"Not often, no. When I have, it's usually been one part of something else; loss, or threat. Although recently, I have been trying." They stood for a long minute.
"I wanted him to kill me," she said abruptly. "That night. It was crazy, but it just swept over me, a lust, like sex but stronger. When he came through your door, it seemed right. Not good, but just the only possible way for it all to end. I knew that after all those years he'd come to finish it, and I so wanted it to end, to be taken out of my hands. I wanted him to kill me," she repeated.
"I'm very glad he did not," said Kate quietly.
Vaun sighed and looked at her glass.
"Yes. I have days now when I begin to feel the same." She smiled. "Tell me about Lee."
So Kate told her about Lee, about the surgeries and the slow recovery, about Lee's mind and spirit, about their friends, about her own decision to return to the work that had nearly cost her lover's life. They sat in the hot stillness of Vaun's deck until the afternoon brought a movement of cool air from off the sea, and eventually they went back inside. Kate stopped in front of one of the canvases that was not of Andy Lewis but rather of a young girl with short brown hair and a missing front tooth.
"Jemma Brand?" she asked.
Vaun nodded, paused, and seemed to come to a decision. She tipped the picture forward and reached for the painting in back of it, and when she slid it out, Lee was in the room, Lee standing on legs that were whole and strong at the railing of the Alcatraz ferry, Lee half-turned to look over her shoulder with the laughter spilling out of her, her mouth poised for speech, her tawny hair tumbling about her face in the wind, the whole brilliant light of her blazing out of her eyes. To a stranger it would be a dazzling portrait; to Kate it sent a jolt through every nerve in her body and left her stunned and speechless.
She turned to Vaun, eyes wide and filling, mouth moving helplessly, and then she was crying against Vaun's bony shoulder, feeling the painter's strong arms around her and hearing the age-old litany of comfort.
"It's all right, Kate, it's all right now."
And though she knew that it was not all right, would never be completely all right, she felt, for the first time, that perhaps it might be.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 364b7bad-4760-47d5-973d-4dea43be5bea
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 17.6.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.56, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Laurie R. King
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A Grave Talent km-1 Page 34
