“Sorry?” I cried, wiping at my eyes. “Like that settles it?”
“Michael, darling, you are hurting so badly. I know that. But try to understand, if you can, that Laurel is too.”
I do believe Ellen was telling the truth that night—that Laurel never would’ve tried a trick like that unless she’d been blinded by grief. But it doesn’t make it any easier to believe her now. And Rebecca thinks I could let Andie know the facts?
Watching Laurel sitting there on the deck, feet tucked up beneath her, hoping I’ll come back, I know that trust, once lost, isn’t easily found.
Slowly, without taking my eyes off her, I back away.
Entering my bedroom, I discover Laurel’s shopping bag placed neatly in the center of my quilt. She must’ve snuck it in here while I was outside with Rebecca. The bedside lamp’s been turned on too, creating a warm, inviting mood for the whole room. She’s nurturing me, or at least trying to, by leaving a gift here for me to discover.
Standing in the center of the room, I stare at the bag and imagine its contents. It’s a painting; I know that. I knew that earlier today, when she told me she had a present for me, for the house. The question is, what would Laurel have painted for me now? What did she hear when she sat down to create this mysterious, faceless work specifically for me?
Turning Al’s band on my finger, I swear I hear him tell me to loosen up. “You over-think this stuff, Michael,” he’d laugh. “Just see what it is.” Alex loved surprises, gifts, and he especially loved it when Laurel bestowed a new painting on us. There was no greater fan of Laurel’s lyrical work than her own brother.
Reaching into the brown paper bag, I feel around, and can tell it’s a small canvas, maybe a couple feet wide, no bigger. Carefully I retrieve it, the crumpled tissue paper rustling within my hands. I peel back the layers until the painting opens to me like an exotic flower. Dramatic splash of fiery red cresting over a mass of succulent green and blue, and there’s the familiar coppery amber—unbelievably, she managed to capture the exact shade of his hair.
She’s painted Alex. Alex on a beach, an abstraction, his pale arms extended upward to the sky as he holds the sun, the light literally radiating into his whole body like powerful cosmic energy. He’s rejoicing, the way it looks to me. Sweet Alex in the afterlife, right on the beach, exactly like in Andrea’s dreams. Exactly like Rebecca just told me outside.
She’s made him beautiful, filled with all that spirit and kinetic energy that defined each day of his life. Somehow, miraculously, she’s detailed my lover’s very essence, and I know this small painting is Laurel’s love poem to me, to what I had with her brother—and it’s her visual sonnet begging me for forgiveness.
Problem is, I’m not sure I’m capable of that kind of forgiveness. Not with the truth out there, the truth of Andrea’s parentage, waiting to destroy me like it always is—because a whole lot of my bitterness isn’t even about what Laurel did. It’s about all the power she still holds, and what she might do with it one day. It’s about how Alex dying changed the delicate balance of things, here in this world. Why didn’t we work this stuff out before he died?
Dropping heavily onto the bed, staring at the image of him I hold within my hands, I know exactly why we didn’t settle so many issues—because we always thought we had another day.
Allie, you left me in a mess of trouble, I whisper to him in my head. Why aren’t you here to help me figure it all out, baby?
That’s the real source of my anger, not the taxes. It’s that Alex should’ve realized he might die. He left a will, a planned estate, money for Andie’s college—he just didn’t tell me what to do with the truth about our daughter.
Setting the painting on the dresser, I lie back on our bed and lose myself in the swirling colors, the powerful brush strokes. I nearly fall asleep like that, bedroom lights on, staring at Alex, arms reached high to God in heaven. I’m not even sure how late it is when I finally strip out of my jeans and turn out the light.
***
I enter the glass atrium by a maze of other rooms. First through a hatch-like portal, then a narrow hallway; finally coming into the bright, airy openness of the butterfly house. At the far end of the palm-lined path, squatting down to Andrea’s six-year-old level is Alex, patiently explaining something to her. Metallic purple and ginseng-brown wings flit past her eyes as she reaches a timid hand to try and catch just one of the dozens of butterflies.
“Don’t touch, doll,” he cautions, capturing her tiny hand in his much larger one. “We can only look, okay? This is their home, not ours.”
“But I want to touch them so they’ll know how pretty I think they are.”