“Oh my god,” Lexi whispers next to me, staring at the painting on my dad’s easle. “Who is she?”
“His sister. That’s the last thing he ever worked on, didn’t even get to finish it. She passed when I was a kid.”
“She’s beautiful. The way he painted her eyes is just…it’s incredible. So lifelike.”
I walk into the room to my station, and that’s when I remember why dad’s palette is on the floor. Cans and brushes litter the area, violently scattered around the room. Splatters of paint go up the wall, some even reaching the roof. The piece I was working on that night lays shredded on the ground, the frame broken like a toothpick. The rage and grief come rushing back to me, crashing against me like waves in a hurricane. I can’t hear anything but the blood pumping through my body while my heart races and I fall to my knees.
Dad.
“I forgot. I forgot I came back. I—” My lungs are tight and I can taste the paint in the air. I’m hyperventilating and I need to get out of here. I shouldn’t be here. Then I see her. She steps in front of me and her hands cup my face, thumbs softly stroking my grown out beard.
“Look at me, not everything else. Focus on me. Tell me what you were making that night.” I stare at her, unable to answer. “It grounds you when you talk about it—about the art and the process—so tell me about it.”
“It was…it was a painting. It was supposed to be for him, a gift. I’d been working on it and kept it covered. He used to tease me that he was going to peek when I walked out of the room, but he never did. He never got to see it.”
“Did you get to finish it?”
“I finished it that night.” I pick up a jagged and splintered piece of wood, running my fingertip over the end as the memories come back in another powerful wave. “We kept wood pieces in a bucket across the room. I’d picked out some that were still in good shape and wanted to make a frame. I’d been working for fourteen hours straight. I was so tired, I passed out on the couch.”
Lexi helps me stand and I toss the wood onto the pile of rubble that sits on top of my bench. I used to keep it so clean, like dad taught me. I blow out a breath and start straightening up the things on the bench. Her hand closes over mine as she picks up the brushes and places them in a nearby cup that—miraculously—hasn’t broken.
“I had trouble when I was a kid, with a lot of things. When I stopped talking, my…my moth…” I take a deep breath, counting slowly down from ten and breathing with her. “My mother wanted to ship me off to some specialist. The night before I was supposed to go, dad found me in his art room, painting. That was the night he packed my things, and we left.”
“He just took you?”
“The paintings he found, the ones I’d done that night, were of my mother. They were of some of the things she did to me. It was my last silent scream for help. She, uhm, she didn’t want a little boy, and she made sure I knew it. She hit me with things, anything she could find. She would…do things to humiliate me in public. Traumatize the shit out of me. When she got pregnant with Elle, things got worse. Mom had a brother, sick fucker, and she let him—” The brush in my hand snaps and I drop it, jumping from the noise.
“You’re safe. I’m here. You only need to talk about what you can. Don’t force yourself, Jamie.”
“She got pregnant right before their divorce and she did it on purpose, to trap my dad. She had all the papers drawn up and was just waiting to spring on him as soon as she knew the baby was healthy. It was all about her fucking company. I still don’t understand it, something about shares that would go to her heirs or something.”
There’s a sniffle from somewhere behind me and realize Chase and Natalie are there. Not to judge me or force me to move on, but to show their support and be there if I need them. Lexi is right. They’re my support system and it’s a damn good one.
“Dad realized she was the reason I stopped talking. He found the bruises and scars just after we left. I think I was six, and no one knew because Mom was good at hiding them or blaming me for them. She was trying to use me to get leverage in the divorce. Courts tend to side with the mothers and she could lay it on thick, but around that time, the cops found out about her brother. Dad finally had the upper hand, even though he hated why. He could have taken the money and had power over the company. Instead, he made a stupid agreement with her that basically gave her everything she wanted so long as he got to keep custody of me. He tried for Elle, too. He tried so many times to get Elle. Especially after he found out mom had shipped her off to some fucking boarding school in the middle of nowhere…Switzerland, I think. I don’t know.”
“You’re doing great, Jamie. Take your time.”
“After Dad and I moved, he found me a doctor who worked with me while Dad started studying more about art therapy. Eventually, they taught me how to paint my feelings.” Muscle memory has taken over as my hands move around the table, putting things where they once belonged, orderly and neat. “My father was also the one that taught me art was messy, like life. He saw how calming it was when I’d start putting everything away. I was methodical about it, like it was soothing. Everything had a place, everything but me.”
She doesn’t ask me directly, but I can sense the question when her hand runs along my side, over the scars. I nod and she gives me a tender smile that says I’ve said enough for now. I don’t have to tell her which household items became weapons in my own mother’s hands or the words she wielded just as sharply. I’ve opened the door; it doesn’t mean everything needs to rush out at once.
Tears run down my cheeks, but I turn to her anyway, cupping her face for just a moment before I pull her close and sob into her shoulder. It doesn’t hurt the way I thought it would. I know it’s because of her and the way she helped me through this. She’s given me a safe space, somewhere I’m allowed to feel what I need to. She’s my safe space.
I pull back and look at her, and that’s when it hits me. In a frenzy, I rush around the room, looking under everything until I spot the pile of canvases, already mounted and ready to go. I find one that’s undamaged, then I scrounge through drawers and boxes until I find a full set of charcoals my dad gave me. I drop to my knees with the canvas and rip open the pack, mumbling to myself.
“James?”
“The eyes.”
“What?”
“EYES! You said her eyes, the way Dad did her eyes. I fucked up the eyes. Every time I draw you, it’s the eyes I get wrong. It’s too much light!”
She kneels next to me, her hand on my back as my hands race over the fabric. I hear her breath stop as she watches me work. As she watchesherselfappearing on the canvas.
“I couldn’t see it before. I couldn’t get it right.”
“See what?”
