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“Something large? Radical? Not mainstream? I don’t know. It was just a feeling I had from her.”
Tom nodded for a while and then started to chuckle. “You know Kate, for someone so screwed up, you do have some really deep insights.”
She punched his arm, her old reactions to his sharp teasing coming to her naturally. “What? I’m not screwed up.”
Tom stared at her. “Really?” His tone was sarcastic, with just the very hint of humor behind it.
“Stop it. Just stop. I’m being nice and all you do is try and yank my chain.”
Tom grinned at her. “It’s so good to hear you speak like Kate. The Kate I know.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Just, well, maybe I mean that we’re finally used to each other again.”
A slow smile broke out on her face. She nodded slowly. “Yeah. We are.” She squeezed his arm. “And so, big brother, why isn’t Tamzin buzzing around you anymore?”
Tom raised his brows. “Buzzing?” He shook his head and shrugged. “It came down to the fact that we wanted different things. She wanted me to be more edgy with my furniture pieces. Do unique art pieces that weren’t straight commissions for boring things like ‘living room furniture.’ I asked her why it mattered to her. If I was happy with what I was doing, that should be enough.”
“And it wasn’t enough.”
He pursed his mouth. “No. She and her friends had this idea of art and the life of an artist. I didn’t fit in, as much as she tried to make me do just that. My vision is New England essence. Simple, gracious lines, but grounded in the landscape. Flowing like the waters, curving like the mountains, majestic like the trees.”
Kate rubbed his arm. “That’s an amazing vision. And it’s you. I know that.”
He gave her a full on smile. “Thanks. I’m pretty happy now with the way things are going. I’ve thought a lot about what Ethan suggested. About putting more emphasis on creating art pieces, commissions, and bespoke furniture. Expand it as maybe an online outlet for other artists. Possibly a cooperative. I’ve been doing a lot of research. Viability and all that. Putting together a rough business plan. I think it’s doable, Kate. And I’d like to try. That is, if you don’t mind. It would mean funneling some of the profits into it, rather than buying more stock and selling sure things, like we’ve been doing. And that means, well, there will be less coming in.”
He stopped, waiting for her reaction, and Kate could only blink at him, her instinctive response only joy. She’d seen and heard the excitement in his voice. Understood the passion he was experiencing. She leaned forward and squeezed his hand, her eyes alight. “Oh, Tom, that’s fantastic. Of course you should do that, if that’s what you want. I have no problem with it.”
Tom’s face brightened further for a moment. He frowned. “But what will you do?”
Tom had implied this question just moments before, but now he’d put it baldly, and it floored her. It was a slightly different phrasing than the one she’d been asked earlier by Ethan. But however it was phrased, it was a question that had been humming underneath all her days, all her actions and even her sleep. What would she do?
She thought of how poetically, how musically Tom described his vision of his art. His music vibrated in him in so many different ways. And he let music and art bleed over into each other, blending, mixing and creating something wonderful at the end. He just couldn’t help it. It was there. No barriers. No walls keeping it all separate.
Some of Ethan’s words rose up to challenge her thoughts. Missy holding her to ransom against growth and change. Maybe it had been her own demons, though, that had held her to ransom all these years. Making her keep things separate. Separate countries, separate careers, separate lives. The old life discarded. A life she couldn’t have. Wouldn’t let herself have. But now, just as Tom’s loves and passions all spilled into one another, her own were bleeding out of their so carefully contained areas and mixing in with others. Music, art, and literature. She hadn’t been able to contain it. And now she wondered why, through all these years, she had tried to do just that.
* * *
Her hair was tucked up in a clip, with wild tendrils falling around her forehead and around her ears. It was halfhearted, Kate knew, but she’d been so distracted this morning with some ideas in her head for her artwork that she’d dressed hurriedly in some old yellow yoga pants she’d used years ago as sleepwear, and a heavy forest-green sweater with an old yellow mohair scarf of her mother’s bundled around her neck. Topped off with her lime-green fuzzy slippers from high school, she could only laugh at herself when she climbed the stairs to the attic to start on her art projects.
But now that it was her usual brief break time, she knew she’d put off this phone call long enough. She sat back in her chair up in the attic studio, cradling her cup of coffee made from the little coffee maker she’d brought up here. The laptop sat in front of her, waiting. Giancarlo would be just locking up the gallery and about to head home. It was the best time to catch him, before the rounds of various social obligations took hold of him. She took out her phone, located his image and pressed the video icon. She would do this facing him. So he could see her. Understand.
The screen opened up and Giancarlo appeared. She could see he was in the gallery office still, dressed in a charcoal gray suit, deep purple tie and pale violet shirt that contrasted well with his olive skin. His dark hair was tousled a little, as if he’d just run his hand through it.
“Katerina,” he said, his eyes alight, a smile on his face. “I’m so glad to hear from you.”
She felt a stab of guilt. She’d only texted him a few times since he left. Basic sentences that conveyed basic information stating that she was doing well enough, progressing with the exhibition pieces and hoped to complete the allotted amount. Information that she’d shared from a sense of obligation. A sense of obligation sharpened by guilt. Giancarlo was so good and kind to her. He’d done so much for her, encouraging her in her pursuit, and even though she knew it had been more his vision in the end, rather than her own, it didn’t negate how much he cared for her.
“Your clothes, your hair, Katerina,” Giancarlo said, his eyebrows raised, a worried look on his face. “Are you well? Would you like me to come? I can arrange for a short stay, if it would help.”
She gave him a wan smile. “No, no, really, Giancarlo. I’m fine.” She gestured to herself. “Just working. I don’t really think about what I’m wearing, or how I look when I work. You know that.”
Giancarlo gave her a pained look. “Tesoro, look, can we talk? I am feeling awful about how we left things between us.”
Kate felt the tears threaten. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I hate to cause you pain. But it wouldn’t have been right for me to make decisions when I was unable to even understand what I wanted in the next breath, let alone for the rest of my life.”
Giancarlo looked away a moment, biting his lip. When he focused on her again, his eyes were alight with hope, fear, anger and several other emotions that flickered briefly, before he extinguished them all and nothing was left but a neutral blankness.
