They all sent the campaign link out to everyone they knew, and then they waited. Martin sent the link to Seb too, hoping he would see the video at least and know how many people were waiting for him to come home.
It was disappointing when he didn’t reply.
Donations were slow at first. They’d set a goal to raise ten thousand dollars, enough for new artist’s supplies and the rent Seb would need to focus on his work. Oliver chipped in a few hundred to start, and he said some early anonymous donations came from their family. A number of townspeople made donations of varying sizes. By midday on the first day, they passed the two thousand dollar mark, but stalled out just below five on the second.
“We need more people to help,” Cassidy said, staring at their tally. She kept hitting the refresh button on her browser, but the number didn’t change.
The idea ofmore peoplewas only slightly less terrifying thanpublic speakingto Martin, but she was right.
So, despite the roiling in his stomach that told him he’d only get laughed at for his request, Martin called every community radio station and newspaper within an hour’s drive of Seacroft.
No one laughed at him.
Town Rallies to Raise Funds After Local Artist’s Studio Lost in Fire
The campaign appeared on one news site and then another. And donations from people Martin, Oliver, and Cassidy had never heard of started to come in.
On the third day, a complete stranger called Martin and said they were making a four thousand dollar donation and would also donate a piece of Seb’s work they had purchased years earlier to the highest donation in the next twenty-four hours.
They hit twenty thousand dollars that day and doubled it when another collector made the same offer with another piece.
By the fifth day of their seven-day campaign, they had raised more than seventy thousand dollars, and the art collectors were still calling to find out how they could help. Cassidy said once that Seb had a following, and she hadn’t been exaggerating.
But Seb still hadn’t responded.
Martin sat in the diner. He was supposed to be reviewing an application essay for a friend of Cassidy’s, except he’d been staring at his laptop screen for close to an hour and had failed to make any progress.
He clicked over to the crowdfunding page. Seventy-eight thousand, six hundred and seventy-two dollars. Every dollar of it for Seb, and he wasn’t there to see it.
Martin glanced across the street as a truck rattled by, splashing through a puddle. The world outside was gray and burnt red from the last of the fall leaves on the trees. People rushed past, trying to stay dry under dark hoods and umbrellas.
And in the midst of it all was white. A bright flash that disappeared as another car slid by. Martin blinked, and the white-blond figure reemerged, standing perfectly still.
It was the ghost again, and Martin’s heart leapt into his throat. He was afraid to move or to lose eye contact in case the apparition vanished. The man across the street stared at him, too far for Martin to make out the features he had been waiting to see for over a week. That wasn’t good enough, so he groped blindly for his coat and barely pulled it on before heading to the door, calling over his shoulder to Penny to watch his laptop. He didn’t know if she heard him, and frankly, if someone stole it, it wouldn’t matter as long as the man outside was still there when Martin got to him.
It took two tries to cross the street; Martin was so enthralled that he nearly collided with a cyclist on his first attempt. He hurried over the pavement on his second, weaving as a car splashed through a puddle, but never taking his eyes away from the other man’s face.
Seb stood, hands in the pockets of a dark coat. It had only been a week, but his face was harder than Martin remembered, the lips thinner. White-gold stubble coated his chin.
In another life, Martin would have hesitated, would have stopped on the edge of the curb to gauge Seb’s reaction. In another life, he would have let Seb make the decision.
He couldn’t take that chance now. If he let Seb decide and he chose to leave again, Martin would regret it.
He walked right into Seb’s space and wrapped his arms around him, until he was sure the ghost wouldn’t vanish, that Seb was real and back and here with him.
“You asshole,” he gritted out as he buried his face in Seb’s neck. Seb held him close.
“I’m sorry.”
* * *
The first time I met Seb, I thought he was a ghost.
He saw me when I felt like no one else did anymore.
Martin’s serious expression, the soft gray eyes and the crooked jaw, the private smile Seb had been lucky enough to be part of sometimes, had drawn him home.
Kenneth showed him the website, the crowdfunding page with the improbable sum of money at the top, but all Seb saw was the screenshot with Martin gazing at the camera. Seb and Kenneth watched the video, the familiar faces moving past. And then Martin. His gentle voice and serious eyes bounced nervously over the screen as he spoke. He looked tired and completely sincere.
