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“I wondered why you came back,” he admitted, and then cut his words off, as though what he said next was important and needed to be measured. “I had hoped it… it was for personal reasons.”
Connie leaped up from her chair. There was too much space between them and she went to him, unsure of how he would react. She stood in the kitchen and her eyes became huge and somber.
“It was,” she admitted. Her legs were trembling and she felt herself teeter. She clutched at the doorframe to hold herself upright. “I wanted to come back to see you.”
He looked unconvinced. There was a cynical arch to his eyebrow. “And you wanted to get my permission to show the paintings.”
Connie lowered her head and stared down at the floor. Her hair hung down over her face like a veil. She took a deep shuddering breath and felt as though she was on the edge of an abyss with the ground beneath her quickly crumbling away. She lifted her face at last and wrung her hands.
“I wanted to be near you,” she said in a whisper. “Yes, I want to show your paintings – I won’t deny that because the world deserves to enjoy them – but coming back here and seeing you again was what mattered most.” She stopped suddenly, worried that she had already said too much, but yearning to say more. So much more. She bit her lip as though to physically choke off the rush of impassioned words that leaped to her lips.
Connie saw some flicker of reaction behind Blake’s eyes – a fissure in the stone of his expression.
“Blake…?”
Connie’s words had seared like a white-hot brand across his mind. He felt a lightheaded lift that gripped at his heart and squeezed tight as a fist, and he wondered suddenly if his emotions were transparent – if she could see the feelings she stirred within him every time he looked at her.
He glanced away lest she saw that thing in his gaze which would leave him so vulnerable. “Let me think,” he said gruffly.
He went out through the door without another word and Ned rose instinctively from his bed and trailed him down the porch steps. Blake walked stiffly down to the sand, stood for a long moment as the surf lapped around his feet, and then began to pace with his head bowed in thought towards the northern end of the beach.
He was in conflicted turmoil – unable to turn away from the realization that he had missed Connie, and that he had longed for her to return.
But he wondered, after all he had endured, whether his grief had left him susceptible, or if the loneliness of his existence had left his heart so dry and exposed that his tumbling emotions were merely an illusion of his solitude.
And with this woman, he knew, came guilt. He had encouraged her to pursue her dreams, and he felt some of the burden of her dilemma – the loss of her job for keeping the vow of secrecy he had sworn her to.
He stopped pacing suddenly, looked up and was startled to realize the trail of his footprints stretched the length of the beach and back again. Ned was splashing in the edge of the surf. The big dog came to him shaking water from his shoulders, his tongue hanging pink from his mouth.
After an hour he came back in through the doorway kicking sand from his feet with Ned like a shadow at his side. His face was creased and had been colored by the sun.
Connie was sitting pensively on the sofa, her hands clasped in her lap, her expression wracked with the appalling tension of a patient waiting in dread for a doctor’s results. She looked up into his face as he stood there, a broad shouldered silhouette against the glare through the door.
“I will let you do an exhibition of my old paintings when you establish your gallery.” He thrust a warning finger in the air and scowled, “But there is a condition.”
Connie leaped from her chair, went to throw her arms impulsively around his neck and cover him with the bubbling joy of her kisses – but she stopped herself with a great effort, so that instead her move towards him was curtailed to an awkward wave of her arms and demure restraint. “Thank you,” she gushed, certain that all she was feeling shone transparent. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am.” Her face was lifted up to his and her lips were glossy and soft, her eyes flooded. Blake wanted to kiss those lips, to taste the sweetness of her. He drew a breath.
“There is a condition,” he reminded her. She had come towards him and he had raised his arms to wrap them around her, his heart squeezed, wishing it to be so. But she had stopped, and the small space between them felt like a desolate ache.
“Condition?” Connie’s cheeks were bright and behind the long dark lashes her eyes glittered like precious gems. “What condition?”
Blake made his face stern. “I want to paint you – I want to paint your portrait.”
Connie went quite still, like some timid animal on the edge of a forest. She searched Blake’s eyes in confusion.
“You want to paint me? But you don’t paint… and you don’t paint portraits.”
“I want to try.”
“How long would it take?”
Blake shrugged. In truth he didn’t know. “Maybe two weeks,” he considered. “Perhaps three. It’s been a long time since I sat at an easel. I don’t know how difficult it will be to get my technique back.”
Connie was bewildered by the request, but secretly also elated by the idea. The chance to spend so much time with Blake was like a tantalizing promise.
“When would you want to make this painting?”
“As soon as possible,” he said without hesitating. “But I would need to clean out the studio first. Maybe the day after tomorrow…”
“So soon?”
“Yes.”
Connie nodded slowly, her mind trying to deal with the daunting logistics of driving from Hoyt Harbor each day, and the looming dilemma of housing. But she shrugged those issues aside and nodded her head. “Fine,” she said.
He was pleased. She saw it on his face. “They will be long days,” he felt compelled to caution her. “Have you ever sat for a portrait before?”
Connie giggled. “Of course not.”
“Well we will be starting early and finishing late – I like to paint well into the night…” he stopped himself then, realized the sacrifice he was asking of her and tilted his head quizzically as a fresh, intriguing thought struck him. “Would you like to stay here – until the painting is finished, I mean? I have a spare room with an empty bed. You’re welcome to it, and it would save you a lot of driving – a lot of time on the road…”
Connie didn’t flinch. For just an instant she considered the offer and saw laid out before her a solution to everything her heart yearned for.
“Yes,” she said solemnly and nodded her head. “If you just tell me why. Why you want to paint again after all this time, and why, of all people, you want to paint me.”
Blake stood unmoving, a man whose grip on his private pain was slowly unraveling, and at last he had no choice but to let go, to fall. He weighed all that must be risked from laying bare his soul. His grief and his secrets were all he had that mattered, and the idea of opening himself up in such an intimate way chilled his blood.
“Connie, I’m going blind,” he said at
last. “And painting you is my last chance for redemption.”
25.
“Blind?” Connie repeated the word and the sound of it seemed to pierce her heart as a shocking pain. She fell like dead-weight back onto the sofa.
Blake nodded his head soberly. “Yes,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Blake said. “It’s a hereditary condition, and it’s progressive. I’ve known about it for many years.”
Connie shook her head in slow disbelieving denial, her eyes like deep wells of despair. “Can anything be done?”
“No. Nothing at all.”
Connie lapsed into silence, her emotions swirling. She went very still for a long time, her gaze vacant. Then suddenly the sickening pain of it came to her again, and a deep raw ache left her eyes brimming with tears.
She got slowly back to her feet and reached for Blake’s hand. She squeezed his fingers tight in a convulsing spasm like some injured little thing and then her hand went very soft and still. “How long have you got before..?”
Blake shrugged. “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “I first noticed my vision blurring several years ago, but I thought nothing of it. I was young – I thought I was ten feet tall and bulletproof. But lately, it has become progressively worse. I’m losing close up focus, although my long-range vision seems fine. It’s like my eyes are dying from the inside out.”
He needed space. Connie was too close to him, and he felt the claustrophobia of her; the way she was looking up into his eyes with a tragic kind of sympathy that made him feel vaguely resentful. He didn’t want compassion – he wanted her to understand
He backed away, let her hand slide through his fingers and went to the bookcase. “That’s why I’m reading so much,” he admitted. “And that’s why I want to paint you, Connie. It may be my last chance to make a painting. I know one day – sooner or later – I’m going to wake up blind.”
