I found the picture where I had left it in the brush. It was damp but okay. I left it there and I made my way toward the marina where the yacht I had been working on had been docked. I saw that it was still there – I was worried that they had left port without me. I wanted to slip on board and grab my things and begin my search for Kinsey, but the sun was coming up and I was afraid the cops might be looking for me again so I went and hid in a park near there and stayed low for the day. That evening I made my way toward the docks and the boat. I went and hid the painting in another bush and stepped out and made for the dock. I took one step onto the dock and two policemen appeared behind me, blocking my escape. I ran the other way, down the dock, with the intention of diving in the water and swimming away. As I ran by the yacht that I had been working on I saw my friend Sheff waving for me to stop but I was a man on a mission and getting away from the cops was my first order of business if I was to keep the painting and find Kinsey and I so kept running. I blew past Sheff and I was preparing to run off the end of the dock and dive into the water and make my get away when a police boat pulled up at the end of the dock and blocked my escape. My goose was cooked and I just sat down on the end of the dock and lifted my hands up to the air.
Now I’ve never been a money hungry person but there are benefits to having money and on that day my simply having made a good friend in the billionaire, Bill Warner, that owned the boat I worked for, kept me from getting into any trouble. Sheff came down off the boat and he brought Bill in tow. They had a long talk with the policemen who were putting me under arrest and then a phone call was made by one of the policemen at my boss’s request. A few minutes later they let me go and even said I could keep the painting. I followed Sheff back up the walkway to the boat and I was in my cabin within ten minutes. After the police left I told Sheff where the painting was hidden and he went and retrieved it for me.
Having Sheff as a friend and also having a good friend in Mr. Warner kept me from being in a lot of trouble that day. Sometimes it pays to be powerful and have money and if you don’t have money it pays to have friends that have power and money.
We departed that night and sailed for the Caribbean Sea and the Virgin Islands. I was in tremendous pain and since we didn’t have a doctor on board we pulled into Kingston Harbour in Jamaica and I was taken to the hospital where I ended up spending two weeks getting medical care and convalescing. Mr. Warner put up me in a condo near the hospital after I was released from the hospital and I had to stay there for therapy until they came back to port to pick me up. To be truthful I needed to spend time healing. I’d freaked out at the thought of losing Kinsey that night of the fire and instead of doing what I was told to do by the doctors and those in charge I tried to find her my way and I ended up losing her.”
“I can guess what happened to you from there because it happened to Kinsey and us as well. We looked everywhere for you but she just didn’t know enough about you to know where to look.” Jess smiled, “I have a bit of advice for you and Kinsey.”
“Yes?”
“Next time you guys meet the person of your dreams – get a name, a full name.”
“You think?” I had thought I’d heard her say her name but then I thought my concussion had made me forget it. I even tried hypnosis to remember it but the hypnotist couldn’t make me go under. Turns out I start laughing when someone tries to hypnotize me.”
Jess was intrigued and said, “Kinsey said she never told you her last name and she said you said your name twice, once to Mr. Barksley and once to Dale and both times she couldn’t hear what you said your last name was.”
“Would you like to know my last name now? In case we get separated again?”
Yes, really,” Jess said smiling, “you never know what might happen.”
“It’s Brodie.”
“Brodie, huh? I think you two would have a gaggle of kids by now if she’d known that. Kinsey Brodie. Has a nice ring to it,” Jessica said.
“I agree. More than you’ll ever know. If I can one day gift Kinsey with my last name my life will be complete.” Tanner said.
Jessica found herself looking at Kinsey’s painting that Tanner had hung on the wall by the door to the balcony and she said, “So tell me about this picture and how you came to be in Ms. Lester’s home. I almost fell down in traffic when I saw you get out of that car and walk in the house this evening.”
Tanner walked up to the painting, “You see right here? Along the edge? That’s where I had to take it to an art restoration company and have them fix it. The heat of the fire had almost made it catch fire along the edge of the canvas. They did a good job on it don’t you think?”
Jess examined the painting and the restoration. “It’s an excellent job. I would never notice the damage if you hadn’t pointed it out to me. Kinsey was almost as devastated at losing your painting as she was to losing you. She said she had just given it to you, right?”
“She did. But she never signed it. I could have used her signature to track her down.”
“She put every ounce of herself into that painting. Giving it to you had meant everything to her. She thought it was destroyed in the fire and it took her a long time to begin painting again.”
Tanner nodded, “I knew she would be crushed at the thought of losing it. More than anything, I wanted her to know that I had it with me and that it meant everything to me. I’ve tried so hard these past years to find her. My life has changed because of it.”
“Are you sad?” Jess asked, looking into the back of Tanner’s eyes as he answered her.
“Not since you knocked on my door this evening,” Tanner said.
Jess noticed his eyes brightening at the thought of seeing Kinsey again, but then they went dark as he spoke again saying, “But up till then? Yes, very sad. Almost overwhelmed by it at times. But like I said, searching for her has changed me,” Tanner opened the door to the balcony and stepped outside into the evening light. “This is a lot like how the sunset was when Kinsey took the photo that she made into the painting all those years ago. I stand out here and think about her doing it – offering herself to the city, to the universe and to God and even to me. My heart would ache out here, but it was a pain that goaded me on to finding her, to keeping the search alive.”
Tanner was looking across the city to the high rising steeple and the sun setting over the far horizon of trees and buildings. Jessica became quiet and let him tell her of his quest, his search for Kinsey.
“I’ve always had an easy time in life. People seem to like me and I always took it for granted. But losing Kinsey showed me that people, as much as they want to help, can’t fix everything for me. After about six months of searching, I prayed. I had become so despondent, which is not me, I am not a sad feeling person, I always loved waking up and starting a new day. My parents taught me that life is a gift and we should hold dear to each moment of it and live it with passion and thanks. I did that until I met Kinsey and in the first moment that she spoke to me I knew that sharing days, moments, and all of life’s joys and travails with her was why I had been created. And then hours later, after just a few moments of bliss, I lost her.
I became dark and I ran to water. I ran to the sea and I worked all over the world on different boats, ships and yachts. And I became quiet to those around me. I wore my friend, Sheff, out with it but he stuck by me and we sailed and worked together for two years and I tried to both find and forget about Kinsey. Neither worked and so I got mad. I directed my anger at God and I began to ask him why. Not a complex prayer but, for me, a powerful prayer. Over and over I would go to bed asking why and nothing came back and I let my thoughts run wild and I kept praying but I wasn’t being quiet and listening for an answer to my prayers.”
Tanner paused and turned to Jessica. “Do you know what happened?”
Jessica had no idea and she shook her head.
Tanner turned his eyes back to the setting sun, “I had a dream where everything around me was going crazy and I was ove
rwhelmed and sad and I was ranting back at the world and even God himself and then I just woke up. I was sleeping in this tiny cabin in an old freighter off the coast of Israel and I woke up and it was quiet. The only sound was coming through the hull of the ship, it was water, peaceful water splashing against the ship and I rose from my bed and made for the deck. I stepped out just in time to see the sun rise up out of the hills of God’s ancient holy land and I knew that, without speaking in words, but in his own language, God was telling me to be quiet and listen.” Tanner let his eyes meet Jessica’s and she waited for him to continue.
“I let go of the dark that had filled my soul and I asked God to forgive me for feeling like I was owed Kinsey and I asked God to help me be the man that he wanted me to be. And then, if God, and when God, thought that I was ready to find Kinsey, that he help me search for her. I smiled watching that beautiful sunrise, that holy sunrise, and it felt good to do it. Later that day I asked Sheff to give me a punch and toss me overboard if I acted dark or sad and he laughed and said he’d been waiting a long time for me to say something like that. From that day forward I went to work making myself a better man.
I began to write down my experiences and my thoughts and I found out that I can put a pen to good work filling up a notebook with ink. I also pulled out Kinsey’s painting and I studied it. I thought that if I could find where she had seen that sunset then I might find her there as well.”
Jessica heard herself, as mesmerized as she was by Tanner’s story, interrupting anyway, “You were able to find this place by searching for the same view as Kinsey’s painting? No way!”
Tanner nodded and smiled, “I did. I’m quite the detective, no?”
“That is amazing.”
“Like I said though, it all came about because I quit being selfish and I put God first, people second, and me last.”
“The golden rule. It’s so obvious sometimes. So how did you find it? This house?” Jess asked.
The sun was now down and Tanner stepped to the balcony door and let Jess step inside first then he went in, closing the door behind him.
Inside, he continued, as they made their way downstairs, “A few months later, I was on a boat that had docked in Tampa and my best friend and his wife, a girl I almost married actually, lived there and I went to see them. I had left her, almost at the altar, before we were to be married but I made up for it by getting my friend, who I knew was in love with her, to go on a blind date with her. They ended up married and when I visited them in Tampa I had to fill them in on where my life had gone since I’d set them up on their first date and it led me to showing them Kinsey’s painting. I told them I had been on the internet looking at photos of different city skylines trying to match one to the painting. I had been focused on the west coast because I thought that Kinsey had told me she was going west. I figured she must have been living out west but both my friends said it looked like Savannah, Georgia or Charleston, South Carolina.
I was on it. I quit my job working on the cruise ship I had been working on and headed first to Savannah, where I’d spent some time years before. I didn’t think the picture was taken there as I was quite familiar with the city but I went there first, just to make sure, before coming north to Charleston.”
Tanner led Jessica back to where they’d been sitting earlier and asked, “How do you think I found this home? What object did I find first within the painting?”
Jessica didn’t hesitate, “The steeple of the church. That’s the same church where Dale and I are getting married. That church stands out with the small steeple on one end and then the tall steeple at the other. It’s Catholic you know.”
“I sure know now. I went there and asked the first person I met about it. It turned out he was a priest and he let me walk around in the high part of the steeple and try to see the angle from where Kinsey might have taken the photo and painted the scene. Then he asked me to lunch.”
“You need to be careful going to lunch with a priest, who was it?”
“It was Father Ron…”
Jessica stood quickly, “That’s amazing. He’s performing the wedding ceremony for me and Dale next week.”
Tanner started laughing, “He’s my good friend now. At our first lunch he asked me why I wanted to find where the picture was painted from and I can’t blame him, it isn’t every day that a guy walks in a church trying to figure out the sightline for a painting his church is shown within. So I told him my story and he was intrigued with my trying to better myself for God. To being a grown up Christian as I had taken to calling my journey and he asked what I thought a Catholic Church rising up so high and beautiful in my lost love’s painting might signify…”
Jess interrupted, “He’s smart like that. He has both me and Dale really involved in the church now with questions like that.”
“You’re telling me. You haven’t heard the best part yet. So that set me to thinking and as I searched for the exact angle from which Kinsey had painted her masterpiece I met a lady in a café. I was sitting, writing in my notebook everything that was happening in my life, sipping an expresso, and enjoying the sun while I’m doing it and…”
“How long ago is this?” Jessica asked.
“About two years ago. So, I’m oblivious to the world around me – I get that way when I’m writing – and I feel this tap on my shoulder and I turn around and find myself looking into the warm eyes of this elderly lady. She’s well dressed and she just shines with life and she asks me what I’m writing and I tell her it’s just a journal of my life and she sits down. She doesn’t ask, she just sits down and says, “Tell me all about it.”
What can I do? I start telling her about my writing and she says she’s a patron of all the arts and she wants to read my journal. I’m astounded and I ask her if she’d mind telling me her name.”
It hits Jessica who the lady is as the same time that Tanner is saying it and they both say her name together, “Ms. Lester!”
“Yes, Ms. Lester. She took me in and can you believe this? She made me stay with her and the first time I went with her to her house, I’m not thinking about the angle of Kinsey’s painting, why would I – you can’t see the church steeple from the front door of the house, and we go in to talk and she begins to make me lunch and says to have a look around the house while she’s preparing it. I do and I go upstairs, and, I’m not making this up, I walk into the bedroom upstairs where Kinsey had stayed all those years ago and I see the church steeple out through the balcony doors and I almost fell over.
I end up giving Ms. Lester all my journals – leaving them with her that evening. Before I left though, I asked about you and Kinsey and she said she didn’t remember keeping either you or Kinsey. She said she would remember you if she saw you though. She said her memory wasn’t what it used to be – and believe me, it was terrible – but that she would think about all her painters that she’d had stay with her over the years and try to match up a name for me.
Two days later I go back at her request to see her and she says that we are going to publish my writings. She said she was up all night reading my journals and that she had already placed a call to her publishing friend in New York.”
“You’ve had a book published? That’s wonderful.” Jess said.
“Three, actually. And the second and third have spent a good deal of time on the New York Times bestseller list. My fourth comes out in three months.”
“Would I know any of them?” Jess asked, amazed.
“”Have you read Big Sea, Bigger Heart or The Quiet Hurricane?
“That’s you? You wrote The Quiet Hurricane? But I thought Patrick Lawrence…”
“Pen Name. The publisher thought it would sound better.”
“You’re Patrick Lawrence and you wrote The Quiet Hurricane? About the man at sea, searching for his lost love?” Jessica said, then she stopped and could only stare at Tanner for a moment before figuring it all out, “Of course it’s you. It’s about a man sailing in the great expanse of
the ocean and he has lost his true love and he his searching the world for her. That’s about you and Kinsey isn’t it? No wonder that book read so good to me. It reminded me of Kinsey and you but I never told her to read it because I thought it would depress her. The book ended saying there would be a sequel, right?”
“Yep, but I think now I’m going to change its ending. And I think I’ll insist on using my name from now on; I don’t like hiding behind a fake name as it were.”
“Yes I agree, why not be who you are? But keep going. What happened next?”
“Okay,” Tanner said, beginning to smile, “This is all so crazy sounding. So it turns out I had a talent that had slipped under the radar for me. I had no idea I would love writing so much and now it’s even let me buy Ms. Lester’s house and take care of her. A year ago she fell at the art museum and hit her head and broke her hip. She is in a nursing home. I visit her on most days. She isn’t doing well, although sometimes she remembers things and those days are nice. But for the most part she is in her own world. I have her at the best place money can buy. I used the advance from my third novel to buy her home from her. I paid more than it was worth and her estate pays for her care. She has no family but she has so many artists that come by to see her. They are like her children in a way. She won’t be with us much longer though. I can take you to see her, maybe she’ll finally recognize you.” Tanner said, when Jessica nodded yes, he continued.
Lights on the Far Horizon Trilogy Page 10