“There’s a cottage just beyond these trees. It’s closer than the house so that we can get you warm faster. Now, tell me your plans.”
“I found out that the network wants to do a special two-hour show, but I wasn’t going to do it because I couldn’t stand the idea of using what happened as a springboard for more money, more followers, bigger ad contracts.” They were on the threshold of his father’s small cottage when she said, “But I’ve realized that if millions of people are going to tune in, even if most of them probably think they’re going to see a train wreck, I can use that time to do something good. Something that might help.”
“I know the perfect place. My friend Calvin is the mayor. The city hall building is classic without being stuffy. I’m sure he wouldn’t have a problem letting you film there. In fact, given that he has a ten-year-old sister he would do anything to protect, he’ll probably insist on helping you.”
“Always so confident.” She wrapped her arms around Drake after he fished a key out from under a rock and opened the door. “Once upon a time, I would have wondered how you could be so sure. But after spending some time with everyone tonight, I see now that it runs in your family.”
Rosa had expected the cottage to be a storage room, or maybe a simple guest house. But when he flipped on the lights and she saw the paintings, she couldn’t hold back a gasp.
Because Drake’s mother stared back at her from every single canvas.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“My father has stored the paintings here for thirty years.” This cottage had been the original building on the property and was at least a hundred years old.
While Alec rarely set foot inside the cottage, Drake was never able to stay away. Not only because he couldn’t resist magnificent art, but also because these paintings were his only link to his mother.
Normally, the paintings were hidden beneath dusty tarps, but tonight Drake was surprised to find them arranged on the walls in chronological order. He couldn’t imagine how emotional his father must have been hanging each painting, from the first time his wife had sat for him, through the years when they’d been building a family, until the end of both their marriage and his career.
Whenever Drake had come here before, he’d uncovered only a couple of paintings at a time. This was the first time he’d ever seen all of them together.
Love. Loss. Longing. Passion. Shame. Devotion.
Obsession.
You couldn’t help but feel every moment of joy, each sob of despair. Emotion sang from every brushstroke, every drop of color and contour.
This was why his father’s paintings now sold for millions of dollars—and why people would lose their minds if they knew that more than one hundred William Sullivan originals had been growing damp and dusty in a hundred-year-old cottage in the Adirondacks.
“My God.” Rosa gaped at the paintings. “They’re absolutely breathtaking.”
He watched as she followed the painted story of his mother and father’s love affair, first with solo paintings of his mother, then with babies, and then with children growing older often appearing alongside her.
Rosa tugged him over to a canvas in which his mother was looking down at Drake as a newborn. “Look how much she loved you. Whatever happened that sent your mother running, no one could look at this painting and think she didn’t want you, that she didn’t love you. Because she obviously did, Drake. With everything she was.”
“So many times over the years,” he admitted in a quiet voice, “I came and stared at this painting and wished. Wished that she really had loved me.” He’d never bared so much of himself to anyone else, not even his siblings. “But every time I thought she must have, I always thought I must be wrong. Because she didn’t stay.”
“The things your father told you tonight about what her reasons might have been—did hearing any of it help?”
“Some. But it hurts too. Hurts to know that I might have had a mom all these years if only they’d been able to figure out a way to help her.”
“I know.” She wrapped her arms around him. “If it’s too overwhelming to be in here right now, we can go.”
“It always was before, even though I couldn’t ever stay away for very long.” He held Rosa tightly as he made himself look at the painting—really look deep this time, without being afraid of what he’d see. “She really does float without her feet ever quite touching the ground, doesn’t she?”
“She does.”
“It helps to know that she didn’t leave because of me, didn’t take her life because she couldn’t handle another kid. I just wish my father could see that she didn’t leave because of him either. Then maybe he would stop wasting his talent and start painting again.”
“Do you really think he’s wasted his talent all these years?”