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He heaved a deep shuddering breath that was the sound of impossible sorrow.
“After Chloe drowned, I could never paint the ocean again. The sea had given me a career, and then she had turned cruelly on me and taken the life of my daughter. So I gave up my art, and turned my back on the world. And now it seems that once again God has come seeking revenge. I have ignored my gift, and as punishment he is making me blind.” Blake seemed to slump at the cruel irony of fate, and at last fell silent, spent and grieving, like the pain poured from his soul in an open wound that could never be healed.
Connie took another step closer, and this time he did not flinch, did not move away.
“You can still paint.”
“For now.”
“And you blame God?”
Blake fell silent again. He glanced at Connie, but couldn’t hold her gaze. He fled to the window and stared for a long time out at the shadows of the dark night. He was shaking his head slowly.
“Maybe I didn’t love Chloe enough,” he said so softly, the words so tortured that Connie barely heard him. “Maybe I didn’t appreciate her, or cherish her. Maybe I stopped deserving her… and so she was taken from me.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know,” the words were wrung from him. “But if it was because I failed her, and if I’m going blind because I turned my back on my gift in the same way I didn’t appreciate Chloe, then I need to find a way to square my soul, find some peace.”
“The portrait?”
“My salvation,” he said with the sudden conviction that could only come from desperate, despairing belief.
28.
Connie went down the porch steps and stood peering into the gloom of the night. The wind was gusting, shredding dark clouds across the moon so that the world seemed bathed in a soft glow without edges or definition.
She followed the path down to the beach and when she reached the sand she turned back suddenly and saw the bright lights ablaze in the house – a sad, sorrowful reminder of a little girl lost, disguised by the warm and welcoming glow of a beacon.
Her steps became heavy as she walked towards the lonely shape of the dog, sitting patiently above the high tide line. Ned was black as the night, seemingly carved from the same craggy dark rocks of the headland. He turned, saw Connie coming towards him and recognized her.
Connie dropped into the sand beside the dog and threw her arm up, around the Great Dane’s shoulder.
They sat in companionable silence, the big dog gazing with sad eyes at the blackness of the ocean, and Connie watching the white phosphorous explosions of foam as the waves hissed and dashed upon the shore. She sighed, and scratched her fingers down Ned’s back. He was like a shelter against the wind, an anchor to her worried thoughts that formed in her mind like waves but then burst apart before she could analyze or understand them.
“Ned, what am I going to do?” Connie spoke out loud, her words whipped away on the breeze. “Everything tells me I should go – that Blake’s fallen too deep into his own despair for me to reach him… and yet… and yet I am hopelessly attracted to him.”
She wrapped her fingers around a handful of sand and let it trickle from her grip as if poured through an hourglass. It was like life, she decided as she watched the tiny grains spill like flakes of gold. There was only a handful of time to live life, to savor its joys and disappointments, its agony and ecstasy. She thought about that time slipping her by, and then suddenly instead considered all the sand still in her hand – what remained in her grasp. It seemed to Connie to be the answer she was seeking.
She leaned against Ned, resting her head against his shoulder. She could hear the deep sonorous sound of his breathing, a steady rhythm like the ebb and hiss of the waves.
“I’ll stay,” she said.
She got to her feet slowly, scratched Ned behind his ears and stared one final time out at the empty black void of the ocean. Then she turned on her heel and walked back up the beach towards the house. There was still sand clinging between her fingers to remind her that time and hope were still in her hands.
29.
Blake was standing in the hallway entrance when Connie came through the screen door. He was bare-chested, wearing only denim jeans that were slung low at his hips. He had a towel in his hand, his dark hair curling and wet, and his chest tanned the color of old oak.
He draped the towel over his shoulder. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Connie felt a flush of warmth across her cheeks and a prickling of the fine dark hairs at the nape of her neck. Her breath caught for an instant in the back of her throat. She wanted to stare, felt obliged to look away – and in the end did nothing except stammer in confusion.
“Pardon?”
“You said you were going to your car to find something when I went for a shower. I was just wondering if you found what you were looking for?” There was no taunt on Blake’s face, no understanding of the effect he was having on her. Connie managed a rattled little smile
“Yes,” she said quickly and found distraction by brushing the sand from her hands. “And then I went down to the beach.”
Blake nodded, going back down the hall towards the bedroom and Connie let out the breath that had strangled in her throat. When he came back he had stretched on a t-shirt, and Connie’s legs were no longer trembling.
“It’s too late now for you to drive back to Hoyt Harbor,” Blake offered. “I thought I might sleep on the sofa again. You’re welcome to the bed.”
Connie frowned. “I don’t want to inconvenience you,” she protested. “You said you h
ad a spare bed?”
Blake nodded and his eyes flicked away, down the hallway in the direction of the studio. “It’s in Chloe’s room,” he said and Connie was surprised that the words were not bruised by the lingering ache of his sadness. “I was going to clean the room out for you tomorrow, while I was organizing the studio.”
Connie nodded, sensed another change in the man, like the first hint of the sun breaking through on an overcast day. There was warmth there now, still watery and weak, but better than the dark brooding clouds. She smiled. “I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said abstractly, but Blake seemed to understand.
“Chloe’s things are all packed in boxes, the closet is empty. I just need to scrape away five years of dust,” then his voice lowered and became filled with meaning. “You’re no trouble. The room is yours for as long as you want it or need it.”
Connie felt herself melt a little in the sudden warmth, and she thought desperately of a way to feed that flicker of life she saw glint faintly in his eyes. They talked about art, its rich history and the movements that had emerged through the twentieth century, until slowly the stiffness went from his voice as she coaxed him with a covert thrill as he began to warm and then relaxed.
“Can you tell me more about the portrait you’re planning?” she asked.
Blake inclined his head. “I want to paint you in sunlight,” he said, and Connie sensed that he was scrolling through images in his mind, visualizing then discarding again until an idea began to firm and he groped towards it. “Near the window sill,” he said. “Some of the most beautiful paintings by the old masters were studies in light. I want to do the same thing – create a painting that pays tribute to the greats of the past, but in a way that makes the work timeless.”
Connie smiled. “I saw a painting like that once,” she said softly, not wanting to shatter the fragility of the mood, nor distract him from his vision. “It was in Amsterdam. It inspired my passion for art.”
