Because Rosa could save herself.
So he stayed with his father and made himself ask, “Why?”
William held his gaze. “Which why do you want first?”
They’d made a beginning at dinner. But now, Drake wanted to understand what he’d seen tonight in the cottage. “Why have you been collecting my paintings?”
Surprise registered for a moment in his father’s eyes. “You went to the cottage tonight?”
Drake nodded. “You never once let on that you were buying my work.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was hovering over you all the time, but I still couldn’t resist buying a painting at your first show. Anonymously, of course. Each time you had another show, I would tell myself to let you be...but you’re my son. And your art felt like my only lifeline to you. The only way I could follow your growth. The only way I could get inside your head, your heart.”
“I had no new paintings of yours to follow,” Drake pointed out. “No way to get inside your head or heart.”
Grief washed across his father’s features. “I couldn’t paint anymore. I just couldn’t. Couldn’t really do much of anything for a long time. Not until Jean and Henry asked me to work on building houses here with them.”
Drake thought of Rosa’s insight about his father likely needing to make that change in order to move forward. “Does building give you the same satisfaction painting did?”
“Painting wasn’t always healthy for me. Even before your mother, the truth I didn’t want to admit is that I was driven more by pressure than inspiration. More by competition than enthusiasm. When people said I was good, I felt that I needed to be great. Until great wasn’t enough anymore, and I had to be the best. And then when I met Lynn, that urgency spun into obsession. You’re right that building isn’t the same as painting. But for me, it turns out that’s not a bad thing.”
Drake silently processed his father’s revelations. So many things had fallen between the cracks during the past thirty years, too many to deal with in one night. But at least they were making a start.
He hoped like hell that Rosa and Isobel were too.
There was one more thing that Drake needed to know for sure tonight. “It was worth it, wasn’t it? To be with Mom, even if a part of you knew that it might not be forever?”
“I would do it all again, just to have the four of you. And I promise you I would also try to do it better. So much better.”
After the decades-wide chasm between them, of course it was good to hear that. But though Drake believed his father, he wanted to know what was in his heart, not as a father, but as a man who had once loved a woman beyond all reason.
“And if we’d never been born? If those years with her were all you’d ever have?”
“One second, one hour, one day, one year.” His father’s words were raw with unguarded emotion. “Any amount of time loving Lynn was worth all the pain that came afterward.”
Before Rosa, Drake could never have understood. Now, nothing had ever made so much sense.
“I’d like to donate the paintings you’re going to give me to a few museums.”
The Met in New York City, of course, but also the small museum here in Summer Lake, along with the De Young in San Francisco, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. One in each city where Sullivans lived.
“All but the painting where she’s holding me as a baby.” Drake would forever prize that one.
“Your mother asked me to paint it for you.” His father’s voice was hollowed out by the memory. “She said she wanted to make sure you could always look at that painting and remember how much she loved you.”
“Almost as if she knew she was going to leave.”
His father didn’t look away. Didn’t deny it either. “I know we can’t fix everything tonight, but I’m damned glad you’re here, Drake.”
“I am too.”
By the time they headed back into the living room, the two women’s heads were bowed together, and it looked like they were taking notes on a cell phone.
Oscar saw the men first, and when the dog caught Rosa’s attention by lifting his head from her lap, the smile she gave Drake nearly blinded him in its beauty. They’d been apart only an hour, but he crossed the room with eyes only for her, breathing her in like oxygen when she met him halfway.
He brushed his fingertips over the dried tear tracks on her cheeks. “You’re okay.”
He didn’t say it as a question. Despite the smudges of exhaustion under her eyes, he could see not only that she was okay, but also that finally talking with her mother had lifted a big part of the load she’d been carrying.
“I am.” She put her hands on his chest, and he could feel his heart beating against her palms as she looked deep into his eyes. “So are y—” She lost the battle with a yawn. “You.”