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Rowan
One week later...
IT’STHEDAYbefore the show. This is the quickest I’ve ever pulled an event together, but it was almost like divine intervention helped it along. Every artist I approached said yes. Every delivery went according to plan. Every element clicked into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Everythingoutsidethe show, however, is a mess.
I’ve been fucking miserable since Emery left my apartment. I haven’t seen her since, despite walking up to her front door more times than I can count. I even held on to my nerve long enough to knock one time...but there was no answer. Dom is barely speaking to me because I’ve been like a bear with a sore head. Kylie is steering clear for fear of getting dragged into the middle, and my father’s calls are growing ever more insistent.
Despite the show coming along perfectly, it feels as though the control I have over my life is slipping through my fingers.
So I’m holed up in my office, listening to the banging and clattering below as everything is being installed for tomorrow night. But I can’t work. I’m staring at the pile of canvases wrapped in butcher’s paper and stacked against the wall. I swear, I had every intention of driving them out to the tip and leaving them to rot.
But I couldn’t do it.
Growing up, my life was centred around art, and throwing the canvases away feels like blasphemy. But I feel stuck now. It’s like my limbs are being drawn in opposite directions. My desire oscillates between wanting to keep my mother’s memory alive the best way I know how...and breaking free. Living for my own wants and needs.
It’s almost like I’ve forgotten how to be anything but this—a man without attachments and goals of his own. A man who’s untethered and aimless and willfully alone. The stairs creak and I feel my body tense up. I really don’t have the strength to deal with anyone right now. Sucking in a breath, I swing around on my desk chair and stand.
The figure that emerges stops me in my tracks.
“Dad?”
He’s moving slower these days, and he takes the stairs carefully, one at a time. His hand grips the railing and all of a sudden he seems so old. Frail, even. I head over to help him up the last few steps, but he waves my hand away.
“I can do it,” he mutters, his breath wheezy.
He was much older than my mother—almost twenty years her senior. So he was already in his late forties by the time I was born, but I’ve never seen him as anything but the strong, wiry man from my youth who hefted large bits of metal around and could open the lid of any jar with ease.
But now his back is hunched, and his head is almost totally silver, whereas before it was salt-and-pepper. It’s a shock and I realise that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him. Three years, at least. Possibly more. How has time moved so quickly?
“Don’t look at me like that—I’m not dying.” His dark eyes are sharp as ever and his tone makes me instinctively straighten my shoulders. “But you can get me that chair.”
I move my desk chair closer to him and he lowers himself slowly.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m coming to visit my son who’s always too busy to take my calls.”
“Sorry for having a life.”
“Do you?” He narrows his eyes at me. “Because I think a man who hides behind his work doesn’t have much of a life.”
“Why does everyone think it’s fine to come into my space and criticise the way I do things?” I throw my hands up in the air.
“I’m worried about you, Rowan.”
I blink. “Since when?”
“I spoke with Dom the other day. He’s expressed some concern that you’re more stressed than normal.”
Fucking Dom. I love my brother more than anything, but sometimes he does not know how to mind his own business.
“I thought about selling the gallery, you know,” my father says.
My head snaps toward him. “What?”
He owns 50 per cent of the business, while Dom and I have twenty-five each, which was how my mother’s portion was split between us. If he convinced Dom, then they could absolutely sell this place.
