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“See, that’s the thing,” I’m quick to say, trying not to shift when she goes back to drawing. “I didn’thaveto move. It’s not as if a choice was offered to me, but I could’ve fought to stay, and I should’ve because she wouldn’t have left if I hadn’t.”
“You didn’t know that would happen, Holden,” she says so quietly I barely hear her.
“Yeah, but…” I sigh. “I could see a change in her, you know? And sometimes I think, maybe if I’d just asked the right questions, then…”
Jamie’s eyebrows rise when she glances up. “What? You could’ve saved her?’
I shrug.
She heaves out a breath, warming my entire chest, and a moment later, she’s moving lower down my body, her breasts near my junk as she focuses her attention on the spot right above my heart. Whatever she’s working on now, it’s far more intricate than what she’d been doing prior. I think she’s about to ignore my question completely, and I’d be okay with that, but then her mouth opens, shuts, opens again. “When things were about to get bad between my mom and her boyfriend… she’d lock me in the closet under the stairs with nothing but paper and a pen, so I wouldn’t have to see it, you know? But I’d still have to hear it. I’d hear the shouting and the screaming and sometimes the breaking of furniture… and those sounds were okay. I could handle those. It’s when things got quiet—eerily silent—that’s when I’d panic. That’s when I’d draw. And I used it as an escape because I could control what I saw that way. I could see the ocean, or the stars, or a field full of daisies.” She says all this, her voice low, filled with zero emotion. Maybe because I’m sucking all of it out of the room. I regret asking, but I can’t regret knowing, because knowing is another piece of the puzzle.
“I almost hated when that closet door would open again because I knew what to expect. The smeared makeup and ratted hair and cuts and bruises and then came the reasoning. The excuses. The promises that it wouldn’t happen again. And then the apologies…”
My entire body is rigid, and surely, she must feel that beneath her touch. “Did he ever—”
“Once,” she says, pointing to the scar above her eyebrow. “Never again. My mom—she’d always step in to protect me.”
I don’t tell her what I want to—thattrulyprotecting her daughter would mean getting them the fuck out of that situation.
“Anyway,” Jamie says, cutting through my thoughts. “I think it happened so much that it’s become second nature—like a coping mechanism. Some people bite their nails. Some people drink enough alcohol to slay a small horse. I draw. Because for so long, it was the only thing I had, and it was the only thing that made me feelsomewhatsafe until…” she trails off.
“Gina?” I ask, and she’s slow to respond, to look up and make me bear witness to her withheld tears. I run the pad of my thumb under her eyes—eyes far too delicate to be holding them hostage. “Yeah,” she whispers, leaning into my touch. “Gina.” Her throat moves with her swallow as she adjusts herself on top of me, her voice kicking up in volume when she adds, “Now quit moving. You’re going to make me mess up.” And she’s done with the talking, the exposing pieces of herself that are far too deep for me to even comprehend.
She goes back to her task, and I lie still while she works, watching her every move. The only sounds in the room are our breaths mixing with the movement of the marker. “Are you working on Thanksgiving?” I ask a few minutes of silence later.
Without losing focus, Jamie answers, “No. It’s the only day of the year Zeke closes the diner.”
“So you’ll come here then?”
She chews her lip, but doesn’t look at me, doesn’t stop drawing. “If you want me to.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
She attempts to hide her smile, but I see it. I seeher.“Then I’ll be here.”
At some point while Jamie’s drawing, my mom sends me a text, tells me she’s on her way home. I reply, tell her that Jamie’s here—a hint not to come into my room unannounced. A few minutes later, I hear the front door open and her moving around in the kitchen.
It’s almost time to leave when Jamie completes what she declares, “might be her favorite piece yet.”
I ask her to grab my phone from the pocket of my shorts, and so she does. After handing it to me, I open the camera app and snap picture after picture, from every space, every angle, making sure I don’t miss a single thing. When I go back to inspect them, Jamie curls into my side, warming me there, while her head rests on the crook of my arm.
What she’s drawn is nothing short of breathtaking, and I don’t mean that in some bullshit metaphorical way. I mean, I literally can’t breathe. She’s used the shadow of the blinds like rays of sunlight across my torso, starting at my neck and making its way diagonally down my left side. Each beam is wrapped in vines and leaves and little flowers I have no doubt she could name, plus throw out a random fact about each one. But all of that isn’t what’s stolen all the oxygen away from my lungs. It’s the centerpiece… the piece of the puzzle that connects all other parts, completes the entire image, the one she worked on the most. On the left of my chest is a compass similar to the one that she’d drawn in the anatomical heart that had slipped from the pages of her sketchbook.
I shouldn’t ask.
Because the truth might destroy me.
I ask anyway. “What’s with the compass?”
“It’s right above your heart,” she says simply, as if that’s answer enough. It’s not.
And I know I’m digging myself a hole I might not be able to get out of. Still, I ask, “Butwhya compass?”
She’s quiet for a beat. And then: “Because it’s where I feel the most found.”
When it’stime to take Jamie to work, I hand her my keys and ask her to wait out in my truck. Then I go to the kitchen, where my mom is standing by the sink, inspecting her little herb garden. “Ma,” I call out, moving closer to her.
She spins around, the same smile I’ve grown up with lighting her eyes. “Are you taking Jamie to work now?”
