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She froze.
Thanks to her anxiety, she was good at anything involving self-protection. Walls. Shields. Yup, walls were her thing. Foxholes, too. She was really good at building forts and crouching in foxholes during a winter snowball battle.
But life wasn’t all foxholes and fortresses. If she’d stayed behind the castle walls of her odd childhood, she wouldn’t have Zack and Bean.
Bean…she thought about her youngest son as she sorted through the basket of mittens and hats, looking for the extra-warm fleece she wanted to wear. If anyone had cause to want to stay inside and avoid risk, it would be her accident-prone youngest. If there was a puddle of melted snow in the foyer, he’d find it and slip on it. If there was a crack in a mug, somehow he’d be the one leaked onto.
But not once did he let that stop him from running after fun. She didn’t want him to, either. She wouldn’t mind if he was more careful, but the last thing she’d want was for his spirit to get dimmed.
Was it normal to consider your own six-year-old son to be a role model?
She found her father cleaning his paintbrushes over his old cast-iron sink.
“Here to see my painting? About time,” he grumbled.
Nice to see you too, Papa. It’s been pretty crazy around here, Papa. My work is going well too, Papa. Don’t you want to know how Annika’s doing, Papa? “I haven’t heard you sound this excited about a painting in a while, Papa. I can’t wait to see it.”
“You waited long enough. I painted it for you.”
Great. Clearly, he was in a mood.
“Does it have frogs and mushrooms and all my favorite things?”
“Huh? Oh.” He grunted. “Not like that, no. But you’ll like it.”
He strode to the corner of the living room where stacks of paintings leaned against the wall. He found the one he wanted and heaved it into his arms. It always amazed her how casually he handled his old paintings. They were works of art that might be worth thousands of dollars, but he treated them like records in a bin.
“Here.” He turned the canvas over so it faced her. The vivid colors of the oil paints made the painting vibrate with life and emotion. It wasn’t like anything she’d seen him paint before. A woman lay splayed on the floor in a pool of cobalt blue. A small child with hair the color of marigolds crawled toward her, howling. Shards of broken pottery lay next to the woman, a river of milk spilling across the floor. The scene’s violence and distress jumped off the canvas.
The painting rang a distant bell in the back of Jenna’s mind. Something like that had happened to her. More than once. “What is it?” she whispered. But part of her thought she might already know.
“The baby’s you. That’s your mother.”
Gruff words; her father never was much for words, until he got drunk and recited epic poems or rap lyrics.
“What happened?”
“She fell. Dropped you, dropped her bowl. I found her like this. You were fine. But she wasn’t.”
Jenna stared at the painting, noting the cast iron sink against the wall, an easel, a barrel stove, all still here in this spacious room. “She got hurt?”
“She didn’t trust herself anymore. It happened a few times.” He gestured at the canvas. “A week after that, she left.”
Jenna felt the blood drain from her face. For so many years, she’d wanted to know why her mother had left, and no one would say. She hardly saw her mother, and when she did, she hadn’t wanted to upset her by pelting her with questions. And Papa…he didn’t bother to answer questions he didn’t want to.
“That’s why she left?”
“I think so. There was a man. But this…” He gestured at the painting. “This too.”
“And you never told us?”
“It was her choice.” A defensive edge came into her father’s voice. “Didn’t you ask her?”
“No. I almost never see her!”
“Not because of me.” Her father leaned the canvas against the wall and surveyed it. “I told her she could come back anytime.”
“Papa…” She was so furious she didn’t know what to do with herself, where to turn…or who she was actually angry at. “Why didn’t you ever mention this before?”
