“Yes,” Christian said. “It was the title from the first brushstroke.”
From the first brushstroke.
Blood pulsed in my ears, keeping time with my frantically beating heart. “Andrew didn’t paint this?” I waved my hand around. “Any of this?”
Christian opened his mouth then covered it with his hand, as if to hide a laugh. But the crinkling corners of his wrinkled green eyes gave him away. I squinted at the inky, pungent pigment still smeared across his knuckles.
Not motor oil, it dawned on me.Oil paint.
“No, most of this is my work,” Christian confirmed, but he reached for a sketchbook resting on his drafting table. He handed it to me. “Here is a representation of Andrew’s.”
I flipped over the cover to see a watercolor on the first page, and while I was neither an artist nor qualified art critic, it was…
Half-finished and not good.
Was I looking at a sunriseor a sunset? And was that a whale or a dolphin? There were no dolphins on the Vineyard, right?
“But he’s everywhere,” I mumbled. “The bridge, the Fourth of July, the beach… He’s always painting…or sketching…” I gave Christian a confused look. “He’s sodedicated.”
“Yes, because he’s been unusually bored this summer.” Christian shrugged. “I suggested he take up art.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, he certainly plays the part.”
Christian chuckled, then he let a beat of silence pass between us before he murmured, “You look so much like her.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks.Like who?I could’ve asked, but I didn’t see the point.
“You’ve known?” I said softly. “This whole time?”
Christian shook his head. “No, not at first. After meeting you and Connor at the bridge, I told myself I was greatly exaggerating the resemblance—maybe evenseeingthings. You were a Carmichael; you couldn’t lookthat muchlike Annette Clark.”
The way he said her name.
Annette Clark.
He coughed. “And then I found out you were adorable little Erica’s stepdaughter…” He took off his baseball cap and ran a hand through his white hair. “Well, I’m not particularly proud of what I did next.”
My silence begged the question:What did you do you next?
“I asked my grandson to find your Instagram.” He blushed a bit. “I recognized a blouse you were wearing in one photo; I remember her sewing it. And you write the most beautiful birthday tributes.”
I swallowed hard. Annie had never been the most technologically savvy—“I am not meant to live in the age of the smartphone!” she often lamented—but shehadgotten the hang of Instagram before her diagnosis. And I’d loved posting throwback photos of her on her birthday, some that made her smile, some that made her laugh, and others that made her say,What was I thinking with that haircut?
“She has three grandchildren,” I finally said. “I’m the oldest. She is the most wonderful person in the world.”
Christian nodded. “I always thought she was astonishing.”
Then what happened?I wondered, deep in my soul.What were you to each other and what went wrong?
And why does she still think about you?
Because, spotting his bitten-down fingernails, a theory was suddenly unspooling in my mind. “Chris’s nails were nothing more than nubs,” I vaguely remembered Annie saying, and I’d thought she meant my dad. In fact,every timeAnnie mentioned “Chris,” I assumed she was talking about my dad.
Maybe she hadn’t been. Maybe the Chris who wasnever therefor her wasn’t and had never been my dad.Chrismight’ve been a nickname.
We had to start at the beginning, though.
“When did you meet Annie?” I asked, hands clasped so thatIdidn’t start biting my pinkie nail. “Howdid you meet?”
