by Jenny Rabe
“A few months.” Cambria looked around. “What about you? Do you live around here?”
Brian shook his head, warning bells pinging in his head. No personal information.
This is how he’d met Violet. Innocent and sweet, she had met him at a mutual friend’s house, seeming friendly. They’d had an immediate attraction he had thought. But weeks later, after she’d discovered he was a multi-billionaire, there was no looking back. Her greediness had gotten the best of her and nearly destroyed his career. He wouldn’t let that happen again.
“No, I was just taking . . . my dog for a walk before practice.” The less she knew about him, the better.
Her phone buzzed right then, and she sighed. “Sorry, hang on.”
Despite himself, he smiled. “Let me guess. Your mom?”
Cambria smiled and turned. “Let me call you in a bit, Mom.”
Brian studied her as she tried to end the phone call. He didn’t know what that was like, having a mother to talk to all the time. His had abandoned him a year after he was born, leaving his dad to pick up the pieces.
Brian tried not to hear her mom’s well-check questions, but it was difficult.
Halfway through their conversation, she turned back to give him an apologetic smile. Finally she hung up the phone. “Sorry. If I don't answer right away, she'll keep calling.”
Brian widened his eyes. “That's . . . nice.”
Cambria laughed loudly. “Not really. She worries too much. I’m doing fine.”
He checked her out head to toe. She looked cute in her paint-splotched Keds, not exactly running shoes, but she hadn't really been running. He had. She looked fine to him. Too fine. He flicked the dog's leash. It was time to move on.
“I better let you get back to your walk.”
Cambria shifted from foot to foot, and he wondered if she knew he was being aloof. “Well, it was nice seeing you again.”
Brian smiled at her attempts to move past the uncomfortable silence. “Yeah. Much better when I’m not ramming into you.”
She laughed, a tinkling sound that was becoming familiar to him. “Agreed. Maybe next time we’ll be going the same direction.”
He shook his head. Next time? He didn’t need to like her even more. “Uh, yeah. Maybe.”
She gave him a tentative smile. “Enjoy your run.”
Brian nodded and started backing away. He felt a strong but ridiculous urge to ask for her number. There was something there, or he wouldn't be so bothered. Brian growled to himself. Of course he shouldn't ask for her number. That would be the opposite of what he was trying to do.
He turned back one last time. She'd turned around to look at him as well. California was closer to Arizona. Did she recognize him from the papers? Or was she attracted to him? The thought sent an unwanted flutter to his chest. Would it really be so bad if he was interested? She didn’t look like the type that would date him just to exploit him on the national news.
An uncomfortable heat rushed through him. He hadn’t thought that would happen with Violet either, but it had. He whipped around and sped up his pace, practically dragging Sunny with him.
Maybe if they met again, not at the park, it would be a sign that he should give her a chance. He smiled to himself as he thought of seeing her around Harker Heights. It was nowhere as big as LA, but still unlikely they would see each other anywhere but the park.
He had nothing to worry about.
Chapter Five
Cambria
It had been a bonus to see Brian at the park. Since he didn’t have a scheduled practice, and she wasn’t sure how much progress she was going to make. The pictures on her phone of Brian didn’t even compare to what she could see in person. Last night, she’d finished two paintings before bed. But when she’d woken up, the inspiration was gone.
She’d gone to the park that afternoon, looking into other faces, hoping that seeing Brian the day before had broken that spell. She sketched a father waiting for his daughter at the end of a slide and when it came to drawing his face, the pencil stalled.
She growled and kept the pencil moving. She closed her eyes and pictured Brian’s face. It had been less than twenty-four hours, but she had enough of his facial features memorized that she thought she could pull it off. The softness of his eyes, the curve of his jaw.
She opened her eyes only to find two black eyes, drawn like a toddler. They weren’t even elementary kid level.
Nope. She needed to see Brian’s face.
And then on her way back to the house, she’d seen him running toward her with his dog. At least he didn’t seem as interested in her this time. In fact, he barely seemed to want to talk to her. But then when she’d turned around, he’d been watching her.
She practically ran back to her house to sketch his face before she forgot, etching out the little details she’d noticed this time. A tiny scar above his mouth, maybe from shaving, and a freckle right under his left ear. These tiny details made his face even more interesting to her.
She sketched quickly, the details in his face coming to her memory and speaking to her fingers. His dark brows, the curve of his smile, they all seemed so familiar. She stared at the final sketch when she finished. In less than five minutes, she’d done what she couldn’t do in two hours.
She dug into the painting of the couple on the swing. This morning, she had started the woman’s face and it irked her that the man’s face remained blank and unspoken for. She happily filled in his face, not taking all of Brian’s features exactly, but blending them into a mesh of a couple of people she’d seen that day.
Brian’s scar above his mouth, a man’s nose, Mr. Walker’s eyes with the tiny, old crinkles in the corners. Though some of the features weren’t as perfect as Brian’s, they seemed to fit the painting well.
At first she’d made the couple young, but the more she looked at it, the more she wanted a seasoned couple, one who’d grown old together, lived a long life, shared memories and children and laughter and sadness. She streaked the woman’s hair with gray and increased the wrinkle lines in her face. When she finished, she couldn’t have been more happy. These paintings weren’t just about the young. More than anything, she wanted to see people in their old age and still very happy with their lives.
Cambria sloshed the paintbrush happily in the paint, excited to finish another painting. A whole painting usually took over two weeks to finish, but since there were only faces left to do, she’d finish in no time.
Her phone buzzed with a call from her landlord. That was never a good thing. She answered the phone with some hesitation.
“Hello?” She wasn’t late on her payments, though she wasn’t sure how she would pay next month. But he didn’t know that.
“Hey, Cambria. It’s George.”
“Hi, is everything okay? I sent my payment last week.”
He chuckled. “Yes, I received it. No, this is about something else.”
Worry flooded through Cambria. It wasn’t hard to find a house in Harker Heights, but it was hard to find something in her price range. Dirt cheap. “Oh? What’s up?”
George cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t mean to stir things up. I know you just moved here and all.”
Cambria gulped. He was going to push her out of the house, and they were going to move back in. She couldn’t go back to her mom’s, and Arizona’s house market was way out of her budget.
“Have you liked living at the house?”
Of course she did. For something affordable, everything had been maintained well and she had plenty of space. “Yes, I do.”
“Well, I’m glad. Then you’ll be the first to know. We’ve decided to sell the house.”
Cambria blinked back the tears she felt coming. “How much time before you put the house up for sale?”
“A month maybe. We’d like to get going on it right away. Would you be interested in buying? We’d take what you’ve spent so far off the total cost and sell it for a fair price.”
“T
hat’s generous, but I can’t right now.” There was no way she could buy a house right now, much less rent another one.
George clucked his tongue in disappointment. “That’s too bad, but I understand. Just wanted to offer before we make things public. The house will need to be shown. You might want to tidy up a little in the next few weeks.”
Cambria looked around. The two finished paintings had been hung, the others lined the halls, and paint spills and splatters were everywhere. She’d have to repaint her art room for sure. Depression loomed overhead, ready to break her resolve to climb out of her funk.
“Thanks for the heads up.”
She hung up the phone, frustration kicking in. She was finally pulling herself together and now she’d have to make another change. But first she needed money.
Walking down the hall, she looked at the two finished paintings. Which piece of her heart should she sell first? She couldn’t bear for them to hang in another person’s house after so many months of keeping her company. Each one was a piece to her recovery. Selling them away might ruin everything.
She wasn’t even sure how to go about spreading the word about her art. The Phoenix Art Institute had hired her after graduation, and the orders came to her without so much as a phone call. How was she going to sell these paintings in time to make enough to afford a new place? She could only hope it wouldn’t sell fast.
She settled into her art room with the sketch of Brian in her hands. The kind lines in his face softened the rough feelings tumbling inside her. Everything would be okay. Somehow, it would. For now, she had to move forward.
Her phone pinged with an email. She checked it and sighed. It was an invitation to attend a grief meeting.
Her mom promised to stop bugging her if she would just sign up to get meeting notices from the group that met at the Harker Heights library. She wasn’t ready then, and she wasn’t sure she was ready now. But, she did need to go shopping for food.
She showered and dressed, then came downstairs and cleaned the fridge up a bit to make room for some groceries. After finishing off the last of the breakfast casserole, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door. Before she turned the door knob, she stopped in her tracks.
It wasn’t the frustration with her progress or her shallow bank account that had kept her cooped up inside all these weeks. Those things were glaringly still present in her life.
No, it was the photo framed on the side of the door where she hung her keys.
A picture of Shawn in his military uniform, forever there to remember. Remember the good times, remember the bad times, remember all that she had lost. She never thought being engaged to a soldier would be a big deal, but after his last deployment, he never returned the same.
Cambria stared at his picture, her eyes blurring. She wasn’t coping well. She wasn’t coping at all.
In addition to the disappointment of losing her house, the pain in her heart seemed unbearable today. Tonight would be a good night to give the grief meeting a try, and she owed it to herself.
Chapter Six
Cambria
Cambria sat outside the library for twenty minutes, trying to convince herself to go inside. It wasn’t very big compared to the one in Arizona where she had taught art classes. Those had been wonderful days. While Shawn was gone, Cambria worked as a volunteer, teaching art lessons.
She missed those days.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up without thinking. “Hey, Mom.”
Sure enough, her mom’s voice sounded in her ears, loud and cheerily optimistic. “Are you standing in the parking lot, thinking about if you should go in?”
Cambria rolled her eyes. I should have never told her I was coming tonight. “No.”
“Fine, are you sitting?”
Cambria opened the car door and stood. “No.”
“Will you go into the meeting already? I can practically see you standing next to your car, waiting for something to happen. You’ve got your groove in painting. Now it’s time to take a look at your heart. You moved to Texas to make a change, and now it’s time to get your feet moving in the right direction.”
That was enough of a pep talk for Cambria. “Fine, Mom. I’m going.”
“Call you later, sweetie.” Her voice took on a sugary tone. “I love you.”
Cambria hit her toe against the car’s wheel. “Love you too. Bye, Mom.” She took a deep breath, hoping it pumped her full of courage as she headed inside. A sign directed her to the right library meeting room. The room was small, with a circle of chairs at the front and a table of coffee and refreshments at the back.
“Welcome,” a woman said, standing by the edge of the door. Her bright white teeth contrasted with her beautiful dark skin, eyes, and hair. She wore an ankle-length, wrap dress in muted colors of brown, navy, and orange. She was lovely. “Thank you for coming. I’m Jancy.”
Cambria looked down at her outfit. Possibly one of the only adults who still dressed like she lived in the ’90s, she wore carpenter khakis overalls, a plain orange T-shirt, and her paint-speckled Keds. Her hair was still damp and a pencil was currently pinning the hair behind her ears on her wayward side that never laid flat.
“I feel a little underdressed,” Cambria said in a small voice.
Jancy waved away her concern. “Now don’t you worry. I dress up only because the library makes me. You’re perfect just the way you are. What was your name?”
Jancy’s words slid off of her tongue with such a Texan drawl, Cambria had to repeat the words in her mind before she could answer.
“Cambria Wicker.”
“Oh, you’re Donna’s daughter. She calls every once in a while to check in with me.”
Cambria tapped her tennis shoes. “I bet she does.”
Jancy laughed and patted her arm. “She means well, but it looks like you are doing just fine on your own.”
Cambria stared into her kind, brown eyes and felt like telling her everything right then and there.
“Hey, Jancy.” A tall, skinny man came up behind Cambria, stealing her moment away. The man was in his late fifties. He was hunched over a bit, and had a wide mustache and a smile. “Good to see you.” He leaned over and kissed Jancy’s cheek, and she giggled.
“Jim, what have I told you about kissing me with a mustache?” A mischievous look replaced his disappointment at being scolded.
Jancy took his arm and moved him so that the three of them formed a semi-circle. “Jim, I was just getting to know Cambria when you walked in. Cambria, this is Jim. He’s one of our old-timer guests.”
Jim nodded. “Yep. My son died in the war a couple of years ago, and after my wife died a year later, I’ve kind of stuck around.”
Cambria lifted her eyebrows. She still didn’t know what to say to people who lost loved ones. After a year of mourning her own loss, she hadn’t found any words to make things better. “I’m sorry.” Her voice broke as she thought of losing Shawn again.
Jim’s face filled with sympathy, and she knew she’d made the wrong decision in coming.
Cambria headed back for the door. “I don’t think I’m ready—”
A man with a too-familiar, beautifully symmetrical smile came striding toward her. Cambria stopped moving and stared. What were the odds that Brian attended grief meetings?
His eyes lit up. “Cambria!”
Cambria swallowed down the tight feeling in her throat. “Uh, yeah. Hey.”
He nodded. “You come to these meetings too? I mean, this is only my third time, but I miss sometimes.”
Cambria shoved her hands into her pockets and swiveled to see Jancy watching her. Jim had found a chair in the circle. She turned back to Brian. “This is my first time.”
Brian’s army-green eyes were more of a palm-tree shade tonight. “Well, I’m glad you came.”
Cambria’s insides turned to mush. If he only knew what meeting him had done for her. She’d finished four paintings since meeting him and staying would give her the perfect excuse t
o see his face up close.
“Well, I’ll see you over there.”
Cambria nodded and watched as he chose a seat next to Jim.
“Glad you decided to stay,” Jancy murmured to her, then greeted someone new at the door.
Before anyone else could steal her desired seat, Cambria chose a chair across from Brian. Under the artificial lights, his facial features looked even more detailed.
Somehow focusing on him eased the tension in her shoulders. It was true that Brian’s face was attractive, but she studied it for many other reasons. His expressions changed in a flash, and she found even more material watching him interact with others as they arrived.
As he greeted a couple introduced as Chris and Sally, a small dimple in his right cheek showed.
Sally’s long, light hair covered most of her face, and she only swiped it to the side when someone asked her a question. She had a beautiful peach complexion and a rosy, upturned nose. With wide blue eyes and a tiny mouth, she reminded Cambria of one of her childhood china dolls.
Her husband’s personality seemed to offset her silence. Loud, boisterous, and friendly, Chris seemed to liven up the meeting in no time. He seemed like the teddy bear type. Big mouth. Big heart.
The last person to join their meeting was Arthur. He seemed to have more white hair in his scraggly eyebrows than he did on his head.
Arthur gave Brian a fist bump with his cane. His pants were pulled up a little too high, his shirt a little disheveled, and he wore a sly grin that immediately made Cambria like him.
Jancy caught Cambria smiling at him and wagged a finger in his direction. “Don’t be fooled. Arthur has a wicked, naughty cane. He doesn’t use it to walk like most people.”
“I‘ve never tripped anyone with my cane,” Arthur said indignantly. He tried to sit up to prove his point but ended up slouching lower after the attempt.
“Must be because you haven’t found the right opportunity,” Chris said.