“He was a genius,” he responded absently, his eyes studying the beams. “But yes, people found him fairly intolerable. Another reason I’m curious to meet your grandmother.”
Finally, he turned to view the wall of windows facing thelake. That part, she had to admit, was pretty incredible. From a certain angle, the glass almost disappeared into the wood ceiling like a continuation of the forest. An airy space held together with glass and wood and stone.
Elliot took in every detail, every notch in the masonry, every smooth angle in the galley kitchen she’d never thought much of. There was plenty she’d appreciated about the house. It was beautiful, undeniably so, and a little untamed, as though the surrounding wildness had seeped into its honey-colored stonework over time. But she’d never seen it likethis. Like it was the kind of art that could move a person.
At once, she understood. There was something magical about art that took up physical space. It was part of what had drawn her to sculpting.
Years ago, Gran had taken Lainey to the Minneapolis Institute of Art for a special exhibition of the French sculptor Camille Claudel.The Waltzhad awakened Lainey’s obsession with sculpture art. To her, that piece was so much more than two figures dancing beneath a drape. She hadn’t known bronze could convey that kind of vulnerability, movement, and magnitude. She wanted to climb inside the dance. To exist within its tumultuous passion forever.
It returns to Paris at the end of the month, darling, Gran had explained.
Lainey hadn’t cared. She would’ve happily stowed herself away across an ocean for it.
Her little house, with its cold floors and poor roof drainage, was Elliot’s Claudel sculpture, and he was getting the chance to live inside it.
She looked at him, with his enthusiasm for something sosingular as the angle of the kitchen skylight and the dramatic bands of glass around the living room, and for a moment, she was back at the beginning, under the gas station canopy, with a crush on the stranger in the olive-colored jacket.
She cleared her throat. “The bedroom on the right is empty. And there’s a dresser and wardrobe built in to the wall—which we’ve already covered.”
“Is he your favorite artist?” Elliot asked.
Lainey turned to face Elliot, who was standing in the doorway of her grandmother’s room. Which was now his room.
“Salvador Dalí,” he clarified. “With the anteater. Is he your favorite artist?”
“Oh.” She tilted her head side to side, weighing the question. “Probably not, but maybe sometimes, I guess. He was super weird and brilliant. I saw a Jean-Michel Basquiat installation in high school that I’ve never fully gotten over, so he’s probably up there, too. Or Camille Claudel. That’s sort of like asking what my favorite movie is. It all depends on what I’m feeling and what I need.”
His forehead creased, like he was filing away that information for later. “I know exactly what my favorite movie is. I have a list on my phone.”
He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. The house she’d known for years looked smaller with him standing inside it like this. The ceiling and walls seemed to pull in around him, like even the room was drawn to him.
She lifted her chin. “I’ll bite. What is Elliot Hodges’s favorite movie?”
“Gladiator,” he answered confidently.
She couldn’t imagine a world where Russell Crowe fighting atiger brought anyone comfort. “You’re telling me that no matter what mood you’re in—happy, sad, sick with the flu—you always want to fire upGladiator?”
“My taste is consistent.”
“Do I dare ask what number two is?”
“Alien,” he answered, with a small adjustment to his glasses.
“Somehow, even more disturbing. But I do love H. R. Giger.”
“Don’t know who that is. But Ripley was my first crush.”
“He’s the Swiss surrealist sculptor who designed the alien,” she explained.
“Really,” he said, appreciatively, as though he was a little pleased to have collected a new piece of trivia about his second-favorite movie. She wondered if he would add it to his Notes list.
She stood there, waiting for something else to happen.
He lowered his arm from the doorframe and pointed to the front door. “I should bring my stuff inside.”
“Right. I’ll leave you to it. Good night,” she said, backing into her room and shutting the door. Only after she was in there did she wonder whether he’d wanted her help unpacking the suitcases or the old-fashioned steamer trunk that he carted all the way from wherever he’d come from like a disinherited heiress. Or whether his desire for her help should’ve mattered to her at all.
And only after she’d shut the door and said good night did she realize it was only five p.m.
