by Susan Sey
“This one,” Eli said and plucked a doughnut hole from a spike. “It’s perfect.” He passed it to her on a pretty little napkin and went hunting for his own.
She murmured her thanks and continued breathing. Just breathing. Suddenly her nose was full of cigarette smoke, black coffee and lilies of the valley, which could mean only one thing: Nan Davis had arrived.
“Well if it isn’t Willa Zinc. Good lord, child! Look at you, all dressed up!”
Willa turned to find Georgie’s grandmother at her elbow, all not-quite-five-feet of her. Nan Davis hadn’t exchanged a civil word with her daughter-in-law Bianca in more than a decade, which put her and Willa on more or less the same team. But Willa hadn’t survived as long as she had by underestimating Davises. The glaring exception being, of course, letting Georgie stuff her into this godforsaken dress. She kept the thinnie firmly in the back of her mind and freed up the front to perform the standard exchange of guarded remarks.
“Hi, Nan. You look—” With an unnaturally black cap of hair, a brightly painted mouth and a year-round Birkenstock habit, Nan looked like nothing so much as a bad-tempered hobbit. “—very nice yourself.”
Nan barked out a rusty laugh. “No I don’t. But I would if I had a figure like yours.” She gazed directly at Willa’s chest. “Where on earth have you been hiding all that?”
Willa sighed. The where of the matter was simple — a determined sports bra could flatten anything. The why was a bit more complicated but it had a lot to do with Nan’s clear conviction that seeing something put it squarely in the public sphere, open for comment and judgment. It had even more to do with the subtle, assessing glances being leveled on her body to some degree by everybody else in the room. Nothing good ever came from this kind of attention. “The usual places,” she said with determined lightness. “Given my line of work, this isn’t a very practical look. Georgie insisted, though.”
Nan’s attention flew back to Willa’s face, her eyes sharp. “Since when does Georgie tell you what to wear?”
“Since Addy made me a bridesmaid.”
Nan seized a champagne glass. “Young man.” She poked it at Eli’s kidney. “Fill this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, as if being ordered around by barky, chain-smoking hobbits were a daily occurrence. He handed Nan the doughnut hole he’d obviously just selected for himself, and obediently filled the glass. He gave Willa a probing glance and topped off the glass in her hand, too. Filled one for himself while he was at it. He started to put the bottle back in the chilling bucket, then shrugged and just held onto it.
“Thank you.” Nan sipped her champagne and smiled. “So. Willa. You’re standing up for our Addison, are you?”
“She didn’t really give me a choice.” Willa shrugged. “You know Addy. Then she sicced Georgie on my closet.”
“It shows.” Nan gave her another shrewd up-and-down. “You look just like your mother.”
Shock had Willa staring stupidly. She didn’t look anything like Shay. Shay had been blonde and flamboyant, with curves for days and a wardrobe that was more costume than clothing. “My shoes are sparkling,” she heard herself say vaguely.
Nan surveyed them with sympathy. “Yeah.” She wiggled her own toes inside a pair of comfortably worn Birkies. “Too bad about that.”
“I like the sparkly shoes,” Eli offered.
“Who are you?” Nan asked.
“Eli Walker.” He stuck the champagne bottle back in the ice bucket and held out his hand. “Gerte slapped my face off a few days back.”
“That was you?” Nan tossed the doughnut hole into her mouth and shook with her now-free hand.
“That was me.”
“Well, you did blow up the Dumpster and Peter’s resort.”
“That actually wasn’t me.”
“No?” Nan’s penciled-on brows climbed. “Lainey said it was.”
“Lainey said she thought it might’ve been Eli,” Willa said.
“Why would she think that?” Eli asked.
“Because she threw herself at you in a tizzy of sexual frustration, you said no and she didn’t take rejection like a lady.” Nan smirked. “And this is Gerte’s daughter we’re talking about. Probably packs a decent punch.”
Georgie said, “She does. I danced with her date at our junior prom and found out for myself.”
“Georgie? When did you get here?” Willa frowned at her. “I thought you only appeared out of the blue when I was dressed inappropriately.”
“Please. There aren’t enough hours in the day.” Georgie flicked back a shimmering sheet of white-gold hair, straight as rain and twice as slick. She leaned down to kiss Nan’s cheek. “Hey, Gran. Enjoying the champagne?”
“I’m no Bianca fan but I’ll give credit where it’s due. The girl doesn’t cheap out on the alcohol.”
Eli said, “Who’s Bianca, and why aren’t we fans?”
“She’s my mom,” Georgie said. “And I am a fan, thanks.”
“My daughter-in-law,” Nan said, and her mouth soured. “Diego’s mother.” She jerked her helmet of hair toward the center of the gallery, where Bianca stood chatting. It was like looking at Georgie twenty-five years from now. Her hair just brushed her shoulders, an expensive swing of honey-gold lightly streaked with silver. Diego’s Angel hung on the wall behind her, exactly where it always had, but a second, sheet-draped frame hung beside it now.
“Hey, is that Diego’s Angel?” Eli asked. “I’ve never seen it in person.” He tipped his head and frowned. “What’s under the sheet next to it?”
Nan’s lips spread in a tight smile. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Georgie sent her a bland look. “It’ll be a revealing evening, I’m sure.”
A few yards away, Gerte was chatting with Sarah Schnickle from the Gilded Fish gift shop, and her head popped up like a hunting dog coming to point. “Revealing?” Gerte left Sarah without a word and stalked over to them. “In what way, Georgie? Because I swear on all that’s holy, if you brought me out here to look at porn—”
“For crying out loud, Gerte.” Nan sighed. “Nobody’s going to expose you to porn. Some of the stuff is probably R-rated, but Addy’s already agreed to keep it in the Diego After Dark collection, which they’re clearly advertising as an after-hours, ticketed-patrons-only showing. It’s not going to drive God-fearing families off Main Street.”
“We’ve got it all set up already, right through there.” Georgie pointed at the white-curtained doorway she’d taken Willa through a few days earlier, and smiled serenely. “In case your curiosity gets the better of you.”
“I’m hardly curious about your brother’s smutty drawings.” Gerte sniffed. “I would, however, be very interested to know what Bianca’s got under that sheet next to Diego’s Angel.”
“Why?” Willa asked. “It’s Addy’s painting. It’s Addy’s business. If it isn’t dirty, why do you care so much what it is?”
Gerte’s eyes flew to her, then widened. “Good lord, Willa, is that you? Look at all that hair and…” Those eyes fell to Willa’s chest. “…everything.” She blinked and dragged her gaze back to Willa’s face. “Where on earth have you been hiding it all?”
“That’s what I asked,” Nan crowed and poked her empty champagne glass at Eli again. “Hit me again, young man.” Eli obligingly refilled her glass.
“Under her abysmal fashion sense,” Georgie said and pointed at Willa’s knees. “Look, she has legs, too.”
Willa breathed and thought desperately of her thinnie. Eli put his hand in the small of Willa’s back and grinned. “This must be the henchmaid you’ve been telling me about.”
Nan snickered. Georgie lifted one perfect eyebrow. “Henchmaid?”
“I’m sure I meant bridesmaid,” Willa said innocently. “But yes, this is Georgie Davis, Addy’s maid of honor, Nan’s granddaughter, Diego’s sister and my closet’s arch enemy.”
“Eli Walker,” he said and held out a friendly hand. “Professional hiker,
owner of the face Gerte slapped silly and Willa’s date. I think we’ve actually met before. I was holding a dish tub at the time, though, so you might not remember.”
“I remember,” Georgie murmured, frowning. “You’re really Willa’s date?”
“I am.”
Willa’s cheeks felt hot but she kept the thinnie firmly in her mind and shrugged lightly.
Georgie stared. “But you’re a man.”
“Oh, right.” Eli snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “I understand you thought Willa was a lesbian.”
Nan waved that off. “We all thought Willa was a lesbian.”
“Not that my sexuality is anybody’s business,” Willa pointed out.
Georgie snorted. “A town this size? Your sexuality is everybody’s business.” She turned to her grandmother. “Nan, you’ve got a newspaper. Write a story or something. Willa’s dating a man.” She blinked, struck. “Hell, Willa’s dating.”
Gerte was still staring wordlessly at Willa. Her eyes dropped to Willa’s sparkly sandals then drifted back up to her face. “My stars, Willa, you look just like your mother! It’s like Shay come back to life.”
“She’s not dead, Gerte,” Willa said. “She just took off.”
“Mmm,” Gerte murmured noncommittally. “Speaking of your father—”
“I wasn’t.”
“—I hear he’s back in town?”
Willa was saved from answering when Georgie lifted a hand and waved to Addy who was speaking to somebody on the other side of the white curtain dividing the public space from the private. “Addison! Come over here and meet Willa’s date!” she shouted. “It’s a man!”
Conversation died and every face swung her way. Horror rose inside her — she definitely shouldn’t have let Georgie live — and she lifted her champagne glass for a fortifying slug. Beside her Eli chuckled, then leaned down to brush a wisp of hair away from her hot cheek.
Addy craned her neck and blinked at Eli. She gave Willa big eyes and a thumbs up. Eli gave her an amused finger-wave.
“That’s the bride-to-be, I assume?”
“That’s the one,” Willa muttered, mortified.
Addy pointed at Georgie and jerked her head toward the center of the gallery. She made an exaggerated sorry face at Willa, who waved it away.
“Showtime,” Georgie said. “That’s my cue.” She scooped up a glass of champagne and drifted off in the direction of the draped painting.
Eli watched her go, then turned to gaze down at Willa. “You’re not the villain of this story, Willa,” he decided. “They don’t hate you.”
“No?” She smiled up at him fiercely. “What do you call this kind of systematic public shaming?”
He smoothed his hand over the hair spilling down her back and smiled sympathetically. “Family.”
She stared up at him in mute shock.
“They give you shit all the time, sure, but just watch them circle the wagons if somebody else tries it.” He drifted his knuckles down the line of her cheek and lifted a shoulder. “It makes no sense, I know, but that’s family for you.”
She closed her mouth. She suspected it was gaping. Was that really how family worked? They’d hurt you endlessly and right up close, but protect you from any minor hurt a stranger could launch at you from across the moat? Finally she shook her head. “Not my family.”
Her family had only gotten half the memo, if that. They believed in hurting you right up close. Protecting you from strangers? Not really on the agenda.
“Not the one you grew up in, no. I believe that.” He dropped a companionable arm around her shoulders. Why was he touching her so much? And why was she letting him? But the weight of his arm was warm and comforting and she felt safe under it. And she’d been unsafe too often to reject even the illusion. “But you have this family, too.” He nodded at the gallery full of people, watching with naked interest as Eli touched her. As Willa allowed it. “And they don’t hate you.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? A forlorn yearning threaded through her skepticism. She didn’t need to be loved, but it would be nice not to be hated.
“I’m a Zinc,” she said simply, and killed the yearning with cold, brutal logic. “It’s not my fault but believe me, I’m hated.”
“I don’t believe that.”
She smiled bitterly. “You should.”
CHAPTER 22
THE CLEAR TINKLE of a spoon tapping on crystal cut through the hum of conversation and the gallery fell silent. Eli turned with everybody else to the center of the room where the woman who was unmistakably Georgie’s mother stood gazing out over the crowd with patrician satisfaction. Diego’s Angel hung behind her left shoulder, and the rest of the family stood on the other side of the frame, their backs to the sheet-draped mystery canvas that held everybody’s attention. Georgie stood nearest her mother, then came Addy, the real-life angel Diego had painted. She was less perfect than the woman on the canvas but so radiantly happy that the painting faded in comparison. Which probably had something to do with the man holding her hand.
Jackson Davis was obviously the groom-to-be in Willa’s unholy bridal situation, and the eldest Davis brother, though he had nothing of his family’s tall, angular elegance. He was about six feet, if that, but built like an oak tree and probably just as easy to move. If Eli remembered correctly, he was also Devil’s Kettle’s fire chief.
“Welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for coming.” Bianca Davis clasped elegant hands loosely at her waist, a woman confident in her authority and comfortable in the spotlight. “Devil Days kicks off tomorrow, and I know you’ve all taken time you can’t spare to be here tonight. I want you to know how much we appreciate your support. Tomorrow we’ll unveil a collection of Diego Davis canvases never before shown in public, a collection that tells Diego’s story in full, from the talented boy he was to the mature master he became.”
She paused, grief passing over her face like a cloud sliding across the sun. Addy stepped forward to take her hand. She was a curly little riot of nutmeg hair and creamy skin next to Bianca’s cool elegance but there was no mistaking the affection between them. The smile Addy gave her was a miracle of warmth and encouragement, and it melted away a stiffness Eli hadn’t even been aware of in Bianca’s posture. She didn’t smile back but turned to face the crowd once more.
“It’s fitting, I think, to tell his story in canvases. Diego painted the way the rest of us breathe. It was his oxygen. He didn’t understand his own heart until he poured it out in oil and sweat on the canvas. And for that reason, we’ve kept a number of his works private. They were simply too revealing, and our loss was still too new. Some of his works, however, we weren’t even aware of.”
A murmur ran through the crowd again, and the air went electric, as if the lightning gathering above the bluffs outside were suddenly inside the room.
“As I’m sure you all remember, our family suffered a number of unfortunate accidents earlier this year, beginning with a fire in our carriage house.”
It occurred to Eli suddenly that he remembered that fire. It had been late spring and Eli had just peeled off the Superior Hiking Trail hoping to find enough work to replace his failing camp stove. Not that he was broke. His Forest Service job came with a paycheck but as far as Eli was concerned, it was just one more stubborn root connecting him to his old life. And he didn’t want to even remember the past, let alone finance the present with it. So his salary sat in the bank collecting interest while Eli survived day to day on the grill skills his mother had insisted were forever.
He’d been busing tables at the Wooden Spoon when the carriage house had gone down, and though he didn’t talk much, he heard plenty. He’d gotten the distinct impression that Devil’s Kettle was dubious about just how accidental that fire had been. He’d also overheard more than a little sympathy for the youngest Davis kid, who was rumored to be responsible for it. The kid might look just like Diego but that doesn’t mean he can paint like Diego, not that Bianca wants to hear it. If
she was my mom, I might be tempted to burn something down myself.
“Addison risked her life to rescue from that fire a canvas of which I had previously been unaware,” Bianca said. “A canvas that undeniably puts Diego in his rightful place as one of the brightest lights of his generation. A canvas that also chronicles his descent into addiction, infidelity, guilt and shame. He named it Broken.”
She stopped, swallowed visibly. Addy squeezed her hand and took over.
“Unlike Bianca, I knew Broken existed. But the subject matter was so raw, so painful, that Diego and I agreed to keep it private so long as our marriage endured.” Grief crept into her smile but didn’t dim it. She simply shone brighter. Eli was a little mesmerized. “Addiction stole his life before we resolved our marriage, and I spent the next couple of years trying to find my way. Trying to find my place. Eventually I found it.”
She shifted that smile to Jax, who returned it with a slow devotion that Eli looked away from. It was so richly intimate that he felt like a voyeur just seeing it.
“My place is here, with you. I’m a Davis, twice over by next year, and I finally feel like I’m in a steady enough place to tell the rest of Diego’s story. He didn’t love me by the end. He didn’t love anything more than his addictions, or at least that was what I thought. But I’ve studied this canvas over the past months. I’ve really looked at it with fresh eyes and a fresh heart, and I know now that Diego did love me. We weren’t in love anymore but he loved me nonetheless. And he hated what his addiction had done to me. What it had done to him. What it had stolen from us, from the world. Diego’s story isn’t a happy one but it’s true. It’s beautiful, it’s bloody and it’s real. It gives, it takes, it hurts and it heals. In short, it was exactly like him. Broken is his final chapter, and it’s brilliant. We hope we’ve given it the context here that it needs to shine.”
