by Anne Eliot
“But he’s fine. He’s happy. He’s safe. I’ve done what I came here to do. I found him a safe home, I got a good job, and I’ve got an offer for a long-term position at a very fancy hotel. They can’t just tear us apart like that if I’ve got all of the things I need in place. Can they?”
“The caseworker said the ultimate objective would be to allow you to eventually be together, of course. But you’d need a full and stable job with proof of stability, you’d need money in the bank, and you’d need a real home, plus a way to make sure his needs are properly provided for. Maybe you do have all that you say you have, but sadly, the process of reviewing cases like yours could take almost a year or longer. You’d need money and at that point, yes, you’d need a lawyer. Frankly, the only thing that would save you now would be if your dad could pull a miracle and return home to fix this whole mess.”
Her words feel like a punch in the throat.
I can’t even breathe anymore, so I start begging through gasps, “But, Joanie. I just said we were coming home! I said, I’m sorry. Why can’t Sage at least stay with you until I figure things out? Please. Joanie. Please.”
“He can’t. We, me and the boys, have finally emotionally distanced ourselves from you two and what’s happened to our lives. You and Sage refuse to accept the possibility that your father will never return. But we’ve had a funeral since you’ve been gone. My kids and I are grieving the real loss of my husband and their daddy. They’re finally coming to terms and I won’t have your unfounded hopes of your own father making it home, messing with their heads anymore.”
“They’re only MIA, Joanie. They’re MIA! They are coming back. Our father is coming back.” I go limp against the wall and sink down it.
“And this conversation is exactly why you can’t come back to my house. You and Sage need grief counseling.”
My voice goes as icy as hers. “We do not. We’re not sad about anything, just worried. We need a worry counselor.”
“It’s your life, Robin, whatever you believe, whatever the outcome. You will have to face the idea that you two, on paper, are orphans.”
“Shut up.” I’d have shouted it, but her words have buckled my lungs so those words came out as only shredded, choking rasps. “Don’t you ever say that to me again until we’re both standing next to a casket. A real casket. Not a fake empty one like what you buried. God. I hate that you said that to me.”
“I hate that you can’t accept the truth.”
For the first time in a long time, I’m bawling. I sink onto the floor with the phone clutched in my hand. My cries had brought Angel into the kitchen, along with Mrs. Perino. I can tell by the dark circles under both of their eyes that they’ve spared Sage and I one last night of sleep while she and Angel probably stayed up all night talking about this.
Us.
Me.
How I didn’t tell them the whole truth.
How crappy our life truly is right now.
How much trouble I’ve created for everyone.
I confirm my fears by assessing their devastated, worry-laden expressions.
Joanie’s voice is cracking on the other end of the phone, like my tears have gotten to her. “I’m sorry, Robin. The kids are awake and in the kitchen with me now. We can’t continue this part of the conversation. You do have funds coming in from your dad’s service to the country. And if you come to your senses and do everything right, you will be able to accept your university scholarship and you will build a home with Sage eventually. And don’t you blame one bit of this on me, young lady. I didn’t make my dear, beloved husband and your father go M-I-A. I wasn’t the one who ran away before we could really talk through the details. You scared the hell out of everyone. You’re the one who made everything worse.”
I stop crying, my tears are replaced with white hot rage. “Running was stupid and dangerous; I see that now. But we were fine. And we found a real family and learned what real love and compassion feels like. My one mistake was calling you so you could trace where we are. I won’t stop trying to fix this situation while we wait for my dad to come home. Sage is not going into any sort of protective custody if I can help it. He’s protected. He’s with me. And that’s where he’s going to stay, even if he and I have to disappear into the next black hole. Only, we won’t make the same mistakes twice. I’ll never call you ever again, that’s for sure.”
“Robin. Don’t you dare do anything else stupid.” Joanie’s voice grows harsher. “You’ve been informed by me exactly what is supposed to legally happen. You must understand, kidnapping is a felony. I can guarantee they will never give you custody of Sage should you try to run away again. They were going to put an Amber Alert for you two if we couldn’t reach you personally today.”
“Amber Alert?”
“Yes. But if you stay put, they’ll call it off. Do you hear me?”
My hand goes sweaty around the sides of the phone and the room spins around me as bile burns the back of my throat. “You know I’ve done whatever it takes to keep Sage safe and with me. You know how much I love him and how much he loves me.”
“Save it for the judge, Robin.” She doesn’t call me out like she usually does about me being a spoiled, irrational teenager that knows nothing about the world, instead answering softly in a shaking voice, “Mrs. Perino says you don’t have any money.”
“I’m about to get paid,” I say, hoping that it’s true. Wondering already if I can figure out a way to have Gregory and Mrs. Felix bring the cash they owe me to my party today.
“Promise me you’re done running away, Robin.”
My throat constricts tighter. I want to shout that I hate her for reporting us. I want to grab my car keys and yank Sage straight out of bed so we can pull out of here in our pajamas right now.
But instead—because this is all my fault, because of the sorrow in Mrs. Perino’s eyes plus the fear on Angel’s face, and because I have only ever sworn to do the right thing for my little brother—I wipe the tears away on my sleeve, and answer, “Where could we possibly go? I won’t run away again. I promise.”
Chapter 33
For Sage’s sake, Mrs. Perino, Angel, and I have managed to put on fake birthday-day smiles ever since I hung up the phone with Joanie.
I couldn’t bear to tell Sage that random people were going to show up and shove him into a car and take him all the way to foster care and, possibly, also arrest me. Until Angel could do some more legal research for me, I’d decided to give my brother a modified version of the truth. My announcement about a return home hardly tripped Sage up at all. That was because I promised we’ll be coming back—and we will.
Someday…
Mrs. Perino had hugged both of us over and over as we told the kid. She’d also promised to try to seek some sort of legal custody for us right away if she could. Sage believed all of it, because he is the kind of kid who simply assumes the best. The idea that Mrs. Perino could so easily be our guardian now, and that he would be allowed to stay here and go to school in Florida until our father comes home, seemed a great solution to our problems. Because I didn’t have any answers as to how or what is going to happen, and because I feel slightly optimistic that the courts aren’t going to trash our whole lives and maybe give us a break, I hardly feel like I’ve lied to him at all.
It’s also made me more determined than ever to protect the Perinos. I know I have to exit this place in a way that leaves Angel, Mrs. Perino and the girls unaffected or noticed by the police or the press. Of course, like Sage, I’d be thrilled to call this place home forever, but even more, I’ll do anything the authorities ask me to do as long as they absolutely don’t stir up the Perino’s past lives because of the trouble I’ve caused.
After all that lying and smiling, I was so tired all I wanted to do was cry, but since that’s not allowed in front of Sage, and certainly not in front of little Anna and Julia who wouldn’t understand, I asked for a birthday gift from them all.
My last lie was saying how I want
ed the chance to paint all day in the cottage. It was a gift everyone was thrilled to give. The kids didn’t want me outside while they decorated for the party, and Mrs. Perino said she didn’t want me in her kitchen peeking at the cake she was making. As for Angel? He simply knew I was down and needed to be alone.
I cried a good thirty minutes straight under my shower-head until I used all the hot water, which is my preferred method of secretive sobbing. Once I was done with that, I lay on my bed wrapped in damp towels, studying the blank ceiling for another half-hour, and finally got dressed and reported to one of Cara’s old easels. I know painting won’t make any of this better, but it will feel great to be doing it after such a long break, and it will make me less of a liar.
I choose one of the smaller canvases Cara left stored in her largest art cupboard and drag it to an easel near the window.
At first the beautifully rendered words in the tree mural Cara made on the walls sidetrack me. This happens often when I’m around work I admire. I get this idea that none of my stuff could ever be as beautiful as what the other artist has created, and that I’m a fraud to sit here and try. Thankfully the blank canvas lures me in and offers the escape I need. My thoughts are already pulling me into the possibilities: What will I do to fill this white rectangle? Which subject and medium will serve to distract me the most from all that hurts right now?
I grab a new pencil, sharpen it, and breathe in the smell of freshly turned wood off the sharpener, waiting until the point of the pencil is sharp but not too sharp, and start to sketch. After placing a few ultra-light, curving lines onto the canvas my throat grows dry in anticipation of how I’ll get to paint over them soon. I pause to pull out my acrylics and squirt a daub of each color onto one of Cara’s old wooden pallets, then fill a few small bowls with water, lining them up on the table next to the easel, along with some cotton rags and my brushes, making sure there’s enough so I won’t have to stop and gather more should I really get rolling.
My heart’s racing now, because it’s been too long since I’ve done this. Too long since I’ve felt the drag of the pencil bumping over canvas, since I dropped a color-tipped brush into water. Returning to the pencil, I sketch and sketch, hardly noticing when I exchange it for a chunk of charcoal, and then for the brushes. I float, pulling colors and the image I’m creating together. I never know what’s coming until it arrives in front of me. A memory comes alive. A fantasy becomes real, breaths of air and whispers of dreams and wishes I never knew I’d thought up all comes through my hands.
I lean back and laugh at what has appeared on the canvas this time.
“Are you really going to finish painting this? Him?” I mutter to myself, eyeing my largest paintbrush. One that I could load up with white—or black—and paint away the face that’s appeared in front of me. The that’s haunted me since the day we met.
“Damn you, Royce Devlin. Could you please get out of my head?” I laugh a little, rejecting the idea of smearing him away. Mostly because even half formed on a flat canvas, that face casts a spell on me. He’s so beautiful. Maybe painting him will purge how I want to stare at him too much. Maybe my brushes will solve the mysteries I know he’s been hiding behind his eyes.
“And so I’ll start with those,” I whisper like I’m talking to him. “Your eyes. What color are they exactly?”
I reach for the smallest brush and spend a few moments mixing little circles of cobalt blue combined with every color I can think of—sea green, baby blue, hints of purple, bits of grey, each time, adding in swirls of white, trying to come up with a combination that mimics his eye color plus the shards of light those eyes exude.
None of my attempts work.
Frustrated, I jump up and pull open drawer after drawer of Cara’s workbench, hoping she’s stockpiled what I’m looking for. I zero in on where she stored her paints, and in the third drawer down I discover an entire row of top quality, unopened metallic acrylics. Yanking out the silver for his eyes, and grabbing the gold in case I need to add it to his skin tones, I rush back to my stool.
This time, it takes only two tries to mix his eye color just right. I know I’m close when my heart races like he’s here in the room with me, and I know I’ve got it right when my throat closes some with that feeling I always get when he’s looking at me.
In seconds, I’ve painted the color into his iris, and it’s so perfect I find that I’m blushing, because it feels like I’ve brought the canvas to life. Next, I reach for pure black and use the same tiny brush to proceed with the outline of his eyes, adding in the squinty-sexy tilt plus draw in those few deeper laugh lines he’s got at the edges. Heart galloping now, I slash in his mocking brows. Use a thicker brush and the very same black to smudge in thick swirls of jet-black hair, then risk placing some of the silver mixed with white on the tips of that hair so it looks like he’s backlit by the moon. I’m almost panting from the effort it takes to hold the brush loaded with silver in just the right way so I don’t overdo my lines.
Realizing I want to do more detail work on the planes of his face, I search again for a pencil. This time I choose the one with the softest lead, made up of half charcoal half oil pastel. It will create thicker lines that won’t be hidden when I add paint. I layer the high parts his cheekbones, and just in case, I go over the brows, defining the edges of those and the eye lines again. Next I strengthen his square chin, and add some muscular cords to his neck, ending the image by dragging one side of his collarbone all the way to his broad shoulder line and then carrying it off the canvas.
I work on his mouth shape next. It takes mad concentration to do perfect justice to the sardonic twists in those sexy, curving lips. When he’s smiling at me exactly how I like—and it’s a real smile, not the one he always wears to hide his thoughts, but a smile I’ve only caught glimpses of when he thinks I’m not looking—I trade the pencil back for my brushes again. Staring at his face, I let the paints, my passion and my emotions take me somewhere far, far away…
I come to consciousness when my spine screams for motion—when my right arm shakes—when my eyes feel like I might go blind from staring in the same direction too long, and when my fingers and hand ache so much that, when I set down the brush, I groan.
Pulling in a breath, I slide off the stool so I can step back to survey the canvas. The acrylics dry fast, which is good, because I already know this one is getting shoved in the back of a closet…right after I’m done staring at it, that is.
Because, Holy cow. God…but…Royce Devlin is so beautiful.
I’ve never done anyone’s face this well. I’ve captured Royce’s hair, his luminous skin, his barely-there rock-star beard. I’ve trapped that intangible, watchful sex-music-and-secrets expression that is his essence. Tilting my head to the side, I say, “I do think it’s the best portrait I’ve ever done.”
I laugh a little at myself for this conversation. “At least this allows me to blatantly look my fill at your beautiful face, doesn’t it? Because I’m sure not allowed to stare like this when you’re actually in the room, now am I?” I laugh again. “Damn the backs of my knees, always going out on me. Even on a flat canvas your presence makes that happen and my chest constricts. I also can’t believe that when I first met you, I wondered who would want to take a selfie with you? Ha. Stupid me. Stupid… dumb… annoying… terrible… rockstar.” I glance around for my phone, wondering if I should take a selfie with my painting. “Oh my God.” I laugh again. “I’m going insane. Aren’t I? Well, who cares. I’ve got real reasons for it now. The world would understand if I snapped.” I sigh. “Except my little brother, that is, and so…” I sigh out, biting my lower lip. “Onward.”
I turn the easel, painting and all, toward the wall, deciding I need to wash my hands, because…damn, but I can’t look at that face anymore. Possibly ever again. “Just why…did I even paint him? Something is so wrong with me…” I mutter, soaping up my hands and watching the bottom of the sink and the bubbles between my fingers light with color as
I rinse.
The floorboards of the cottage creak and I jump, looking up to see Angel watching me. “Sorry. I knocked, but you didn’t answer. Not going well?” he asks, raising a brow as I grab a towel. “There’s a lot of grumbling going on in here.”
“Just mulling over my own insanity and future incarceration,” I try to joke, firing off a cynical smile, taking his outfit. “Dude. You’re in a full suit? Is it princess party time?” I blink, waggling my brows acting like I can’t wait. “I’m getting hungry and I really want to hear you singing happy birthday soon, so I won’t have to hear myself think anymore.”
“Uh. Party. Yeah. There’s uh…problems. A little delay going on.”
“I can sympathize, but don’t worry if you think I’ll be upset if the frosting won’t set or if the Piñata falls down, because even your worst party problem will seem puny after this morning’s cry-fest, right?” I dry my hands and glance over my shoulder with holding the grin as wide as I can.
I thought he’d soften a little and at least smile back by now. But he doesn’t.
He’s clutching a rolled-up newspaper in his hands, and I could swear, for some reason, my comments have made his naturally tanned face go pale. “Look.” He clutches the paper tighter. “I know it’s your birthday and you’ve already had the worst news of your life today, and we’re supposed to leave you alone, but my mom said I better tell you right away. She’s freaking out. All of the guys in the band are freaking out. Mrs. Felix and Gregory have lost their minds. They’ve been on the phone with my mom for over an hour, and—well—I got the job of telling you…”
“What?” I reach for it, but he won’t release it from his clutches until I tug really hard. “What?” I repeat, unrolling it to the front page.
“You know how when it rains, it kind of pours? You’re part of the first article. “There. He points. “Up top.”
