His Darling Bride (Echoes of the Heart #3)

by Anna DeStefano

  She rubbed at the aching muscles in Bethany’s hand, the ones that always cramped when she was in the middle of a creative binge.

  “Don’t stop,” Bethany groaned, willing to endure her girlfriends’ pushing their way into her current creative crisis, as long as Clair didn’t stop.

  “I doubt you’re going to scare your cowboy away, either.” Clair tended to the pressure point in Bethany’s hand, until Bethany wanted to scream in relief.

  “The next time you see him,” Nicole said, “do you really want to be sporting the dark circles and six-feet-under skin tone of a zombie? How long do you think you can keep this up?”

  “As long as it takes . . .” Bethany sighed, too worn out to keep fighting with her friends. They were just trying to help. And it was entirely possible they knew Bethany better than she knew herself. She winced as Clair hit a particularly tender spot. “Whatever it takes, to show my parents what I see every time I look at the world they gave me, when they agreed to take on the mess that I was at fifteen.”

  She didn’t need to sleep. She didn’t need thoughts of Mike distracting her. She didn’t need to be worrying about what would happen when they finally went out for real. She needed this painting to make sense.

  How did she explain the emptiness inside her where her imagination used to dream in effortless abandon? Or the panic she felt each time it seemed her art would never come back. How did she tell people that if they wanted to worry about something, to worry about who and what she’d become if she lost her creativity for good?

  “If I get too tired later,” she said with renewed determination, “I can crash on one of the cots down the hall for a couple of hours.”

  The loft was equipped with small sleeping areas for residents, alcoves that were little more than dorm rooms. But they were magical havens with blackout curtains and white-noise machines. Artists who needed to recharge could lock the door and grab a few winks whenever they needed to.

  “I have to figure this painting out,” she insisted.

  The three of them studied what she’d done so far.

  Bethany reclaimed her brush from the cluster of rags she used to mix colors on a palette board, thinning hues out, creating custom tints and textures. She’d wanted to capture the Dixon house this time, instead of leaning into another portrait of the family.

  Over the last few months she’d tried and failed to paint her siblings, one by one, and then their parents. She’d also attempted several family groupings—Oliver and Selena and Camille, Dru and Brad, Marsha and Joe and the younger kids. All from photos Marsha had collected over the years. Bethany had wanted to capture each detail. But the perfect reflection of her family that she’d been going for had refused to materialize. Then she’d watched Mike gaze around Marsha and Joe’s living room for the first time . . . and a new idea had sparked to life.

  In her latest canvas she’d gone for an interpretation of the Dixon house, instead of painting an exact replica of the home she loved. From memory alone, she’d create her impression of the magical world that had been her fresh start. She’d wanted viewers to feel what she’d watched Mike take in.

  She’d wanted to capture the love seeping out of every inch of the place, palpable to anyone who entered Marsha and Joe’s home. The acceptance and belonging, and the way her foster parents had made Bethany and her siblings feel instantly welcome. The second chance Marsha and Joe had tirelessly offered to broken lives that were desperate to become whole.

  Bethany had wanted her parents to know what that meant to her, what they meant to her and all of her siblings. Even if she still needed to keep her distance sometimes, the world her foster parents had given to her was absolutely everything she’d dreamed family could be. That was what she’d hoped to bring to life when she’d started painting this morning.

  “I thought you liked things to look more . . .” Clair hesitated.

  “Realistic?” Nic ventured.

  “Yeah.” Bethany’s gift had always been photorealistic painting. “Not so much anymore.”

  Her use of light had come so easily once. As had the pure, simple lines that had emerged so effortlessly. She’d had a natural gift, according to her high school art teacher, for drawing the eye into the very heart of an image—whatever image she’d loved so much, she’d had to capture it—making the viewer believe they were looking at a photograph instead of thousands of brushstrokes. She could remember losing herself in the escape of capturing each of those early moments, never once questioning whether an image would come to life.

  For over a year now she’d been fighting to get the technique back, ever since moving to the apartment above Dan’s. She’d thought setting up her studio at Dru’s in January would be the turning point that would seduce her creativity into playing nice. Now she was counting on her residency to kick-start things.

  She’d been so excited when she’d hauled a fresh canvas out of the supply closet this morning. She’d picked her paints, going by feel alone. Committed to doing something different with the house and the yard surrounding it, she’d let herself be drawn to less realistic colors. Lighter, brighter, more whimsical hues. The result, once she’d started working, had rendered an almost surreal composition, like nothing she’d ever produced with a landscape. It was as if you could look through the walls and roof of the house, even the trees and shrubbery. The effect was ghostly in a welcoming way she’d hoped would draw the viewer in, the same as her more “accurate” paintings.

  She’d started with a deft wash of green against a bright white canvas. Trees and grass and sky had taken ethereal shape in different hues of the same base color, mixed with creams and light pinks. She’d framed the area where a hint of the house currently existed, waiting to take clearer shape once she focused on it. If she got around to focusing on it. But every time she tried to execute more of the building itself, amid her otherworldly reflection of the yard surrounding it . . . the perfectly imperfect foster home that had saved her, was still saving her, wouldn’t appear.

  “It’s going to be pretty,” Clair proclaimed in an overly optimistic way that had Bethany wanting to crawl under her worktable.

  “You know,” Nicole amended, “once you’re finished doing whatever you’re doing.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Except it felt as if Bethany were suffocating.

  She looked around her, really seeing the loft for the first time since she’d started working. The other artists scheduled to work second shift in the cubicles around her either hadn’t arrived yet or were taking a break for dinner. She vaguely remembered day shift people coming and going, conversations up and down the hallway outside the alcove she’d reserved. She’d waved at their friendly remarks as they’d passed, mumbled a hello or goodbye.

  She’d been so jazzed to be there. So sure another change in creative scenery would do the trick. She’d actually been psyched about finally calling Mike back when she was done, to tell him what he’d inspired her to paint, and that she’d finally finished something.

  “I’m starting over.” She dabbed her brush into the darkest, rawest green on her palette board and confronted her canvas, ready to cross a gigantic X through it.

  “No!” Nicole stepped between Bethany and the painting, her arms spread wide. “It’s too beautiful. Seriously”—she blocked Bethany from stepping around her—“girl, I don’t know exactly where you’re going with this one. I’ve never seen you do anything like it. But you’re not giving up. Not again. How many half-finished canvases do you have at Dru’s? A dozen? Two?”

  “Even if your heart’s not in it yet,” Clair agreed, “give it some more time.”

  Time to find her heart . . .

  Shaking off the notion, Bethany turned to Clair, contemplating what her friend’s white jacket, white jeans, and trendy white silk top would look like smeared with throw-in-the-towel green.

  “You two,” she said, “were harassing me just now to quit.”

  “For the night.” Nic
slapped her arms to her sides. “Not the whole damn painting. Dru says you’re giving up faster with every new piece you try.”

  “My sister needs to stay out of my studio. And what are you doing talking with her about my art anyway?”

  “We’re trying to help you,” Clair said with uncharacteristic exasperation. She usually played the good cop when she and Nicole tag-teamed Bethany. “Your art is agitating you as much as everything else right now. Give it a rest until you figure out why.”

  “You think I don’t know why?”

  Bethany stared at her friends, haunted by the passion and need and flurry of her teenage brushstrokes. The restful, peaceful results she’d taken for granted. The excitement back then that had driven her to paint every second of the day, and to love every minute of it. The sense, finally, that anything in her life was possible.

  Painting had helped her stay. In Chandlerville and with the Dixons, and with the two best friends she’d made at Chandler High. Painting had been a clean, easy space where she could hide all the hurt and pain, and where she could turn her fear into something beautiful. Back then, she’d believed her art would never hurt her. And then it had betrayed her, right along with Benjie.

  Bethany tossed her brush down.

  She rushed into her friends’ arms, so glad they’d come. That they were still in her life, even though she’d left them behind, too, when she’d run away.

  She hadn’t been there for Clair’s father’s funeral. She hadn’t consoled Nic through her parents’ very public divorce. But her friends had shown up when Bethany moved back to Chandlerville. They continued to show up for her, hunting her down whenever she started to wander too far. They were holding on to her as fiercely as her family, believing Bethany was fighting with everything inside her to stay for good this time.

  “I just . . .” She clung to Nic and Clair, easing away eventually and dashing at her tears with the sleeve of the T-shirt she’d layered under her sundress. “I keep telling myself that if I can just get my art back . . . I guess I thought it would mean everything else would be okay, too. I don’t know what I’m going to do if it’s not.”

  She wiped at her eyes again.

  Her friends were staring at her, looking more worried than before.

  “Then don’t give up,” Nic insisted. “On your painting or your parents or Mike or anything else you want.”

  “Things are just crazy right now,” Clair responded. “Everything will settle down. So will you. So will your painting. You’ll make it work.”

  “Just maybe not tonight.” Nicole picked green paint out of Bethany’s hair. “Not before you shower and sleep and chill out. And while you’re at it, do some low-maintenance chillin’ with your hunky cowboy. Let the rest take care of itself for a little while. It’s all going to get okay, Bethany. It will turn out even better than your dreams.”

  Bethany stared into the wispy, filmy image she’d captured on canvas—her foster family’s world, looking like something fantastical out of a children’s picture book. It was exactly how she’d wanted coming home to feel . . . and she couldn’t finish it.

  “Let this canvas dry,” Nicole reasoned. “Don’t destroy it. Start something else tonight, if you just have to. But don’t give up on this one. We’ll help.”

  Bethany checked her watch. “You two don’t want to hang here with me for the rest of the night. Go to your club. Meet hot guys who’ll buy you drinks. Report back with details.”

  “Or we can bring the party to you,” Clair quipped.

  Nicole dug into her larger-than-normal purse and produced a small bottle of cabernet. Clair liberated three Dixie cups from her bag. They set their bounty on Bethany’s worktable. Nicole unscrewed the cap on the bottle and poured generous servings, handing Clair and Bethany theirs before holding her cup up.

  “To another painting,” she toasted. “Do whatever you need to do tonight. We’ve got your back.”

  Bethany toasted but drank only a sip. Gratitude was clogging her throat. “You both have businesses to run tomorrow.”

  “If you’re pulling an all-nighter”—Clair held her cup out to Nic for a refill—“we’re pulling an all-nighter.”

  Nic scanned Bethany’s clutter of paints and rags and brushes and thinner. “What do you need to get this show back on the road?”

  Bethany sighed at the two best, most stubborn girlfriends in the world. She’d love them to her dying breath. She sipped her wine.

  “If I’m not getting rid of you two—”

  “You’re not,” Clair assured her.

  “Then I need to start something else before I leave. It’ll just be another hour or two, I swear. There are some prestretched canvases down the hall. Maybe a larger one this time.” Bethany pantomimed how large, then threw her hands in the air. She was too distracted, exhausted, to describe what she meant. “I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ve got it.” Clair set her wine down, grabbed Bethany by the shoulders, and pushed her into the folding chair that came with the cubicle—the only other furniture provided, besides a basic worktable. “Large. Canvas. We’ll find something. Then you’ve got two hours before we’re revoking your painting privileges. If we have to strap you to one of the cots down the hall and hook you up to a cabernet IV, you’re going to get some sleep.”

  “Two hours.” Bethany sank into the chair and took another sip.

  Her arms and hands throbbed from the work she’d already done. Her brain was mush from the things her friends had forced her to think through. Things that she found herself wondering whether Mike would want to hear. Her other boyfriends since Benjie hadn’t minded her being quirky and sometimes moody. As long they didn’t have to listen to her talk about why she couldn’t seem to settle down and just have fun, like normal people her age.

  Don’t make me wait too long for that date now, darlin’.

  “We’ll be right back,” Clair said.

  Bethany nodded. As her friends headed out in search of the supply room, she turned to her worktable to sort through the pile of oil paints she’d selected, consumed with thoughts of tall, dark-eyed, smiling cowboys.

  “Wowza,” Nicole said from down the hall. “This is amazing.”

  Bethany set her wine down and dragged herself to her feet. She discovered her friends with the door open to what she’d been told was the co-op manager’s office, not the supply closet. Nicole and Clair, who’d been peering from the hallway at whatever they’d seen, headed inside.

  “Don’t.” Bethany hurried after them. The artists who’d given her a brief tour of the place had mentioned that the office was kept locked. That the area beyond was the owner’s private space. “The supplies are next door. I . . .”

  She stalled out beside her friends, just past the threshold.

  The vast, open rectangular space was dominated by a massive desk that boasted an equally enormous flat-screen monitor, perched on top of its black lacquered surface. A large leather chair, weathered and beaten up as if had been carted from place to place forever, was the only other piece of furniture other than two equally battered leather guest chairs and a low bookcase behind the desk. The walls were a shade of gray close to steel, only lighter. And covering practically every inch of them were massive prints of mesmerizing landscape photography.

  Each black-and-white photo was of a different location: panoramas of expansive vistas; and closer, more intimate shots of settings so rich in texture and contrast you could look for hours and not absorb every detail. Mountainscapes, oceans, fields and streams, waterfalls, gardens, historic homes, busy city streets . . .

  “They’re amazing,” Clair said. She and Nic were staring at the walls, too, turning in slow circles. “Look at them. They’re pictures, right? But they look like they’re on canvas.”

  “They’re giclées.” Bethany stopped before a narrow, floor-to-ceiling vertical canvas of a sparkling waterfall bursting from a granite cliff, rushing from a forest of thriving foliage to plummet below into a crash of boulders. �
�High-resolution photography printed on canvas.”

  A splash of color on the rocks beneath a waterfall drew her eye. She leaned closer. It was a Western hat that, glancing around, she realized had been placed in the rest of the photos, too.

  “I think I’ve seen these before.” She turned to a series on one of the shorter walls—coastal beach scenes at sunrise and sunset. The hat was positioned on the sand near the surf, out of place but somehow giving the sense that it belonged there. “They’re part of a series. Rise & Fall. The Art and Design section of the New York Times spotlighted this artist a few years back.”

  She remembered being struck by the photographs’ effortless beauty and the description of the artist’s process. He’d been experimenting with large-format photography for the first time, to capture landscapes that the smaller camera lenses he’d worked with before couldn’t. The resulting pictures were even more striking in person.

  “Sunsets and sunrises only,” she told her friends, the three of them moving closer to one particular grouping. “These are of the same stretch of beach, shot at opposite times of the day, capturing different tides and weather and cloud patterns. He focused on sky and clouds, with just a touch of the water and sand to ground viewers to what they’re seeing. Look at the lines he’s captured with the edges of the dunes and tidal pools. He won all kinds of awards for them. And . . . nobody knows who he is. He works in complete anonymity, releasing new sets of photographs without fanfare, and donating the proceeds from his sales to charities all over the world. He’s never given an in-person interview, doesn’t have a bio pic or social media presence. He goes by only his initials and lets his art speak for itself.”

  She peered closer to the nearest print and read the signature.

  “HMT. He’s never said what it stands for, and it kind of adds to the mystery behind his art. No one . . .” She looked around them in wonder. “No one even knows where he works.”