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“I do, and I’m going to dump this in his lap. I want to go through Dad’s sketchbooks, see if I can find more drawings of the house, and look for the sketches he made of the mirror.”
“You’re going to Maine.” Cleo said it matter-of-factly. “Unless Winter’s very smart boss advises against it, and gives you solid reasons, you’re going. And you’ll want to,” she added, “because your dad had this visceral connection. Because that house is you, Son, right down to the ground. Last? Because you’re just going to need to know.”
She picked up her father’s sketch pad. “I do need to know.”
“I’m going to call Marshall.”
“Oh, Mom, you don’t have to call the boss at home. There’s no hurry.”
“I think you’ll sleep better tonight knowing he’s on top of this. I know I will. Go on up, both of you, see what you can find. I’ll let you know when dinner gets here.”
Her father had converted the attic into what he affectionately called his garret. Sonya remembered climbing those steep, narrow steps, coming into the space, the light, the smell of paints and oils and solvents. She remembered how he’d looked standing at an easel—battered jeans, a sweatshirt in the winter, a T-shirt in the summer. The mop of dark blond hair shining in the light from the windows, the light shooting down from the skylights.
And the focus in his green eyes that inevitably turned to a smile when he turned to her.
Let’s set you up, monkey, and see what you’ve got.
He’d never turned her away, never told her he was too busy. And he’d taught her, as patiently as he’d taught his high school students, how to use space, color, the absence of color, how to add texture and dimension, light, shadow.
After his death—months and months after, when they could face it—she’d helped her mother store or give away his paints and tools, box up his sketchbooks.
Some of his canvases had gone to galleries, and eventually sold. Others, unfinished, were still stacked against the wall.
“I’ve always loved coming up here.” Cleo slid an arm around Sonya’s waist. “I never met him, but coming up here always makes me feel like I did.”
“I know.” Sonya tipped her head toward Cleo’s. “When I look back, I think how much patience, how much simple good-heartedness he had to make time for me. Not just giving me time, but giving me his interest.
“When I was about ten, I showed him a drawing. For a poster for a school project. After he looked at it, he looked at me. So serious. So, so serious I thought, oh, it’s a silly drawing, just dumb and silly. Then he told me to come back on Saturday. He’d get the poster board, and I could use the studio.
“And that was the moment—when he looked at me, when he said that to me—I knew I was going to be an artist. Not just play at it, or have a little fun. He changed my life that day.”
Shaking her head, she brushed a hand over the easel that still stood under the skylight.
“He didn’t have enough time. His art was just starting to move, but he didn’t have enough time.”
She moved over to one of the storage boxes that held his sketch pads. “Mom and I didn’t go through all of these. Later, we talked about doing that but never did. What would we do with them? We’d never throw them out. We wouldn’t sell them even if we could. She’s never used this space, not even for storage.”
“Some loves are forever.”
They sat on the floor, each with a pile of sketchbooks. As she paged through, Sonya understood the full meaning of poignant. It hurt, and it warmed, it brushed the dust off old sorrows even as it lifted new joy.
“He was so good. Look, it’s Mom holding me when I was a baby. Both of us curled up sleeping.”
“Here’s another one of you—what were you, about six or seven?—having a tea party in your room. Wearing a tiara! I need a tiara.”
She set the book aside, picked another.
“Oh! Sonya! Look.”
A dream sketch, Sonya thought. Not the manor. The mirror.
Her father, in those battered jeans, a paint-splattered sweatshirt. He held a paintbrush in one hand, his palette in the other.
In the glass, the reflection—the man, the brother—stood in rough boots, a plaid shirt loose over a tee. He, too, held a brush and palette.
Her father wore his hair back in a stub of a tail, as he did when he’d gone too long without a trim. Collin, for surely it was, wore his above the collar of the shirt.
Animals snarled and flew on the thick frame of the cheval glass. Wolves, fangs sharp; a hawk, wings spread, talons curled; a buck, with antlers tipped like razors; a coiled cobra; a two-headed dragon; a bear rearing up on its back legs; a cougar on the spring.
