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Chapter Twenty
Kathryn
After Mary Ann takes off to return to the bed and breakfast, I get Max set up with paint and an easel. Jensen helps place the drop cloth down on the floor, knowing the four-year-old won’t be as careful about keeping the paint on the canvas as I am, but do you know what? I couldn’t care less. I hope he gets paint on the floor. My mother always frowned upon paint splatter, insisting she get the floors professionally cleaned every six months. Me? I say let there be paint!
“I can paint this whole big thing?” Max asks of the eleven by seventeen canvas I set in front of him.
“The whole thing. Whatever you want,” I tell him, getting a palette and paint ready on the small table beside him.
“I’m painting a baseball field,” he states decisively.
“What colors do you need?” I ask as his dad adjusts one of my old T-shirts with rubber bands on the excited child. We found a small bag in the desk, which Jensen decided was perfect to tie the paint shirt on the little boy.
“Green for grass. And brown for the dirt. And white for the lines. And some red too for the ball.” Max’s eyes are dancing with excitement as I pull all of his specified colors out and squirt them one-by-one on the pallet. “Oh, and purple.”
“Purple?” I ask, glancing over at the smiling boy.
“Yeah, for the flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“I’m putting them at the back. This way, it can be a girl’s painting and a boy’s. Baseball for me. Flowers for you.”
My eyes fill with tears. “That sounds like a wonderful painting.” This little one has very quickly wormed his way into my heart. The thought of not having him (and yes, his dad) be a part of my life brings an ache to my chest. Losing Jensen all over again would be difficult, but add in Max? I’m not sure I would survive the loss.
“You okay?” Jensen whispers against my ear, pulling me into his chest.
The tears spill over, but I’m able to mask my emotions with the hug. “I’m okay.”
“Look, Daddy! I’m making Kate a painting,” Max states. We both glance over at painting to find lots of green grass already coming to life on the canvas.
“Do you want me to draw it out for you with pencil?” I ask, keeping my cheek against the soft cotton of Jensen’s shirt. The scent of his deodorant, mixed with the soap from my shower is intoxicating.
Max seems to think over my question before nodding his head.
“Okay, I’ll just make a general outline of the ball field and then you can add the details that you want. Does that sound okay?”
He nods feverishly.
While I make a quick outline of a ball field, Jensen presses his lips to my forehead and heads over to where his aunt and uncle are reorganizing the books. We went through them, making a pile of those I wanted to keep and one for those I’ll donate to the used bookstore in town.
“I’m going to run outside and turn on the sprinkler system. The yard is shaded enough to give it some water. Plus, I want to check on the purple wisteria trees out by the gate,” he says before throwing me a wink and slipping out the door.
As soon as I’m finished with Max’s outline, I head back over to the pile of paperwork needing my attention. I’ve gotten through most of it, but there are still two drawers from the filing cabinets left. Most of the papers can be shredded, but I’ve found a few things I’d like to keep. A couple of letters from my dad’s first few house sales, as well as old deeds to properties he’s owned and sold. I don’t know why I’m keeping them, really, but it makes me feel closer to him nonetheless.
“Oh no,” Emma says, the sound of papers hitting the floor pulling my attention to where she stands. “These pages fell out of this old book.” I get up and head to where she’s by the bookshelf. Emma bends over and quickly starts to gather the fallen pages. “Wait, these aren’t from the book. I think they were stuck inside it,” she says, opening up a handful of old, handwritten pages.
I glance over her shoulder to see what they are. “They look like letters.” Taking the disarray pile in my hands, I look at the one on top, finding a scratchy handwriting in black ink filling the page. Reading the first line, I have a startling realization. “It’s a love letter.”
“Really?” Emma asks, grabbing my hand and pulling the letters closer to inspect. “Are they dirty?”
I move my hands so she can’t grab the pages and skim over the words. “No, I don’t think so. At least, not this one. I think it’s to my mother,” I realize as the writer talks about taking a dip later in the pool. The handwriting doesn’t exactly look like my dad’s, though there are similarities. I’ll have to pull a few of his old contracts and compare the writing.
But then again, who else could they be from?
My heart starts to pound in my chest. When we moved, Mom insinuated a few times that there was infidelity on my dad’s part. I never saw it, but you never know what really goes on behind closed doors. Dad was always the sweetest, most caring man I’d ever met. He was known as a shark in the business world, yet always had a softer side when it came to Mom and me.
I read over the letters, noting they’re all addressed to and end the same way.
