents had not altered in any profound way, so she hadn’t felt this wrenching grief.

  This would be a game changer for Paul.

  Her phone trilled, its vibrate function making it clatter and dance like a live thing on the wooden bench.

  She picked it up to check the caller ID. Paul. She couldn’t talk to him right now, not with her emotions roiling so close to the surface. He would know she was upset and keep asking his lawyer questions until he found out why.

  What she needed right now was the comfort of a paintbrush in her hand. She stood and waited for Paul’s call to go to voice mail before she turned off the phone and tucked it into her jeans pocket. She knew he had a busy day at work, so he wouldn’t have time to pester her until lunchtime. By then she should have regained enough control to hide things from him again.

  Julia stuck her brush behind her ear and stepped back from the canvas as she considered her work.

  She’d walked into the makeshift studio, taken one look at the start of her painting of Darkside, and removed it from the easel. She wasn’t in the mood for fine, detailed work.

  Hoisting a blank canvas onto the easel, she began squeezing paints onto her palette, not bothering to do a rough sketch first. She could already see what she wanted on the clean surface.

  She’d worked for two hours in a white heat, spilling her vision onto the canvas, turning the morning’s emotions into fuel for her creativity.

  It was done. Well, maybe except for a few dabs of titanium white or cobalt blue here and there.

  She’d painted Paul straddling his motorcycle, his helmet in the crook of one arm. He looked out of the picture, right at the observer, his face alight with an invitation to join him on an adventure, his smile flashing with warmth and intimacy, his silver-gray eyes holding just a trace of sexual heat.

  She nodded and lifted the painting off the easel, turning its back outward before she leaned it carefully against one of the empty bookcases to dry. This creation was meant for her eyes only.

  It was the way she wanted to remember him.

  She decided it was time to return Paul’s phone call.

  “I’m sorry, I was working and had the phone turned off, so I didn’t get your voice mail until just now.” Julia winced. She hated telling him lies, even minor ones, especially when she’d checked her missed calls to discover he’d called four more times.

  “As long as you’re not sobbing into your pillow because of what that asshole Paxton Hayes said, it’s all good.” His words were light but his voice held undertones of anger and worry.

  She forced a chuckle. “He’s coming to the show, so nothing else matters.”

  “You don’t sound like yourself. Are you still at Plants ’N Pages?”

  “Don’t upset Verna by canceling an appointment to come over here.”

  “She’d be more upset if she thought I’d left you alone when you needed a friend.”

  She should be annoyed with him for thinking she couldn’t handle the art critic’s remarks, but the sound of his deep voice just made her wish he was there in the room with her. She wanted to press herself against his long, lean body and kiss him until they were both senseless. That was the drawback of spending two hours focused on capturing Paul’s body in a painting; it got her all hot and bothered. “I was leaning more toward needing a lover,” she said.

  “Damn, my next appointment is here,” he growled. “I’ll be shoving the last client out the door by four, so I’ll pick you up then.”

  “Thank you for worrying about me. Even if you don’t need to, it makes me feel…cared for.”

  “Never doubt it, sweetheart.”

  She hung up, shaken. Oh dear God, she’d almost said loved. That would have sent Paul running for the hills.

  It should send her fleeing in the same direction. In her experience, being loved had become synonymous with being smothered and coddled and not allowed to live fully. Paul’s brand of caring offered the opposite. He took pleasure in expanding her horizons, in challenging her.

  But that was because he didn’t know about her weakness. She had seen how people responded to that.

  She jumped as her phone rang again. It was Carlos, and she had no intention of talking to him again today. She waited for the ping of the voice mail arriving before she brought the phone to her ear. “Julia, this is your uncle.” And he sounded annoyed. “I have gone to considerable trouble to rearrange my schedule to arrive in Sanctuary at noon and will expect to see you at the Traveller Inn. I understand they serve lunch there so we will eat together.”

  “If it was so much trouble, you shouldn’t come,” she muttered.

  She walked back to the easel and lifted the Darkside painting onto it. She stood back and examined it, trying to decide what part to work on first. She’d sketched in Darkside’s head with a focus on the horse’s eye. You could see his ears and part of his cheek and neck, but the rest bled off the edges of the canvas. She had challenged herself to catch the liquid depths of his eye and the silken texture of his glossy coat as it stretched over muscle and bone. It required a totally different technique from her nearly abstract Night Mares.

  After a couple of minutes, she shook her head and walked to the front window to watch the people and cars pass.

  A sense that this was the last day of her idyll in Sanctuary built in her mind. Carlos would arrive tomorrow and blast the gutsy, adventurous image she’d somehow created to smithereens. Paul and Claire and Tim would see her as the fragile, reclusive invalid her uncle believed her to be.

  “So I’d better gather some rosebuds before Carlos says the thorns are too dangerous for me,” she said, turning back to recap her paint tubes.

  It was time to visit her whisper horse.

  Chapter 22

  YOU PAID GOOD money for a taxi to come see Darkside?” The lanky young stable hand shook his head in disbelief. “That horse ain’t worth s
pending a red cent on. I don’t know why Ms. Sydenstricker keeps him around, eating his head off and kicking up nothing but trouble. Anyway, he’s in the north paddock over yonder.”

  “Thanks,” Julia said, jogging in the direction he pointed. She’d stopped to collect some carrots before discovering Darkside’s stall was empty.

  She burst out of the barn into bright sunlight and blinked a few times, trying to figure out which way was north. It turned out all she had to do was follow the cursing to locate her horse.

  “Goddamned devil horse, get your butt out of the way of the gate!” One of the hands was trying to maneuver an empty water bucket into the paddock. Darkside was having none of it. “I don’t care if you die of thirst, but the boss lady says you gotta have some water.”

  “Here, I’ll do it,” Julia said, holding her hand out for the bucket.

  “No, ma’am,” the man said, shaking his head. “This horse’d kill you as soon as look at you.”

  “He’s my whisper horse, so I’ll be okay.”

  “You’re trying to pull ole George’s leg, ain’t you? I know what Ms. Sydenstricker believes about whisper horses. Not that I hold truck with that nonsense, but Darth Vader there ain’t nobody’s whisper nothing.”

  “Darkside and I understand each other,” Julia said. “Let me give it a try.”

  She gave the handle of the bucket a gentle tug, and George relinquished his grip on it with obvious reluctance. “Well, if you put the bucket by the fence, I’ll run a hose into it,” he said.

  “I’m Julia Castillo.” Julia held out her hand. “Just in case you need to tell Ms. Sydenstricker who the crazy lady with Darkside is.”

  “You that famous painter?” George gave her hand a brief shake.

  “Yes,” she said, throwing humility to the winds. “Could you just open the gate for me and I’ll slip in?”

  “If you die, I guess your paintings will be worth more.” With that observation, he pushed the gate open a crack.

  Darkside squealed angrily from the other side of the slats as she slid through the opening. “Hey, buddy, it’s me, and I’ve got carrots, so don’t kick me in the head just yet.”