CHAPTER 57
I quickly sat up, turned my back to him and straightened my hair anxiously. The moment was officially over—he’d made that very clear when he suddenly looked away and started sitting up, pushing me off him. I tucked my messy hair behind my ears, andgathered myself towards myself, as my grandmother used to say. I’d never fully understood that expression as a child, but, as I’d gotten older, it made more sense to me. On many occasions, I’d had to gather together the scattered Becca debris, the little chunks of myself that had become loose and dispersed themselves in a usually very disorderly fashion. I’d had to pick all those pieces up and then click them back into place, where they belonged.
“So—” Mike stood up—“what are we looking for?”
I climbed to my feet and dusted myself off. My legs and back were covered in spider webs and dust—and, I suspected, some bat droppings, too.Wait—don’t bats carry rabies?
“We thought that maybe she’d stashed her favorite book here,” I replied.
I felt a little lost, stranded between this moment and the one that we’d just shared, staring deep into each other’s eyes while my head had been on his chest and my mind was remembering moments from the letters. But Mike didn’t look lost in any moment, he was busy walking the perimeter of this small room. He walked it in a very police-ish manner, running his hand over the stone walls.
“Looking for a hidden compartment?” I asked.
“I don’t know what I’m looking for. This place seems totally empty.” He stopped walking the perimeter and turned around, surveying the room from a different angle.
“I’m sure whoever closed it up cleared everything out,” I said. “The chance of finding something in this room, after all these years, does seem incredibly small.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Mike said, looking up at one of the beams on the ceiling.
I looked up, too, but couldn’t see anything. “What?” I asked.
“This.” He reached up and pulled something down.
I moved closer. “What is it?” I looked at the rectangular object wrapped in cloth and my heart started to beat a little faster. I had this strange, uncanny feeling that I knew what it was. And I couldn’t wait to see it. I pulled it from Mike’s hands and, without a second’s hesitation, unwrapped it, and, when I did, I gasped.
After all this time, I was finally looking athim. His voice had lived in my head for days, now, and I felt as if I’d gotten to know him. But seeing him for the first time brought tears to my eyes. I ran my hand over the edges of the burnt canvas. This must have been the only painting left of him. And, like the diary, it had been fished out of the fire. I gently wiped the dust off the picture with my palm.
“It’s him,” I said quietly, in absolute awe. “The man who wrote the letters.”
I looked into his eyes first, and I was overcome with this feeling that I knew him. I had seen these very eyes in my dreams at night, and imagined them reflected in his letters. They were big and brown, and she’d painted them perfectly, capturing what can only be described as a bright spark, right in the center of them. His eyes were smiling, as was his mouth. It was open, mid-laugh, as if the artist and her subject had just shared a joke. His cheeks were indented with big dimples and his face was dotted with just a tiny amount of stubble. And then there was the color of his skin, the thing that had become absolutely everything. I traced my finger over his cheek; the light caramel color of his skin was almost golden because of the warm light the picture had been painted in.
So much attention to detail had been frozen on to this canvas: the tiny freckles that dotted his skin, the laugh lines in the corners of his eyes, the deep lines etched into his forehead, the individual hairs of his eyebrows. The painting was so realistic that, from far away, one might have thought it a photo. But, on closer inspection, one could see the small, individual brush strokes that made up the face. Each one vital and important in its own way, capturing something of the subject. His light, his laughter, his spirit, a little piece of his soul. Captured, mixed into the colors, painted in a million strokes and saved for posterity.
I looked at the old cloth that the painting had come out of and wanted to weep. This painting should not have been hidden behind a dusty ceiling beam. This painting was created with more love than I’d ever seen, and, as such, should have been hanging proudly on a wall for all to see, as a celebration. People should stand in lines to see this painting, to look into the eyes of someone who was truly loved, deeply, with every breath and every beat . . .Now, how many people can truly say that they know what that’s like?To love against all odds. To love with courage and strength when the world is trying to pull you apart.
“We should take this home and hang it on the wall,” Mike said, next to me, as if he’d been inside my head, thinking the same thoughts that I had been. “This deserves to be seen.”
I nodded. I couldn’t open my mouth to speak, because so many emotions were suffocating me right now. Besides, what words could I use, in a moment like this? It seemed too big and too momentous for words. Words didn’t do it justice, as I looked at him on the canvas.
We hadn’t found what we thought we were looking for,but we’d found everything.
