“What does he look like?”
I pictured the boy as I’d last seen him, sitting on the wall, shoulders slumped. “I’d say he’s around sixteen or seventeen. Thin.” I did my best to describe him.
“Is his hair sort of reddish-brown, a little shaggy? Was he wearing yellow high-tops?”
“You know him?”
“You do too. It’s Duane,” she said. “Duane LaBrea.”
“LaBrea?”
“Rain’s brother.”
It came to me then why the boy had seemed familiar. Once Duane had given Lucy and Rain a ride to our house after some event at the school, and another time he’d dropped Rain off for an overnight with Lucy.
“If you want,” Sophie continued, “I could get in touch with him.”
Did I want? Suddenly I was reluctant.
“I mean, I know him. He used to sing tenor in the chorus. If I asked him for you, he might say yes.”
I didn’t answer.
“Look,” Sophie said, mistaking my silence, her voice more businesslike. “I’m not trying to interfere. If you rather I stay out of it, I will.”
Again I pictured the boy, imagined him as Sebastian, decided. “No. No. That would be great, Soph.”
“I’ll call his house tomorrow. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” I paused to draw a breath. “It’s just, earlier, when you told me he was Rain’s brother, it just took me by surprise. It was unexpected. And—” My voice trailed off. Rain. Lucy’s best friend.
“I know, Will.” I heard her deep inhale. “I understand. I do.”
For the first time in months, we were in sync, understanding without needing words, like we used to be. Before. “I guess I better let you go,” I said, wanting to hang up before the connection shifted.
“Will?”
“Yeah?”
“You sound—” She hesitated. “You sound different.”
Was that a good or bad thing? “I do? Different how?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice grew thoughtful, tentative. “Lighter, I guess.”
Was I? “And you sound happy, Soph.”
“I am, Will. Or at least, if not happy, I’m feeling a kind of contentment. It’s been good for me to be here. Will, I’ve been thinking. If you ever take a day off, maybe you could drive up. We could have lunch or something.”
“I’d like that, Soph. Maybe some weekend? Would a Saturday or Sunday work for you?”
“Any day would work for me, Will. Just let me know.”
“I’ve got people scheduled to pose for the next day or two. How about if we leave it loose. I’ll give you a call when I can take a day.”
Filled with the promise of that day, I lingered on the phone for no more than five more minutes and then hung up before the miracle of the call disintegrated.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
For the next five days, I woke with an unfamiliar feeling I could not identify that lingered on into the day.
As I walked across town to the studio, I thought about it. The emotion was not hope or anything even close to approaching happiness. Certainly not that. It was more an absence, a lack of something that had been part of me for months, more neutral. An unfeeling of a sort, though not unpleasant. I recalled my last conversation with Sophie. You sound different, she’d said. Lighter.
The sky had been steadily darkening all morning, and I heard the rumble of thunder in the near distance. I quickened my steps and reached the studio minutes before the rain started, hard, pelting drops that struck the pavement and the drought-hardened earth like shrapnel, causing steam to curl up from the sidewalk. I was grateful for the rain, as we needed it. Lawns were turning brown and brittle; gardens were parched. Inside, I flicked on the lights against the encroaching darkness. Overhead, the rain pinged against the skylights with such force it could be mistaken for hail. There were no models scheduled for the day, and my plan was to finalize the scheme for the three panels for the south wall. After Lucy died, work had been no more than an escape from a life grown bleak and intolerable, but in the past weeks, it had become something more. I welcomed the discipline, one that seemed to flow into other aspects of my life. My desire for drink had waned. I ate simply. Days were spent either in research or working on the panels. At night I slept deeply, the hours disturbed not by visions of violence but by dreams peopled with saints. Later, I would come to think of these brief weeks as a kind of walking dream, an escape from reality, although reality would return soon enough. But for that time I found that life, so austere and monk-like, oddly satisfying and wondered if this paring down, this simplification, was what Sophie was finding so appealing about the Maine farmhouse, why she had sounded so content when we had talked. Nearly a week had passed since that conversation. Initially I’d planned on driving up the following Saturday for the lunch she had suggested, but the weekend came and went and I remained in Port Fortune. I told myself I needed to work, but I knew it was actually fear that kept me from driving north. Sophie hadn’t phoned again, and I had resisted calling her, reluctant to test the reconnection we seemed to have arrived at during our last call, the fragile promise of beginning anew. Next week, I told myself. I’ll drive up next week, but I still held back, afraid to test the hope that Sophie and I would somehow make our way back to each other. I couldn’t believe that no matter how badly we had been devastated and pulled apart by our separate ships of grief and, as trite as it may sound, that love would find a way. I hoped my drawings of the saints might be part of forging that path.
I settled in at the worktable, pulled a sketch pad from the pile, and again contemplated the architecture of the first grouping. Brendan, the thick-bearded Irish abbot, face shadowed by the hood of his robe; Rose of Lima, the young and slender virgin, eyes lifted to the heavens; Peter, the bearded, old fisherman; Paul, the thin and fiery-eyed Jew; Maurice, the black-skinned soldier; Ambrose, the wise bishop of Milan, his face clean shaven beneath the miter. And lastly, the curly-coifed Crispin. The group was diverse, and their robes, appropriate to the era and geography of the individual saints, added to the distinction. Overhead, the lights flickered, and I swore softly at the threat of a power loss. A sound at the door drew my attention. A figure stood there in the shadow.
“Mr. Light?”
“Yes.”
The voice seemed uncertain. Young.
I remained at the bench. “Can I help you?”
Again the lights flickered. The figure froze at the door, and then a second figure appeared. I could make out the form—a woman—could see the umbrella she stood beneath but little else in the shadow. The woman lowered the umbrella and shook rain from the fabric, spattering the floorboards, then snapped it shut.