“If he didn’t want to jeopardize his community service, he’d make better choices.”
“How? He doesn’t have a car. Unless I give him a ride he walks from home to the library for his service hours. It’s six miles, one way!”
Lucas looked at her, then at Cody, then finally at Duke, who still lay on the floor by the door. “Duke’s not interested, so I’m not, either,” he said.
Cody flinched, the movement confined to his eyes and not much more.
“I’ll be in the basement,” he said, and picked up the toolbox.
“Come into the living room,” Alana said as she held out her arm to Cody. “Do you want something to eat first?”
“No,” he said, clutching the portfolio to his chest.
In the living room, she made sure everyone knew Cody. He opened the portfolio and took out several exquisitely detailed drawings of the mural, then stumbled through an explanation of what he’d drawn and why he’d drawn it. “I’d been in the library on school visits,” he said. “But not at all since grade school. It was just books, you know? I didn’t care about books. But then I started my community service there, and I realized it was so much more than that. It’s easy to say it’s our connection to the world outside Walkers Ford, but the other thing I realized is that it’s a place where we connect with each other. We have the community center and the school stuff—sports, the plays, church stuff—but the library is the only place that’s open most of the week to anybody. You don’t have to be smart, or a jock, or able to buy a soda or coffee to sit in a booth. You just go, and Miss Wentworth makes you feel like you belong there, even when you don’t.”
Tears sprang into Alana’s eyes.
A respectful, slightly shocked silence followed as the drawings made their way from hand to hand around the room.
“That’s why the building is the central focus of the mural. It’s a visual way of reminding everyone who uses the library what’s at the center of our community. Most folks have cable or satellite. Some folks have high-speed Internet access and computers. I don’t,” he said. Alana wondered what it cost him to admit to a room full of patrons who thought he was a loser and a delinquent that he was one of those people. “But the more we isolate ourselves from each other, the less of a community we are. The library brings us together. Because we all have something to offer.”
“These are absolutely gorgeous,” Delaney said.
As if everyone was waiting for a verdict from a representative of the town’s leading family, the dam opened. To Alana’s surprise, Cody didn’t blush or downplay his abilities. He talked confidently about the techniques he used, how he’d replicate them on the mural, got into a very technical discussion with Billy about the properties of plaster and when the surface would be ready to receive paint.
Watching him, Alana felt total certainty steal over her soul. He’s good at this. He knows what he’s good at, what he’s supposed to do. I can’t leave him here any more than I could leave Marissa here. He needs training, he needs exposure to other artists, to techniques, to the wider world to nurture a brain that could easily turn on itself with drugs, alcohol, or the sheer devastation of being trapped.
Mrs. Battle and another older woman were looking over the most detailed rendering of the mural, identifying each of the town’s residents. Gina stood outside her diner, and Superintendent Miller stood on the steps of the county’s high school, watching the football coach run players through practice on the field. The man who owned the gas station was at his pumps, and the shopkeepers on Main Street chatted or watered the flowers lining the business district. Delaney’s father and father-in-law shook hands in the space between the Herndon law offices and the bank. Two uniformed officers were getting into police cars outside the station, but Lucas was nowhere in sight.
Cody had revised the drawings since the first time she saw them. He’d captured the marble steps leading up to the front doors. A blond woman dressed in a tweed skirt and cream sweater stood on the steps. That was her, so the man in a suit jacket and slacks with a gun and badge on his belt was Lucas, one step below her, his dark head level with hers as they surveyed the rest of Main Street. Alana felt heat rush into her face when she recognized herself, and Lucas, in a pose that could either be construed as intimate or attentive, depending on how much the looker knew about their relationship. On the grass in the building’s shadow stood a russet-haired boy, his skinniness exaggerated into a looming emaciation. Cody.