Then come the sketches of my neighbor’s cute dog, a hyper little black dachshund, and a chubby grey tabby cat I sometimes see around, lounging on old brick walls like he owns them.
Random objects, too. A soda can tilted on its side with an interesting dent in the middle. Most of them are pencil, but I have a few in charcoal, heavily shadowed.
A slow, shadowy sunrise over Casco Bay in basic watercolor. The same sunrise in acrylics.
Most artists specialize in one medium, but I experiment until I find what feels like magic. Every scene, every subject is different.
“So cool. I love that day by day of the banana you did. Now that’s dedication, keeping it until it went black.” Kit laughs, tracing each one with her nail. “So you do this all the time?”
“Yeah. It’s how I like to de-stress.”
She turns the page.
There’s my dad, small and exaggerated, his face puffed up in cartoony rage. Not knowing who he is, Kit passes over him without any questions.Close call.
There’s treating her like an adult, and there’s trauma-dumping.
She pages toward the back and stops when she sees tinman Holden.
Oh crap. How could I forget about that one?
Her little eyes widen, dark desert sands just like her father’s. I stare at my little caricature of Holden in horror, dizzy from the rush of blood to my head.
If she calls me out—
Oof.
But maybe she won’t. She’s only ten and it’s not super-duper obvious… is it?
The second she starts laughing, my face burns.
I pry the sketch pad from her hands with a pained smile, knowing I’m just making this worse.
Now I look guilty, too. Awesome.
She mimes zipping her lips shut and throwing away the key, oddly unbothered.
That makes me wonder if this happens more often than I think. Has she seen other women indulging the dumbest fantasies about Holden Verity?
I don’t have time to wonder, to suffocate in the awkward silence for long. Holden calls out, asking for a hand with setting the table.
Kit jumps up and races off before I can move.
Right. Their routine.
Meals are sacrosanct.
“Plates,” Holden says, passing Kit a stack. “Come back for the forks and knives.”
“I’ve got it, Dad,” she says.
I walk to the edge of the kitchen and watch them. The way he swings into dad mode whenever she comes close, his eyes softly tracking her movements.
He’s a good father, even if he’s defective when it comes to having fun.
I’ve known it for a while, I think, but seeing it up close and personal makes my heart lurch. It’s almost painful, the relief I feel seeing this little girl get what I never had.
Also, I didn’t know I was into dads until very recently.
