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He loves animals. I’ve never seen a man who looks so deeply into a dog’s eyes. It’s like he’s communing with them. It makes me smile. They love him back which my mom always said means a person has a good soul.
He’s smart too. He’s read just about every book ever written, or at least it seems like he has. He’s always referencing this quote or that quote, and I wish I could remember them later because I would write them down and think about why they mean so much to him. When I told him he must have the memory of an elephant to recall all those words, he got this troubled look on his face and said he wished he didn’t.
He’s a complex man, and I guess you might say I’m a simple kind of girl. But can I share a secret? I think I’m falling in love with him. Deeper and deeper by the day.
I let out another gasp, raising my head to see that Gage was already looking at me. “M.S.,” I said, a dizzying spiral of joy making me want to dance. “M.S. is definitely my father.” I paused, pulling in a breath as I turned and looked at Faith and then back at Gage. “I got my love of animals from him.” It was a connection, a gap being filled in.
“I’m not surprised,” Faith said. “The way you love dogs…it had to be in the blood.”
I grinned.
“Let’s, ah, see if there’s another entry in the other one,” Gage said, pulling the second painting toward him and picking up the craft knife. I watched him for a moment, sensing his discomfort. My heart dropped as it suddenly registered. He’d told me his father loved animals too. Was his father a big reader? Of course he was—weren’t most highly successful people? And he’d traveled a lot as well—Gage had said so.
I focused in on Gage’s hands as he worked on the second frame backing, trying my best to empty my mind of the idea that we still couldn’t rule out Gage’s father, despite the initials not matching his name. I swallowed down a lump.
The second frame had what looked like a bit of water damage and so the backer came off easily, Gage sliding it aside to reveal two pieces of paper with the ink bleeding on both. My heart jumped and I peeled them apart and laid them both out the same way I’d done with the first. The page on the left was only smeared a little, but the one on the right was almost completely ruined except for a paragraph at the bottom. We turned our heads in tandem to read the one that was intact.
I ran into those mean girls today. You should have seen them, all high and mighty, flouncing around like they own the town and all who reside here. You know that feeling I had that something wonderful is going to happen? That idea dimmed just a little when I figured out what snobby bitches live here, I have to admit. Anyway, I suppose things just got a tad more interesting and I always did like interesting, or at least that’s what my mom says which I know is a nice way to say I tend to stir up drama. Not on purpose, I swear. Anyway, dear diary, I seem to have poked a hornet’s nest—and so I suppose I should prepare to be stung.
“Mean girls?” I asked. “I wonder who she was referring to.”
Faith shrugged. “There are plenty of those in Calliope, but that’s probably true everywhere.”
“True enough,” I said. From what it sounded like, though, my mother had simply butted heads with a few local girls. Ophelia Casteel had never been one to let a sly comment or obvious slight go though, so who knew if it was anything more than that. I moved the damaged entry over and we all took a moment to read what was left of it.
I woke in the middle of the night to find him sweating and squeezing his head. I was so scared. He told me he has visions sometimes. He doesn’t know if they’re memories or hallucinations. They scare him too. But God, I love him. I love him, and I don’t know how to bring him peace.
I looked at Gage. “Visions?” he asked. “Was he suffering from mental illness?”
“Maybe. And maybe if she didn’t tell him about me, that was the reason. Do…do either of you know if any of those men struggled with a mental condition at some point?”
Again, Gage and Faith shook their heads. “No,” Faith said. “But that’s not exactly something most people advertise. Especially if they have the means to address it quietly.”
“Maybe he went away to deal with his problems,” I said. “Maybe that’s why she never told him about me.”
“Could be,” Gage said. “Or maybe it wasn’t a mental illness so much as…a bout with anxiety or depression that was related to some previous life circumstance or another.”
“Did your father struggle with that at some point?” It was a personal question, but I knew Gage would answer honestly in an effort to help me find the truth. He had said he was invested, and I knew he wouldn’t be running all over Maine helping me hunt down art if that wasn’t true.
Gage sighed. “My father went through a rough patch when my grandpa died. I was very young. But he’d had a tough relationship with him. He never went into details, but I think there was some abuse involved.”
“Oh,” I said softly. “I’m sorry about that.” I glanced at Faith and then down at the diary entry, my heart feeling heavy for a man I’d never met but had obviously suffered in some manner or another. I hoped that in the years that followed, he had found the peace my mother couldn’t give him, or hadn’t had the chance to.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gage
I saw Blakely sitting under an umbrella on the patio at the club and headed her way, greeting a few people I knew as I moved through the bistro tables filled with members enjoying lunch. Blakely had pulled out a mirror and a tube of lipstick as I’d made my way to her and when I approached the table, she quickly deposited it into the purse sitting on the ground next to her chair.
She stood. “Gage! It’s so good to see you. Thanks for meeting me.”
I leaned in and kissed her cheek and we both took a seat. “Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you. Work has been crazy.” A lie. Work had been slow, as my employees had started transferring ongoing projects to other managers in preparation for me leaving the country soon. I’d been thankful as it’d given me more time to skip out and leave early so I could help Rory.
Rory.
I’d been trying not to think too much about Rory since Saturday when we’d found two paintings with her mother’s diary entries behind them. The thing with the flashbacks had me concerned. I knew my father had trouble sleeping and carried emotional burdens from his childhood. It was probably another bullet point on the long list of reasons that I was so averse to disappointing him. He deserved the life he’d fought so hard for. God, this search with Rory was like a damn roller coaster. One day I had hope we weren’t related…and the next provided a clue that we might be. At this point, it was just a waiting game for those results.
“Are you okay?”
