“Whynot?”
“I can’t live on two hundred dollars. I make more than that every day as a lawyer, and I don’t think I’m good enough to sell a painting every day,”shesaid.
“You wouldn’t have to. When I was in the gallery, I was looking around at some of the other paintings. A few had prices of more than ten thousand dollars. You’d only have to sell one a month atthatrate.”
“A professional artist?” She shook her head. “My parents would haveafit.”
“Who cares? Would it make you happy?” heasked.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to disappoint them. But I guess I’ve already done that by losingthecase.”
“At some point, we all disappoint our parents. People aren’tperfect.”
“What did you do to disappoint your parents?” sheasked.
He sighed. Did he really want to tell her the story? Even though the incident had occurred years ago, he could still see the pained looks on his parents’ faces when they’d arrived at the park ranger’s office to collect him and his friends. He really didn’t want to relive it, but after glancing at the forlorn look on Abby’s face, he decided to tell hereverything.
“When I was seventeen, my friends and I drove into Yellowstone,” he paused. “God, this is embarrassing toadmit.”
“What happened?” she askedsoftly.
“We were out joyriding in the truck my father had given me for my birthday. We shouldn’t have been driving so fast and horsing around, butwewere.”
“You were kids,” sheoffered.
“Yeah, but dumb kids. Anyway, I took a corner too hard and the truck went off the road. It was the middle of summer and there were tourists all over the place. We didn’t hit anyone—thank God—but we did manage to knock overatree.”
“That’s bad, but not as bad as losing a case and letting a child murderer go free,”shesaid.
“I wasn’t done with the story,” he said. “The tree fell on a historic building that had been standing for two hundred years. We basically demolished it. My parents had to pay the fine and the truck was totaled. I think that’s the only time I ever remember my dad raising his voice. He wasfurious.”
“I bet,” she said in ablasétone.
He frowned. Maybe it didn’t seem like a big deal to her, but to him it had been the end of the world. Disappointing his parents had been one of the worst things he’d ever done in his life. Sure, it may not have compared in scale to her supposed failure, which he still didn’t consider her fault, but she didn’t have to be so callousaboutit.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I’m not discounting the level of what you did, but no one died.” A tremor entered her voice. “In my case, Edward Lee Drake could go out and killagain.”
“You have to stop accepting blame for the outcome of that case. Unless you did something completely negligent, it wasn’t your fault. If you let this case haunt you, it’s going to ruin your life,”hesaid.
“I don’t know how to get past it,”shesaid.
“Paint.”
“What?”
“How did you feel when you were painting the mountains?” heasked.
“Free.”
“Then you should paint anotherlandscape.”
She bit the edge of her lip as if considering his suggestion. He couldn’t look away from the vulnerability in her eyes. For a moment, he could almost believe he was looking at the child inside her who was too afraid to come out. She needed to recapture the spark that she’d lost. Although he wanted to help her, he wasn’t sure how todoit.
After a few seconds passed, her eyes brightened. “I know what I want topaintnext.”
“Really? What?” he asked. Her sudden flash of enthusiasm warmed his heart. Finally, he was getting somewherewithher.
“Wildlife,” she said. “Something exotic, like a herd of buffalo orabear.”
