“Did she say something about him?” His tone is hopeful, like this is what he’s been waiting for and I almost regret asking.
“Not directly…I just need to know what I’m looking for here…” I shut my eyes trying to focus my anger, trying to concoct a believable enough excuse as to why I haven’t found anything on Sloane except for the obvious one, that I simply haven’t been looking.
“Next time she brings him up…press on it. I need to know what she’s telling people about that particular name.” Pain radiates through my jaw as my molars clamp shut.
“Fine.” It’s a harsh whisper but enough for my dad as I hear the phone line end. We hear him ruffling papers in the background and Ian gives me a wide eyed look that warns me to be quiet. I shut my eyes, letting my head rest against the clean lines of the wall, and wish, not for the first time, that I never found myself in this situation. That I went to an affordable state school, focused on getting an engineering degree or maybe even pre-med, something that would allow me to help my mom without all the back stabbing and secrets.
“Andy…Andy!” Ian’s voice is a loud hiss as I realize the room’s gotten eerily quiet. “I think he’s gone. Let's go.” I stand upand follow as he cracks the bathroom door enough just to look out. He nods before opening and moves back to the desk.
“Dude!” I shake my head, eyeing the entrance to the hallway. “Later,” I mouth, dragging him out the door and through the back entrance of the house until we are in the alley between Glenn’s townhouse and the one next door. I put my hands on my knees groaning as I bend over, trying to shake off the nervous energy. “Remind me not to make deals with you again.”
“You’re such a baby,” he says but his attention stays on the photos he took on his phone. “Give me a couple days to digest these. I’ll text you when I’m ready to meet.” He barely looks up and I roll my eyes.
“You know if it weren’t for me we would’ve never gotten that rubik’s cube open…” I tilt my head, positioning my hands on my hips.
“Are you…whining, Andrew?” He meets my gaze amused.
“Just, a thank you would be nice every once in a while,” I huff out.
“Thank you.Now run along. I have research waiting for me and based on that call from Dad, you have a certain Fielder girl who needs your attention.” He winks before rounding back around the house to the entrance we just came out of, leaving me rattled and relieved because this…might actually work.
31
Sloane
Small strokes, tiny and precise, in a deep ochre capture the way the sun turned golden an afternoon last summer—they cramp my hand in a way I’ve been craving. The smattering of oil melting together the way watercolor never could. The photo I’m using as inspiration sat in a box of my things, untouched until Grant suggested I start to unpack.
The dresser,he said with a smirk on his face,was a great place to keep my belongings. I glance back at it, pushed against the wall behind me.
The urge to finally settle came in the middle of the night. I began rummaging through all the shit I deemed valuable enough to keep when I left San Francisco. That’s when I found the photo—the one I took while Elliot’s chin rested on my shoulder. He couldn’t understand why I’d want to photograph a sun that looked like it might burst. I couldn’t understand why he thought a sun that ablaze wasn’t impressive. I can understand now, though. Elliot couldn’t appreciate anything that might supersede him. He bathed in his superiority like the rest of us bathed in bath water. He reeked of it, but at the timeit was cedar and musk to me—a smoke screen of attraction that covered up all the ways in which he lacked. This far back, I think maybe he was a narcissist.
I dip into the pot of ivory paint just as the clouds outside shift, and the light filters in, highlighting my work. Sitting back, I rest against the side of the bed and consider adding a bird. Or two. And then I sigh, so content in the magic that’s worked its way back into my fingers that I laugh. No one’s home—Gen and Grant are off being the kinds of people who move their bodies for fun—so my amusement echoes a little, and I quietly make plans to pepper every wall of Grant’s space with artwork he never asked for.
Must be them,I think to myself when my phone jingles and I bring it to my ear.
“Thank you because I’m starvin’ and there isnothin’in the fridge and you know how I feel?—”
“Ms. Fielder?” a papery voice comes through the line, and I frown. “This is Hannah Cooper. From Arts and Culture at The Journal. I reached out to you a couple of months ago but got no response. I’m just touching base?—”
“I’m sorry, I don’t talk to the press. I don’t even know how you got my number,” I say sharply, unsettled by her persistence. The e-mail last fall was violation enough, but somehow less personal? A voice over the phone always feels like someone caressing your arm. Way too intimate for strangers.
“The internet.” She’s cool, her voice sterile and chilly like stainless steel, and I don’t like it.
“Right,” I mutter. “Well like I said, I don’t talk to the press. That’s why I didn’t respond in the first place. So?—”
“I’d really love a moment of your time,” her voice slips into a congeniality she has no business using with me, but it stops me from hanging up on her before she says, “to discuss Elliot Walker.”
Heart dropping, I force a small intake of breath. “What for?”
Hannah’s silent for a moment, just the shuffling of papers sounding in the background. “You were a student of his, until…well, until you stopped attending classes in late August of last year. Were you not?”
My lips press hard into each other, frustration welling in the tendons of my face as my cheeks turn crimson.
“I’m sure however you got that is a violation of my privacy,” I tell her, my voice grittier than usual from the emotion that’s welled up without my permission. “What rules did you have to break for that, Hannah? Andwhyare you snoopin’ around in my business?”
“You are just one of?—”
“Lose my number, or you’ll be hearing from my attorney.” I hang up, letting my phone drop with a clatter against the drop cloth, and force myself to breathe, the air shakily whooshing out of me.
