“Thank you, sweetie.” Laurel leans forward, kissing Andrea’s cheek. “This is a great find. Maybe we can paint on it together, before I go home.”
Andie agrees, bobbing her head excitedly. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“Hey, maybe the rock’ll sing, too,” I quip as Andie plops between us again.
“Michael, that painting has life,” Laurel insists in a firm voice. Something in her words makes me shiver despite the midday heat. “It will speak to you, but you have to listen.” I think of falling asleep last night, staring at it, of the sway it already held over me. I think of Alex, gone from this world, but maybe having life inside that canvas.
“Laurel, it’s a beautiful painting,” I say. “I love it, seriously. I was just teasing you.”
She smiles, her eyes crinkling at the edges. It’s hard to believe that we started out so young together, and now we’re getting older. “I do know you, Michael Warner.” She reaches for me, touching my hand very gently. “I know you well and love you much.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble, even though she’s moved me with her words. “You’re just trying to get those paintings back out of storage.”
“No, they’re yours,” she disagrees, turning the smooth stone in the palm of her hand. “They may be my children, but they belong to you now. Not me.” I get her pointed meaning, the reassurance that she’s offering.
“You’ve been very generous.” I slip my arm around Andrea’s shoulder. “With Alex and me. Those are some amazing paintings.”
“So, Daddy,” Andie interrupts, “this mean we can hang some of Mommy’s stuff up again?”
“Only if you stop calling Aunt Laurel Mommy like that.”
“Why?” she asks, her auburn eyebrows knitting together in innocent confusion.
“Because it’s freaking weird, that’s why.” And then we all laugh together, sitting there on our little park bench along the golf course, enjoying the shade of the palm trees as a family in our own strange, imperfect way.
After a quiet dinner and probably too many bedtime stories, Laurel kisses Andie goodnight, stroking her hair back from her cheek, then leaves me there in the dark, only the hall light spilling into her room.
“I had fun today,” Andrea says, her small fingers curling around the edge of the blanket as I tuck Felicity in beside her. “It made me think of when Daddy was still alive. We used to do fun stuff, back then. Family stuff,” she adds. “I miss all that.”
I never noticed when the family times stopped—have I been that wrapped in a haze of grief for the past year?
“Maybe we could do that kind of stuff with Rebecca some time?” she continues, licking her lips thoughtfully. “Go on picnics, or to the zoo. You think maybe we could?”
“I’d love that.” I press a kiss to her forehead, inhaling her fresh little-girl scent of shampoo and Ivory soap. “And I bet Rebecca would, too.”
“Okay, well, goodnight,” she says, and I squeeze her hand.
“I love you.” Turning on the CD player by her bed—her nightly ritual for falling asleep, to Sarah McLachlan—I move toward the doorway.
“Sleep tight,” she calls out to me.
“Sleep tight, precious girl.”
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” I flick on her nightlight, and am about to answer, when that soft, breathy voice adds in a whisper, “Daddy.”
Chapter Nineteen: Rebecca
“Someone’s on the phone for you from Foglight Productions,” Trevor speakerphones me. “Says she’s putting together an About the House fan gathering.”
“Oh, geez.” I groan, continuing to type an e-mail to a producer. “Tell her no.”
“It’s a fundraiser, she says.”
“No.”
“The fans would go crazy if you agreed.” Trevor has decided that me participating in this fan gathering is a good thing, and has therefore become this woman’s co-conspirator.
I reach for my coffee—my fourth cup and it’s not even noontime yet. “Put her on,” I grumble, adjusting my headset.
We talk and it turns out the fan thing is in late August; if I would be willing to come and sign publicity stills and glad-hand with the fans at a celebrity auction, it would truly crown the event a success. “I mean, you’re the ungettable get,” the coordinator tells me, none-too-tactfully. “Book Rebecca O’Neill, that’s what I was told. You’re my mandate.”
“I’ve never done one of these before. Never,” I explain, feeling overwhelmed already. “I just don’t do fan events, not after what happened to me.”
“Well, Ms. O’Neill, I completely empathize with that,” she placates, handling me with all the careful acumen of a celebrity organizer. “But this is a fundraiser, to help children with leukemia. And that’s such a worthy purpose for participating.”
“Kids with cancer?” I’m thinking of Alex, of course, and of how strange that this benefits his very cause. Well, not so strange—cancer is common enough. But then she adds, “All proceeds are to go to the children’s hospital at UCLA.”