I touch my cheek, then stare at my wet fingers. My chest doesn’t tighten with panic. I’m not afraid. But an echo of the bone-deep loneliness remains. I press my hands to the granite counter and blow out a breath.
“I’m okay.”
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his eyes. So I wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head against his chest. “I remembered something,” I say softly. “It was raining. Wherever I was. I was so lonely, AJ. All the time. And I wished…I hoped…that you were watching the rain too.”
AJ’s chest heaves. He presses a kiss to the top of my head. He doesn’t question me. Just sets the spatula aside, turns off the burner, and holds me.
The rain keeps battering the window, even as the lightning and thunder fade away, but I don’t care. I’m not alone anymore.
The storm retreats slowly, a last burst of darkness before the start of spring.
We painted one wall of my studio yesterday. Well, AJ did. I still get tired so easily. The whisper of pale purple provides a hint of calm, while still giving the room a light, airy feel. Maybe next weekend, we’ll do another one.
The steady patter of rain against the roof carries me into a sketch I haven’t been able to get out of my head since breakfast. On the page, a window takes shape—small, narrow, sealed shut. No latch. No air. I shade the lines darker. So dark, the paper nearly tears.
For the first time, I can see the rest of the room with a clarity that takes my breath away. The bare wood floor. The narrow bed with its single pillow and thin blanket. Next to that useless, inescapable window, a rough-hewn desk that gave me splinters.
Nothing of any comfort. No plant on the sill. No closet. No color. Only two small bins—one with several clean white dresses and folded cotton panties, and the other serving as a laundry hamper.
On the facing page, I start again, and this time the window fills the entire space.
I add the horizon. Low hills fold gently into one another. They would have been calming if they hadn’t stood between me and freedom. A squat building in the distance. Gray and flat, with a winding road leading up to it. But I don’t remember what it was for.
Closer now, tension gathers in my shoulders as first one pole, then another, then another loom over an area my pencil doesn’t want to touch. But I can’t run from these memories anymore. Facing them is the only way I get my life back.
Still, I add the lanterns first. Six of them. They’re not lit—when I close my eyes, the image behind my lids is mostly gray. Dawn, perhaps. Or dusk.
The door behind me creaks open.
“Grace?”
AJ slips into the room, two bottles of Shiner dangling from his hand. He’s still mostly relaxed, his shoulders loose, his mouth free of the tight line it’s held so often the past week. But this morning’s ease is starting to fade.
“You want some company?” His gaze searches mine, and I see the question in his eyes.
How can I make up for three years of aching loneliness?
I want to tell him he can’t. Nothing can. But he’s here now, and that’s enough.
My smile comes easily now. Finally. Even knowing I’m about to draw something that terrifies me, I can still find it—as long as he’s with me. “I’d love some.”
He sets one of the bottles in front of me, but doesn’t stare at my sketchbook. Doesn’t ask to see it. Just settles into the chair in the corner with his phone in one hand and the beer in the other, his long legs stretched out.
His presence fills the quiet in a way I can’t explain. I used to yearn for something as simple as having him in the same room. The same house. The same…life. Now that I have it again, I’ll do anything to keep it. Even draw the one thing that’s scared me most since I started to remember.
I touch the pencil to the page. Right in the center of the empty space. If I want to make it through this, I have to jump in with both feet.
Fear coils in my belly, sharp and sour on my tongue. I don’t remember what happened there. But something did.
The scar at my side aches.
Four lines. A rectangle. Then, a base underneath. A platform. No. An altar. Flowers all around it. Pink and red and white. Oleanders. Even the memory of the scent sickens me.
The voice is so clear, I almost drop the pencil.
“…the bright light to banish all darkness and bring about the Glorious One’s return…”
My throat tightens, but I keep adding more shading, turning the page darker and darker.
