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ChapterNine
Piper
I stare, shock rooting me in place. There’s so much. I mean, honestly, I sent him a huge list to delay him, but obviously, I underestimated Oliver Nichols. He really pulled together the perfect space in the smallest amount of time. He got everything I asked for and then some.
Track lights march along the ceiling, providing more than adequate illumination without being overwhelming. My gaze jumps around, not knowing where to land first. There’s the workbench with tools set in neat and precise rows and the exposed concrete pad next to it where I could create something fifteen feet tall and just as wide if I wanted. There’s a drafting table in the corner and a couch near the center, set on top of plush rugs that cover the concrete floor. There’s a white bookshelf with paper and notepads and little containers stuffed with pencils. There’s also a minifridge in one corner.
In the other corner… I suck in an audible breath. “Lamentation.”
I walk toward the sculpture, the lights overhead warming the dark copper. I trail a finger down the curve of the arm. It’s an abstract of a person about my size, a figure hunched over itself. The limbs are spindly, long, and drooped. There’s a gaping hole where the central body mass should be.
Oliver stops next to me close enough that if I tilted slightly to the right, we would touch. “I thought you might like to see it again. Maybe it will provide some inspiration while you’re working here. I purchased it eight years ago.” His voice is a rough whisper against my sensitive nerve endings.
I nod, resisting the urge to bend in his direction. Eight years. This was a good sale. My first major sale. He paid well over the asking price.
The memory hits me then. He told me he had one of my pieces in LA, when we first met, the day after I left Ben. Shocked and overwhelmed by the aftermath of hurricane Ben, I didn’t have the energy to ponder the statement at the time. A lot of my memories those first few days still have big blank spots.
Oliver’s eyes are fixed forward, his jawline hard and smooth.
“It spoke to you?” I ask.
His chin dips in a semblance of a nod.
“Will you tell me why?”
I’m always curious how my pieces affect other people. I know how they make me feel, but to a viewer, it’s always different. It amazes me how two people can scrutinize the same work and come away with completely different insights based on their own experiences and perceptions. It’s part of what makes art so interesting.
I hold my breath, waiting. I won’t press him to answer. It would mean so much more if he decided to tell me on his own.
“Have you ever been hungry?” he asks.
My brows lift. “Well… yeah.”
His arms cross. “More than mild hunger pangs between meals. Have you ever been starving? So hungry it feels like your insides will consume themselves?”
I stare at his profile, my voice emerging, low and soft. “Does it remind you of feeling that way?”
I want to touch him, to comfort him, to take away the pain evident in the hard line of his shoulders, but I don’t want to break the spell that has him opening up more than I could have imagined. I also can’t quite grasp why anyone would want a reminder of what sounds like a painful memory.
“It reminds me of how far I’ve come.”
I look back at Lamentation, considering his words and considering the things he isn’t saying. I know little of Oliver’s past. He met Archer at a camp for disadvantaged kids, so he clearly had a less than ideal childhood, but I don’t know details. He’s spent his adult life acquiring… well, everything. Maybe it’s because of the lack he felt in his childhood. The hunger he describes… I can’t even imagine.
What happened to his parents? Did he have siblings? Who watched after him?Does the piece represent a hunger he’s now trying to fill with money and possessions?
Growing up as one of six children, I can’t imagine not having a large, semidysfunctional family. Of course, now I’m no longer one of six. It’s been one of five since I was eighteen.
I gesture to the hole in the center. “This was my grief. How I felt after losing Aria. How it twists and shapes you, overwhelms you, and then defines you.”
The grief is still a part of me. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my sister, about how I wish she was here. It’s even worse when I remember Dad. The shame is too overwhelming.
As I stare at the gaping hole in the center of the sculpture, the familiar sense of loss creeps over me. It’s never far away, always hovering nearby.
“I’ve never experienced it.”
Oliver’s quiet statement snaps me out of my reverie.
“You’ve never experienced grief?”
