by Lexy Timms
I felt as if I were tethered, unable to move even if I wanted to.
I gazed down at the green and brown grass that covered his grave. I took in the dates of his birth and death, swallowing deeply when I realized he had only been twenty-five. The man who had saved my life, who had chased those thugs away and wrenched that man’s grasp from my throat, had only been twenty-five years old.
My tears began pouring down my cheeks as I clung to his brother standing next to me.
“John,” Bryan said. “I know it’s been a long time since I’ve stood here, and I hope you can forgive me for that. I brought someone I thought you might want to see. Do you remember Hailey?”
I looked up at Bryan as my jaw began to tremble. He was stoic, blank like he’d retreated into himself just to process the encounter taking place. His hand removed my grip from around his waist before our fingers interlocked, and then he brought my hand to his lips to kiss.
“I fell in love with the woman you saved, and I owe all of what we have to your bravery.”
I drew in a shaking breath as tears finally rose to Bryan’s eyes. His lips peppered my hands with his kisses, his warmth trying hard to drown out the cold and the dark that was pouring over our little corner of the world. The hurt and anger and depression he’d dealt with for years were slowly bubbling to the top, and when his knees gave out from underneath him, I tried my best to catch him in my arms.
“Steady,” I said lightly. “Just take deep breaths.”
“I’m so sorry,” Bryan said. “I’m so sorry for what you went through, John. I’m sorry for not understanding. I’m sorry for making you feel like you couldn’t talk to me. I’m sorry for yelling at you, yelling the things I did the last time we talked.”
I pressed my lips to Bryan’s cheek as he finally got his feet underneath him.
“I’m trying to make the world a better place for you and for your memory that follows me around everywhere. I started helping the homeless community after you passed. You know, getting them off the street and cleaning them up. Giving them a job. Throwing a rope to those who need it and want it. I see you in them. I look in their eyes and see yours staring back at me. Every single person on a corner I pass, I envision the family that must miss them and love them, the family that must want to help them but has no idea how. Like I did. Like I loved you and cherished you but had no idea how to help you.”
Tears started dripping down Bryan’s face while I rubbed his back. I felt compelled to say something and fill the silent while Bryan collected himself.
So, I decided to talk about how John had influenced me as well.
“John,” I said as Bryan turned his gaze toward me, “your brother isn’t alone in that category, you know. Since you saved me, I’ve moved to San Diego. You talked so much about how beautiful it was and how their art community was so inspiring to you, I couldn’t help but check it out. I didn’t plan on rooting myself here, but I found this wonderful little place to open an art gallery. I think you’d love it.”
Bryan’s arms held me close to him, his body scooting behind mine as he pressed his strong chest to the back of my head.
“I came to San Diego to honor you and experience the beauty you talked about, and instead, I found your brother. I fell in love with him, and the heart he had, and even though we experienced some turbulence, we have seemed to find one another again. And I have you to thank for that. You’ve bound us in a way that neither of us understood until a few days ago. I still do my art therapy classes in my gallery, but I’ve added some children’s components too. The community loves it. It makes me feel like there’s a part of you still with me.”
My breaths hiccup in my chest before Bryan planted his lips into the crook of my neck. He began to sway my body while tears dripped down my neck, the cold air picking up and swirling around us. We shivered in the autumn cold while we stood by John’s grave, the leaves rustling in the distance as it backdropped our sorrow.
“I want to showcase your paintings, John,” I said. “I want to put them up in my gallery. Bryan wants to throw a formal nighttime gallery for the community to introduce them to the world, and I think it’s a fabulous idea. Your paintings are so beautiful and so dynamic and so full of life and emotion, they deserve to see the light of day. I think ...”
I chose my words carefully before I completed my thought.
“I think it would bring the type of beauty into the world you wanted so desperately to leave behind in your wake.”
Just then, the wind almost knocked us off our feet. Bryan steadied me while he tried to catch his balance and the air current whipped around so hard it ripped the leaves off the trees. They swirled around our feet, the cold making us shiver while we looked wildly at each other. When we craned our necks to look up at the sky, we saw the sun was still shining.
There were no clouds in sight despite the furious wind whipping around our bodies.
But then, an animal walked out of the woods, a fox with its long tail and its stern gaze. It stared at us for quite some time, simply standing there while Bryan’s grasp on me tightened more and more. The wind soon fell into the background while the fox’s tail started wrapping around its body, and that’s when Bryan noticed it
The fox’s brown eyes.
“I thought foxes had blue eyes?” he asked.
“Or green,” I said. “But not brown.”
We watched it as it stood, still as a statue at the edge of the woods. I felt Bryan’s breathing quicken while my hands ran up and down his forearm, trying to comfort him while my thoughts ran wildly in my head.
I wasn’t an expert on foxes or anything, but something told me this wasn’t any old fox.
In fact, there was something in my gut telling me the fox looked familiar, with its dark red coat and the white line cascading all the way down the length of its body.
“He has brown eyes,” Bryan said.
“I know,” I said breathlessly.
I knew the fox wasn’t John, even if that was the metaphor Bryan was pulling from it. It was simply a fox, an animal that hadn’t scampered into hiding from the cold yet. I tried to shake the familiar feeling permeating throughout my limbs, but as if John himself was watching over us, the fox bounced its head up and down. It walked toward us and stopped behind the gravestone. It whipped its tail along the granite, almost like it was cleaning it before it looked at us one last time. Bryan and I were frozen in our spots, unable to move or speak while the wild animal stared at us.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the fox was gone.
“Where the hell did it go?” I asked breathlessly.
But all Bryan could do was stay silent.
We stood there for what seemed like hours, searching for the fox while our minds raced with the possibilities. I turned my body into Bryan, shielding myself from the cold as his strong arms wrapped tightly around my body. I had no idea what to make of the scenario, and I had no idea what Bryan was thinking, but instead of turning to go, I heard him draw a deep breath through his nose.
“You made us better, John. Through your connection to us, you helped us appreciate art more. Hailey will never admit it, but I know you’re part of the muse she draws from when she paints nowadays. I know you’re the reason I’m still keeping this company going. Your presence and your inspiration made us better people and molded us into more compassionate human beings. I wish it could’ve done the same for Mom and Dad.”
My fingers threaded with his while I stood at his side, letting him say what he needed to say before the weather got any colder.
“I can’t help thinking I failed you, brother,” he said as his face crinkled up. “I can’t help thinking there was more I could have done. Every single time I offer one of my homeless men a part-time position at my company, I can’t help thinking of all the ways I could’ve used to convince you instead of yelling at you to come home. I keep thinking of all the things I could’ve said to you in earnest instead of saying them in anger like how much I loved you instead o
f how stupid I thought you were being.”
His shoulders shook with his sobs as I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close.
“I miss you every fucking day, John. I wake up in the mornings and want to call you. I go through my day and want to text you. My weekends roll around, and I still want to ask you how L.A.’s treating you. I failed you brother, and I’m so sorry.”
Bryan’s knees buckled again, only this time, I sank to the ground with him. Our arms wrapped around one another as the wind kicked up again, and it swirled around us while our tears drenched the ground. We were becoming one with the many souls that had traveled through this cemetery, crying the same tears we were crying now. We were watering John’s grave with our regrets and our sadness, hoping he was somewhere where he could hear us. The wind grew harsher and harsher as our sobs grew louder and louder, and eventually, we were pressed so closely to one another, I wasn’t sure where I ended and Bryan began.
But the moment our sobs finally died down so did the wind.
“I’m sorry, John,” Bryan said breathlessly. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I cupped his cheeks and turned his reddened gaze toward mine. I pressed his lips with mine, willing his jaw to stop trembling while his arms stayed hooked around my waist. While our tongues slowly found one another’s, we stood, our legs finally growing the strength they needed to hold our weakened bodies upright.
“Let’s go get you some hot chocolate,” I said, whispering.
“That sounds like a good idea.”
We looked back at John’s grave one last time before we both heaved a sigh of relief, our bones aching from the cold while our throats ached with the flood of tears we’d just shed. I held Bryan’s hand while we silently stood there a little bit longer, the weight of the world crushing his shoulders while I sprinkled his arm with kisses. I nuzzled my cold nose into him, pulling the smallest of grins across his cheek as his eyes found mine. But then I saw his eyes gravitate over my shoulder, a shocked look crossing his face as I turned to see what he was staring at.
It was the fox with its uncanny brown eyes and the white stripe down its back, only this time, its tail was waving at us.
Almost as if it was waving goodbye.
Chapter 20
Hailey
“What do you think you’re going to do?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know. I want to try and advertise the formal gallery somehow. Bryan’s dead set on having it, and I think it’s a good idea,” I said.
“What about putting up fliers across San Diego. I could help you with that,” she said.
“I don’t know. I thought about that, but it seems ...”
“Tacky? Juvenile? High school-ish?”
“Yes to all three of them,” I said.
“What about taking an ad out in the newspaper? You could do a small advertisement and run it for a couple weeks or something like that.”
Suddenly, I remembered that woman, the reporter who’d come into my gallery about a month ago. Our conversation ran through my head as I leaped for my purse and immediately started digging for her card.
“I take it I had a brilliant idea,” Anna said.
“Yes, you did. Thank you. Seriously,” I said.
“Well, my work here is done. Let me know if you need anything. I’m going to go look for apartments.”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“Hailey. I told you I wasn’t staying here forever.”
“And I told you that you were welcome as long as you’d like,” I said.
“Well, I’m established in a little part-time job secretarial position, and it pays me enough to afford rent in San Diego along with renter’s insurance and internet, so that right there covers half of what I’ll need. I’ve found some really cute places, so once I narrow it down to two, maybe you could come take a look at them.”
My fingertips finally found the card as I pulled it out of my purse. I had to admit, moving my sister out and into her own place affected me more than I thought it would. I enjoyed having her around, having someone to come home to after the gallery had closed, but I also understood her need to have her own space and live her life on her own terms.
After all, it was why she’d moved out here.
“Good, because I want a say in where you’re living,” I said, grinning.
“That’s the spirit. Thanks, sis.”
Anna embraced me, and I hugged her close. I clutched the card in my hand as I watched Anna walk out the door and then turned for my cell phone to call Jennifer. I knew this would be a wonderful angle for a story in her column, and that would be the perfect type of exposure for the beauty that would be this gallery of John’s paintings.
I wanted everything to be perfect, complete with the announcement of his artwork to the community.
“Jennifer Skyles, entertainment reporter. What do you have for me today?”
“Jennifer, hi. I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but it’s Hailey Ryan.”
“The woman with the art gallery in the middle of nowhere, how could I forget? What brings you to my ear today?” she asked.
“You told me to call you if I ever came across a story you might be able to use,” I said.
“Well then, hit me. I’ve been struggling all week to find something,” she said.
“I have a slew of paintings from a dead artist, a student I used to teach in one of my art therapy classes. I think it might be a good angle for your column.”
“Okay. Talk me through the angle,” she said.
Wait, that wasn’t enough of an angle? What in the world did she want to know about it? How much should I tell her?
Would this upset Bryan?
“Um, well, the artist was homeless when I found him. He was selling his sketches on the street for money.”
“Are you serious?” she asked. “What were his sketches of?”
“Anything he saw in front of him. Lampposts, dogs, traffic flying by. He sold them for ten bucks a piece to buy food for himself,” I said.
“So, how did you find him?” she asked.
“I was in L.A. at the time and kept passing him on the street. So, I offered him the chance to come into my little art studio I had at the time, and I taught him how to paint and shade. All the things that make up the foundation of the art pieces I’m going to be showcasing in my gallery,” I said.
“Oh, this is perfect. Homeless man meets guardian angel who pulls him off the street into this wonderful art gallery and rehabilitates him. Keep going.”
“Well, the studio was only six-hundred square feet. I was living out of it at the time.”
“Oh, this is tasty,” she said.
“Uh-huh. So, he came to my art therapy classes and kept developing his craft, and all the paintings he created he did within the last four months of his life. He got himself clean from drugs, and he died saving my life.”
“Wait. You’re showcasing the paintings of a dead homeless man who got clean and saved your life. Are you serious? Where has this story been all my career? How did he save your life, Miss Ryan?”
“There was an art student selling drugs out of one of my classes. There were some guys who came around threatening me, and he defended me.”
“The dead homeless man,” she said.
I cringed at the way she was describing John, but if this got him the exposure and the respect he deserved for his artwork, I was willing to stomach it.
“Yes. His name’s John, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. So, he saved you from these drug-running thugs,” she said.
“Yeah, but it eventually caught up to him. He went after them to make sure they never came back, and they killed him, injected him with a lethal dose of heroin after he’d been clean for months to make it look like an overdose.”
“Oh, wow. Hell, I could do an entire week’s worth of articles on this story. Where in L.A. did all this take place? I’ll have to corroborate and cross-check with the police department,” she said.
“Well, the police wouldn’t listen to me about the conversation I overheard going on. I was the one who called nine one one after I realized what the guys were doing to him, but the police didn’t believe me. They saw the pockmarks on his arms and wrote him off. It’s not just a story about artwork and heroism, it’s a story of redemption, of going to the greatest possible lengths to prove your worth or however you want to twist it,” I said.
“Look, Miss Ryan. I can’t print hearsay. If it’s not corroborated by the police, I can’t run it.”
“But that’s what happened,” I said.
“I’m a journalist, not a gossip columnist. I’d look like an idiot running something the police had physical records to disprove,” she said.
“You’re an entertainment reporter,” I said. “Isn’t hearsay what you dabble in?”
The phone call fell silent, and I thought she was going to hang up on me. I was getting annoyed with her, with the way she was addressing John and the way she was boiling this beautiful story down to nothing but points she could garner with her boss. I knew this story had potential and part of me wanted to tell her I’d go to someone else with it, but for whatever the reason, I stayed on the phone with her.
“Miss Ryan, I get it. Your cute little love story with your unrequited love for your dead artist and how he saved your life is driving you to showcase his artwork.”
“I wasn’t in love with him. Not even close,” I said.
“Hearsay, right?” she said.
I could practically hear her grin pouring through the phone.
I wanted to tell her I was in love with his brother and that John’s death was the catalyst that started our journey toward one another. I wanted to tell her about how John’s death made us better people and made us reach out to the community to help anyone we could to keep the positive aspects of his memory alive. I wanted to regale her with all the details I knew she would simply soak up and bask in.
But I knew I couldn’t do any of that without Bryan’s permission first.
“It’s a good story, and it’s a true one,” I said. “What if you kept his death out of it? I mean, how he died, the supposed hearsay part.”