The door release buzzes, and I slip into the hall, where Florence is waiting. “Perfect timing,” she says. “Come back to my office. I’ve got something for you.”
We pass a big room full of long tables where the smell of sausage lingers in the air. Red and green streamers cross the ceiling, and an artificial Christmas tree is plunked in a corner. The decorations on it cluster in spots, leaving whole branches bare.
Florence’s office is small and buried in files and boxes. She digs through a pile on her desk, pulls out an envelope, and hands it to me. “You showing up here saves me having to mail this.”
I peek inside. “Two tickets to the gala?”
“For you and your plus-one. Courtesy of Casey Stiner.”
“Wow. I can’t believe this. It’s so nice of her.” I picture Kevin and me walking into the ballroom at the Langham in our fancy clothes. If only…
“So, Sabine, you stopped by for a reason. What is it?” Florence steps back into the hall, my signal to stop marveling at the tickets and tell her why I came.
Florence has no reason to suspect me of anything, but for some crazy reason I don’t want to appear overeager. “Um, I haven’t seen Julie around. Not since last Friday.”
“Neither have I, but that’s not unusual.”
“I’m worried about her. Do you think she’s okay?” I feel stupid saying this. “I mean, I know she’s sick, but…”
“I believe I’d have heard if she was in trouble. An officer friend keeps an eye on my regulars.”
“I’d like to give her some of the money I got for the painting, but I don’t know the best way to do it.”
Florence nods. “You’re worried cash could make her a target out on the street.”
“Yeah, I thought maybe I could cover some of her medical bills.”
“Sabine, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Julie has refused treatment.”
“No. Why would she do that?”
“Treatment’s painful. Debilitating. It would require a hospital stay.” Florence frowns at the ceiling as if she knows she’s breaking a rule before saying, “I’ve located a sister of hers who lives outside Phoenix and would take Julie in, but she needs convincing to go.”
“I don’t understand. Why doesn’t Julie want to be with her family?”
“Sounds like that’s hard for you to imagine.”
Florence is trying to turn this conversation to me, but I don’t want to talk about myself. “It is. Did something happen in Julie’s past?”
“You know I can’t answer that.” We exchange looks. Florence has told me way more than she should have, and now she’s drawn the line.
“So if I see Julie first…?” I ask.
“You let me know.” Florence goes to open the exit door for me. Santa beams at us from a poster for a Christmas dinner and toy giveaway taped to the door.
I point to the poster. “Do you still need volunteers?”
“We do,” she says, “but there’s another way you could help that we could use even more.”
“What is it?”
“We offer day camp over the holidays for families with schoolchildren who stay at our shelter. Could you organize some art activities?”
My chest floods with sadness, remembering how alone I felt last spring break. Until then, I didn’t realize how much I counted on being at school to feel halfway normal. “Yeah, I’d love to.”
“I’ll send you the dates,” she promises.
Walking to CALINVA, I scan the street for Julie, but she’s not in any of the doorways. The thought flies through my head that Adam got to her, but I bat it away. Julie’s smart. She sized him up fast, and if he ever tried anything with her, I’m pretty sure she’d cut him.
Julie’s in my thoughts all morning. Every time I overhear someone talk about Krell, I worry I won’t find her, so it’s almost eerie that she’s waiting on the sidewalk when I leave CALINVA. I slow down as I approach her, afraid my eyes are playing tricks on me. “Julie, hey, I’m glad to see you.”
She’s layered a thick red sweater with an even thicker orange one despite how warm it is today. Even though she’s smiling, her hand’s laid across her stomach, so she’s either hungry or in pain.
“Have you had lunch?” I ask.
“No, can’t say that I have.”
Julie’s face is puffy, but those sweaters are swimming on her. I’ve been so caught up in my own drama, I haven’t noticed she’s getting worse. “Let me treat you. What would you like to eat?”
Her eyes brighten. “Chicken salad,” she says like it’s the food of the gods.
“A chicken salad sandwich?” I speed through a mental list of restaurants where I could get one.
“Not a sandwich, just chicken salad.”
The nearest deli I know is blocks away on California Street. “How would you like to take a ride?” I say.
The two blocks to my car, Julie shuffles beside me as if all her joints hurt. The scuffing of her dragging feet makes me feel guilty and weirdly angry. She shouldn’t be sleeping on cold cement every night, so why can’t she accept her sister’s help?
We reach my car, and before I even get my seat belt fastened, the car fills with a cheesy, moldy smell. It’s not her fault, I tell myself as I quietly crack open the windows.
Driving over to the deli, I ask her where she’s been, but Julie ducks the answer and instead talks about Sweetie, who’s tucked in the kangaroo pocket of her sweater.
Julie waits in the car while I go inside. I return with cartons of chicken salad, a big one for her and a small one for me, along with packets of saltines and two forks. There’s an empty table in front of the deli, but the other customers will probably stare at us if we eat here, so I drive to the park down the street.
As we walk over to an empty table, I steal glances at Julie. Her bony wrists stick out of her sleeves, and her pants flap around her legs. I swear they weren’t this loose before.
I unpack our lunch, weighing whether to ask her about Adam’s car or her sister first. Julie’s in bad shape, and talking about Adam is probably less likely to spook her. I stack saltine packets in front of her, thinking whatever she doesn’t eat now she can save for later. Yeah, right, Sabine. As if a few crackers are going to save her.
“Julie, I need your help.”
“That’s why I’m here.” She scoops some chicken salad onto the lid of her deli carton and sets it on the table. Sweetie scurries down her arm and goes right for it.
I pick up my carton and prop my elbows on the table. I trust Sweetie, sort of. “That man, the one you warned me about—”
Julie cuts me off. “He’s gone.”
“I need to find him.”
“You shouldn’t court danger.” She eyes me like I’m about to do something stupid.
“I swear I won’t go anywhere near him. But he broke the law, and I want to help the police find him.”
She considers this while she chews. “You got a question for me?”
“You told me he has a truck. You said it was green.”
“Not green. Gray.”
“But you called it a green mountain truck.”
“It is. The license plate’s got green mountains on it.”
I pull out my phone and search pictures of license plates until I find one with green mountains. Colorado. “Like this?”
Julie nods and crumbles a cracker into her chicken. “That’s it.”
“So it’s gray with Colorado plates.” I take out my sketchbook, and we begin to play a version of twenty questions. I know I’m pushing her hard, and I try not to act frustrated. Julie can’t tell me the model, but by the time we finish I’m fairly certain we’re looking for a Ford pickup with two doors, running lights, and a scratch on the passenger door. All I’ve got of the Colorado plate is an X and a J in no particular order.
Julie drops her fork in her empty carton. Sweetie’s cleaning her whiskers. I put away my sketchbook, and now the hard part begins.
“I saw Flore
nce today,” I tell her. “She told me your sister wants you to come live with her in Arizona.”
“You interfering in my business?” Julie sits up tall and Sweetie runs up her arm like she’s been called. Then they both glare at me.
“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to interfere, but—”
“But what?”
“Don’t you want to be with your family?”
She strokes Sweetie between the ears. “I got my family right here.”
“I don’t get it. If I had someone who wanted me—”
“You’re not me. You don’t know what I want or what I deserve. You don’t know my story.” Julie swings her legs around the bench and gets up. “Thank you for my lunch.”
I scramble to my feet, but she’s already walking away. “You’re right, I don’t know your story, but I bet that whatever the ‘old you’ did that you’re so ashamed of, you’ve already paid for it.”
She stops for a moment but doesn’t turn around.
I wait, sensing either Julie’s going to take down the wall she’s put up or she’s going to walk away.
She walks away. Damn.
I snatch our trash off the table and head for a nearby can when my phone rings. It’s Tara. Terrific. Wasps circle the mouth of the trash can, so I stand back to toss my garbage. “Hi, Tara. What’s up?”
“Good news. Iona’s accepted your offer to paint her portrait.”
A week ago, I’d have jumped for joy, but today the thought of a month spent gazing at Iona’s overly made-up face as I paint her is almost more than I can bear.
There’s an easy way out and that’s to hand Iona the six grand Adam gave me. All I have to do is tell her: I sold a painting, so I can send you the money.
It’s so damn tempting, but I’m not stupid enough to believe it was an accident that Adam gave me six grand, the exact amount I owe her. He wants me to pay Iona back, and I’m betting it’s because if I get arrested for stealing her dress, any reasons I have to stay silent about my part in Duncan’s theft won’t matter anymore.
If I offer Iona the money, I play right into Adam’s hands again.
“I’m waiting, Sabine.”
“Sorry, I got distracted. That’s great, Tara. Thanks for arranging this with Iona.” And even though I toy with saying I bet it wasn’t easy, I don’t.
“Iona starts shooting the new season the first week in February. Can you get the portrait done by then?”
It will suck up every free minute I have over winter break, but I guess that only matters if I’m not arrested for art theft. “Yes, I can.”
“You sure?”
“I promise,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Talk soon.” Tara hangs up and I head for my car.
Krell’s coming back tomorrow, and all I’ve got to show him is a drawing of Adam and a poor description of his truck. I wish I had more, but if Krell recognizes Adam from the drawing, it might be enough.
Adam insisted Krell wouldn’t want to know Duncan was a fake, but with everything that’s happened, I have to believe that he would appreciate learning the truth.
Wouldn’t it be better to know your masterpiece was stolen and not destroyed, so you could hold on to a sliver of hope that you could get it back? And wouldn’t you want information that could help find the person who stole it and used it to attack you?
It’s even possible Krell would be so grateful I came forward that he wouldn’t insist CALINVA kick me out.
Yeah, that’s likely.
Julie’s friend the Jesus poet is splayed out on the bench nearest my car, so I circle back around, hoping he doesn’t turn and look my way. He may be an expert on redemption, but apparently I’m going to learn those lessons the hard way.
When Kevin comes over tonight, we don’t even pretend that we want to talk. We kiss, and grope, and stumble all the way from the kitchen door to my room, where we fall on my bed. We are buttons and zippers and sleeves, a mess and tumble. And later, when we are panting and fumbling to uncap a water bottle, the water douses our faces and necks, and we can’t stop grinning.
We lie back, hands clasped, and Kevin’s curls tickle my forehead. His arm is hot and damp against mine. He draws up the sheet, and I push it down with my foot.
“I have a surprise,” I tell him.
“Yeah?”
I reach into my messenger bag and pull out the two tickets. “Will you be my date?”
“A gala.” He tosses his head back and forth like he’s weighing whether or not to say yes.
“Oh stop,” I say, giving him a shove.
He laughs as he rolls into the wall. “Of course I’ll be your date,” he says, and sits back up. His elbow rests on his bent knee, and his face is tilted toward me.
He’s so beautiful right now, his features relaxed and his long limbs stretched out. In the soft yellow light of my room, he looks otherworldly, like a Greek hero in a Maxfield Parrish painting. I reach for my sketch pad.
“What are you doing?” he says when I flip to a clean page.
“Capturing you.”
“You’ve already captured me,” he says.
I can’t help smiling. “Not this way.”
I start to sketch, but even though his body is still, the angle of his head keeps shifting as his eyes explore my room. “Okay, you need to focus on one spot.”
He settles down and at last I pencil in his profile: the tilt of his head, the slope of his nose and cheeks, the lidded oval of his eye. I shadow Kevin’s cheek, and squiggle in the beard he’s growing.
As I work the details around his eyes, my skin starts to prickle. There’s an intensity in his focus as if he’s questioning what he’s seeing.
I shift my gaze until it aligns with his. My completed self-portrait. He’s disturbed by it just as Mrs. Mednikov was. I reach for a softer pencil to deepen the shadows. “What do you think about my self-portrait?” I keep sketching like it’s no big deal.
“The bluebird, that’s your mom, right?”
My breath catches and my eyes meet his. “How did you know?”
He shrugs. “Look around.”
My room is half hers. Her portrait with the embroidered birds, the dead songbird of Appetite, THE SMALLEST BIRD SINGS THE PRETTIEST SONGS trailing down her guitar case.
My eyes spill and I swipe my cheeks with my hands. Kevin lays his hand on my knee and a minute goes by where neither of us speak. We both know I’m lost.
When he finally breaks the silence, his voice is so gentle I almost don’t catch what he’s saying. “Why is the house on fire, Sabine? Please tell me what’s going on with you.”
I want to confide in him, to tell him everything, but this, what we have, is so new it could snap under the weight of my confession. “Everything’s so hard without her. I don’t know who I am, if I’m making the right choices, if I’m reading people right.”
“Does this”—Kevin lifts his hand off my knee and it hovers over my skin—“have anything to do with me…us?”
I weave my fingers through his and squeeze tight. “No, no, this has nothing to do with us. You…you make this bearable.”
“Just bearable?”
“Infinitely more than bearable.”
We fall back on the bed, and Kevin cups my face in his hands. We gaze into each other’s eyes before he sets his lips on mine. He kisses me as if he believes we’ve gone to a new place where at last I’ve shared my secrets.
But as I kiss him back, I can’t stop thinking, Don’t leave me, Kevin. Don’t leave me when you learn who I really am.
I lie awake half the night, watching Kevin sleep, knowing that when the truth comes out, it could wreck us. The sun is just coming up, and I mute my alarm before it goes off, holding on to these last few minutes of peace.
Kev’s curls splay across my pillow and I wind one around my finger and stroke the silky hair with my thumb.
I was so blind about Adam. So desperate for approval. All he had to do was toss me a little praise, and I ate his lies up lik
e ice cream. Even when I knew in my gut things were off.
Kevin turns toward me and I pull up the blanket and tuck my body into his. I close my eyes as he nestles me up against his chest, and I match my breathing to his, wishing we could stay like this for the rest of the day.
I’m close to falling asleep again when a dog starts barking and Kevin groans. He gropes around on the floor and silences his phone. I pass him his glasses.
“Thanks. You think Krell will be back this morning?” he says.
I slide out of bed and grab my jeans off the floor. “Who knows, but I’m not chancing it,” I say, tossing Kev his jeans.
He leaves the house before I do. I kiss him good-bye, and when he pedals off, I linger on the stoop, watching until he disappears around the corner and hoping it’s not the last time I do.
I’m going to confess to Krell after class. I pour out a bowl of granola, knowing I need to eat, but the cereal takes forever to chew. Still, I shovel it in, because I need to be strong. I owe Krell the truth.
He might not believe me that Duncan’s a forgery, but I’ll remind him an X-ray can prove it. He’ll see I’m not lying when whatever he painted in the strata beneath Duncan doesn’t show up on the film.
My self-portrait’s tucked in my portfolio, so I get to my seat in class without anyone commenting. My whole life could change after this class, and I’d really like to avoid any drama just yet.
But as soon as my self-portrait goes up on my easel, Taysha looks it over. “Something serious going on here,” she says.
“It’s been a long semester.”
“You know it.”
Birch plunks down in the seat on the other side of me, the one Kevin usually takes, but before I can ask him to move, Kevin takes the empty seat next to Bryian.
Krell’s back, like he promised he would be, but instead of striding to the front of the room, he walks in, head down, lost in a cloud of thought so thick you can almost see it.
We wait, our self-portraits on our easels or in our laps, for Krell to acknowledge us. No one chugs water, or checks their phone, or messes in a bag at their feet.
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