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He kept saying “we.” Where was this wife who had spun herself a web of fantasy? As I surveyed the wall, my mind already mapping out where each element would go, Archer asked from behind me, “Do you need anything? Water? Food?”
“Just a ladder would be great,” I said, turning to smile at him.
He smiled back. A little too long. I turned back to the wall, but I felt his eyes on my back, and then he said, “Sure thing. I’ll be right back.”
I pulled my phone out of my overall pocket and stared at the screen. I wasn’t sure why I had done that. To call someone? To text someone? I chewed uncertainly on the inside of my cheek.Grow up, I chided myself. I slid the phone back in my pocket and turned my mind to my work. Everything was fine. I simply didn’t love social situations with new people. And really, who did?
Archer brought me the ladder, and even though I hadn’t asked for it, a bottle of water. I set it to the side, and as I pulled out my chalk and pencils, my eyes danced over the wall already filming over with a picture of what I wanted to sketch. Starting in the middle, I got to work on my proportions with my headphones on my ears and an ABBA playlist blaring. It wasn’t because of Amos and our conversation about his music tastes. Unrelated.
I lost myself in the process. Time had no meaning when I felt inspired to create, and the more I worked on the initial background sketch, the more excited I became over the possibilities. Cotton candy sky. Jewel-tone mountains. Darkened forest with glowing orbs and fairy lights amongst baby forest critters. I could see the palette in my mind’s eye, and I knew when it was done, it would be truly magical.
After getting the rough sketch done, mostly focusing on proportion and background to foreground perspective, I pulled out my phone to check the time. It read nine at night. I hadn’t meant to stay at their house so long, and suddenly felt guilty that I might have kept them awake or intruded on their time.
As I descended the ladder, I caught a shape in my peripheral vision. Archer was lounging against the doorframe, watching me with keen interest in his eyes. I jumped almost imperceptibly, but there was a weird moment where Archer seemed to notice that he’d scared me. There was a pause—not long, and barely something I registered—but he watched me with sharp eyes in that fraction of a second that held an emotion I didn’t recognize. But then he waved apologetically. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just amazed at how quickly you did that.”
I glanced at the sketch, and truthfully, he was right. I had done a lot in four hours. “Thanks,” I said, slightly breathless. My fingers itched to pull up the rideshare app and get home, and my inward breaths had taken on a slight wheeze again. I tried to remember if I’d taken my meds that morning.
“Meg will love this,” Archer said, advancing across the room with his arms crossed. He still had on his tennis shoes, khakis, and polo. “Do you need a ride home? I noticed that you had someone drop you off.”
“No, it’s fine,” I replied, grateful for the excuse to pull up the app. “I’ll grab a driver. Oh,” I looked up, catching his too-bright eyes. “I forgot to go over the particulars of payment. Sorry. I got so excited about getting started. This wallisa little bigger than I first anticipated.”
“Of course,” he replied nonchalantly. “Just let us know what you’re charging. No problem.”
Looking at their house, I didn’t doubt his ability to pay. “I’ll send it to your email if you’ll text that to me,” I said, bending down to drop my ruler, tape measure, and pencils in my bag.
“Sure,” he said, hands in his pockets while he watched me.
I typed out a message to the driver with my fingers shaking. I could feel his eyes on me. He didn’t move. He just stood there, watching me. I couldn’t tell if this was a generational thing, a bizarre personality thing, or a red flag thing. All I knew was that I desperately wanted to get out of the house, so I bent down to scoop up my art bag. “I’ll be back this weekend to start painting,” I said with a smile.
Archer nodded, his body strangely still. “Sounds good, June.”
I resisted the urge to duck my head. I gave him a friendly wave instead and walked around him. He twisted, watching me leave. A shiver skittered over my skin, but as soon as I was back into the warm night, it eased away.
It took the driver less than seven minutes to get to the house, and I waited for them outside. I looked over my shoulder a few times while I stood outside the gates, but the lights had been turned off and the half-moon cast a silver film over the fairytale house, limning the edges like gilded pages. Shucking off another twinge of unease, I greeted the black sedan as it pulled up.
It wasn’t until I was in my empty home that I realized I’d left my day bag with my medicine at Archer’s house. I refused to face the real reason I didn’t want to go back to get it. I could grab it on Saturday, I decided.
Fourteen
Amos
Sweat clung to my back in a sticky film, sucking my white button-down shirt to my skin. Some of it trickled down the valley of my spine like an insect that skittered down to my waistband. I adjusted my position, punched the cool air flow button for my seat, and leaned my head back on the headrest of my car. As I crawled through traffic, Cade talked nonstop on the other end of the line about our imaging protocol overview.
“If we shoot for four—six? Six sessions, say an hour each, with resting-state and task-fMRI data, then we can ensure that we have structural, dMRI, and fMRI data,” he said. I could hear him typing while he talked, which was a skill I shared. It was why I had been able to count June’s pulse while still babbling away about hospitals.
I cleared my throat, my mind mostly on our research, but a tiny bit on June now that I’d remembered that. “Are we sticking with our original task protocols for the tfMRI scans?”
“I don’t see why not,” Cade said. “Unless you think they need to be updated.”
A text came through on my phone, which lit up on the screen on my dashboard. It was our inter-office communication system.
June: Mr. Larsey is back. He wants a word. Should I tell him to wait in your office?
It was the patient with shoulder arthritis who was convinced he needed his spine fused because a search engine had said so. I sighed deeply and typed a quick response back.
Brady: No, he needs to make an appt with Andrews or shove off.
June: …I’ll paraphrase that.
