Page 94 of Keep

“You’ll get it back.” Chad bumped his shoulder. “Come on. There’s one more I want you to see.”

The painting was in the last alcove, smaller than First Kiss but more immediate—darker, more urgent, the kind of work that didn’t wait for you to come to it but reached out and grabbed you by the collar. A figure, half-formed, pushing through layers of shadow into something that might be light. The brushstrokes were visible, almost aggressive—nothing like the careful blending of First Kiss. This had been painted fast.

Hank read the placard.

Emergence. Chad Ellsworth. Acrylic on canvas.

He looked at it for a long time.

The figure wasn’t anyone specific—at least, Hank didn’t think so. It was more like the idea of someone trying to become visible. The shadows clung. The light ahead was uncertain, more suggestion than promise. And the figure’s posture—shoulders braced, head slightly bowed, leaning forward against resistance—carried something Hank recognized in his chest before he could name it in his head.

“When did you paint this?” he asked.

“A couple of weeks ago.”

The timeline landed quietly. The radio silence. The nine days when Chad hadn’t answered his phone and Hank had lain awake counting the distance between them in unanswered texts.

He didn’t say any of that.

“It’s extraordinary,” he said instead.

Chad shoved his hands into his pockets. “Martin wanted it in the show. I wasn’t sure.”

“Why not?”

“It’s—” Chad shrugged. “It felt private.”

Hank looked at the painting again. The figure pushing forward. The shadows not quite releasing their grip.

“It should be seen,” he said.

“Yeah.” Chad was studying the floor. “That’s what Martin said, too.”

A woman Hank didn’t recognize was standing a few feet away, looking at Emergence with an expression he’d only seen in Senate chambers—the focused stillness of someone taking a position before announcing it. Mid-fifties, dark hair pinned up, dressed in understated black that probably cost more than Hank’s entire wardrobe. She wasn’t browsing. She was studying—her eyes tracking the brushwork, the layering, the places where the figure dissolved into shadow and shadow dissolved into something else.

She moved to First Kiss. Same focus. Same silence.

Then she crossed to where Martin was standing near the refreshment table and said something Hank couldn’t hear. Martin nodded. Glanced toward Chad. Nodded again.

“Who’s that?” Hank asked.

Chad followed his gaze. “Diana Thorne. She owns a gallery in Georgetown. She shows up at these things sometimes.”

“She spent a long time with your work.”

“She spends a long time with everything. That’s her thing.” Chad reached for two glasses of wine from a passing server and handed one to Hank. “Don’t read into it.”

Hank took the wine, reading into it.

Ricky found them near the ceramic installation, arriving with the energy of someone who’d been having a better time than anyone else in the room.

“There he is. The man of the hour.” Ricky pulled Chad into a hug that was one part affection, two parts performance. “You should have seen him before this,” he told Hank. “Four shirts. Four. I had to physically remove a vintage Bowie tee from his hands.”

“It would have been fine,” Chad muttered.

“It would have been a choice.” Ricky straightened Chad’s collar—the same gesture, Hank suspected, that had happened in their apartment an hour ago. “But look at you now. Very legitimate. Very, I belong in a gallery and not behind a bar. I’m proud.”

“Thank you, Ricky.”