But the statue doesn’t look like me at all.
Before I can process the disappointment, Hopper flips to the next picture, a tow-headed boy, maybe twelve or thirteen. He flips back to the statue, and the resemblance is uncanny.
“You met my husband, Liam, at camp, right?”
I nod.
“We used his sperm with the surrogate, so I used pictures of him as a kid as my inspiration.”
“That’s beautiful, Hopper.” I take a deep breath, wishing I’d seen this on any day other than today.
“Thank you.” After a beat, he makes a face. Turning to me, he asks, “It’s not weird, is it?”
“Not at all,” I say, my heart heavy with a melancholy for something that never existed but should have. “You gave them a cousin to play with.”
“That wasn’t my intention, necessarily,” he says, his smile returning. “I just wanted something in the world thatrepresented what we almost had. Something they could put their hands on, and maybe me too.”
“It sounds like y’all have a special family.”
“We do.” He shakes his head. “Where do you paint?”
I freeze for a second, surprised by the change in subject.
“I, uh…in my apartment,” I say, pointing to the second floor.
He looks around, gesturing at the trees. “I can’t tell because it’s dark, but how much light do you get in there?”
“I can barely keep a plant alive. So, very little.”
He clicks his tongue. “I have a space that I keep here in Austin. It gets lonely in there,” he says, tapping his temple again. “Would you join me? Will you paint with me while I work on this next sculpture? It’s about loss and will have a permanent residence at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden.”
My breath catches at his question, so casually posed. Ringing swells in my ear, warped and off-key, as if I’m underwater.
The father, who doesn’t know he’s a father, asks the son, whom he doesn’t know is his, to join him in an artistic space as he works through his own feelings of grief, likely around fatherlessness.
I’m in a Michael Cheval painting. That’s the only explanation.
Are there ballerina slippers flying out of my ear?
I should check.
Instead, “Hopper Hughes wants me to paint with him?” spills out of my dumb mouth, and I cringe at the earnestness.
“Yeah,” he says, amusement firing off the fine lines around his eyes. “Hopper Hughes definitely wants to paint with you.”
Too much.
It’s too much.
Say no.
“I’d love to paint with you,” I answer, rushing to fill the silence. “I-I’m just super busy these days, especially with this new case.”
Hopper pulls up his contact information and just…touches his phone to mine.
“I’ll be in town a whole bunch over the next several months,” he says, patting my knee. “We’ll figure it out.”
I stare at my knee.
