Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter
Thirty-Two
The end of October in LA was summer hot. April stared out Gertie’s passenger window, her iPad in her lap, stylus dangling loosely in her fingers, and took in the mountains in the distance, a heat haze settling over the city, so wildly different from the East Coast.
For the last three months, she’d actually missed Clover Lake.
She hadn’t expected to, but she felt a tenderness toward the quaint downtown in her memory, Clover Moon Café and Owen’s perfect fries.
She missed the lake and the watery sunsets, and she even missed Penny’s boundary-crossing inquisitions about her life.
She missed her house—though she’d found a renter through the end of the year who more than covered her mortgage—and of course, she missed her cats, who had been staying with Mr. Riley since she’d left.
He texted regular pictures, and they’d even video chatted a few times, Bianca with her tail turned up at April, and Bob trying to butt against her face on the phone screen.
She missed Ramona. She knew she always would, but they talked on the phone at least once a week and texted nearly every day. And when a text went unanswered for a day or so, on either of their parts, April was okay.
She felt…good. She felt like herself.
Honestly, the independence of the last three months had been life-changing. Of course, Sasha had been with her, but Sasha was a bit of a lone wolf herself.
“It takes a lot of alone time to keep up this level of charm,” Sasha had said about a week into their trip, sliding noise-canceling headphones over her head in their motel room just outside Chicago, then disappearing for the rest of the night.
And April found she didn’t mind.
She needed the time to process…well, her entire life.
And flying down highways with the wind in her hair and the sun spreading colors all over the western sky, sliding her hands over the smooth striped stone at the Wave, or standing inside a cavern lit with phosphorescence was the perfect environment for some good old-fashioned contemplation.
And goddess, did she contemplate.
She thought and dreamed and longed. She let herself cry when she needed to, let the future terrify her if that was what she felt in that moment.
She let herself miss Daphne.
She let herself text Daphne too, but only once a week, and she’d asked Sasha to hold her to it.
She and Daphne had parted on good terms. After their last night together—a night during which neither of them slept very much, too busy soaking each other in, hands roaming, mouths exploring—they’d stood on the front porch of their cabin and kissed goodbye.
They’d made no promises, they’d devised no plan.
And while April had spent the rest of that day in a gloomy haze, she knew it was the right thing.
But April knew something else too—she loved Daphne Love, and three months exploring the country with Sasha Sinclair hadn’t changed that.
April looked down at her iPad. She’d worked a lot these past three months on her tarot deck, digitizing the twenty-two Fool’s Passage pieces into Procreate so she could make changes easily, then making plans for fifty-six more pieces for the Minor Arcana.
The Major Arcana she’d already created needed a few revisions.
For one, she didn’t want the person on each card to be her.
She wanted a diverse cast, all races and genders and shapes.
And the Minor Arcana would take some time, a theme for every suit—wands, cups, swords, and pentacles.
She was already about halfway through the cups, her favorite suit, and her head was always working on ideas for the rest, ideas for the guidebook she’d write, ideas for a title for her deck.
Star Journey Tarot was her favorite name right now, but she hadn’t settled on anything.
She planned to run a Kickstarter campaign when the entire project was ready, but she’d also emailed a query letter and samples of her illustrations to several agents in the last month, a process that felt like the fiery depths of hell.
But a thrilling kind of hell.
She wanted to bring her deck to life, she knew that, but she also wanted to work on book covers, illustrate picture books, maybe even work on her own story or graphic novel.
She already had a pretty solid Instagram following from her years as a tattooist, and she was excited to start posting different types of art on her page.
She was excited.
Period.
And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that way. About anything.
Anything other than Daphne Love.
April tucked her iPad back into her bag at her feet as Sasha turned onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard, also known as Love Street.
“Figures,” April said, propping her leg up on the seat. Sasha said nothing, and April glanced at her. “You okay?”
Sasha blinked, as though she’d been deep in thought, then frowned. “Yeah, fine.”
“Convincing.”
Sasha sighed and shrugged. “I used to live around here.”
April sat up straighter. In the last three months, Sasha had revealed very little about her past or her family. April had gleaned tiny tidbits, like that Sasha was an only child and her mother was Norwegian, but not much beyond that.
“When did your parents leave LA?”
Sasha pressed her mouth flat. “They didn’t.”
“I thought they didn’t live here anymore.”
“They don’t.”
April rubbed her forehead. “You know, for all your put yourself first advice, you’re really bad at doing the same.”
“I put myself first every day,” Sasha said, turning onto a side road.
“And keep everyone else at arm’s length,” April said. “That’s not putting yourself first. That’s hiding.”
Sasha scowled, but said nothing as they drove deeper into Laurel Canyon, the Maps app on Sasha’s phone calling out directions to Jack and Carrie’s house.
April didn’t say anything else as Sasha drove, but when they pulled up in front of a large modern white house surrounded by greenery, water bubbling from a fountain in the front yard, Sasha made no move to get out of the car.
April looked at her, looked at her phone. They still had a couple of hours until the party, but Dylan and Ramona were already here, and April couldn’t wait to see Ramona.
“Sash?” April said.
“My parents died,” Sasha said, leaning her head against the headrest. “In a car accident. Two years ago. They were documentary filmmakers, and that’s all I want to say about it right now, okay?”
She didn’t look at April, didn’t show any obvious emotion on her face. But April noticed her jaw was tight, her nostrils flaring with the effort of holding back, holding in.
April let the news settle for a second. Suddenly, Sasha’s constant refusal to let April drive Gertie over the last few months—even once on the safest, widest road—made a lot more sense. She reached out and took Sasha’s hand.
“Okay,” she said softly, then squeezed Sasha’s fingers before letting her go.
Sasha glanced at her, blue eyes darker than usual, her smile small and grateful. “Do you think Jack and Carrie have any weed?”
April laughed. “From what I hear, they’re pretty herbal these days, so it could go either way.”
She opened her door to get out, but then her phone buzzed in the cupholder, and when she picked it up, she saw that Ramona had sent her a link. April’s thumb hovered over the text, the article’s headline already fully visible in the preview.
Newcomer Shines at the Devon
She sucked in a sharp breath.
“What is it?” Sasha asked, releasing the buckle on her seat belt.
It took April a few swallows to answer. “Daphne’s show.”
“That just closed a couple days ago, yeah?”
April shut herself back into the car and nodded, which was all she could manage at the moment.
Of course, she knew the Devon’s Evolution show had opened a few weeks ago.
She and Daphne had texted a bit about it—how Daphne was nervous, how April knew she’d be amazing—but they’d barely talked since it started.
April and Sasha had sent her some congratulatory flowers, the card very pointedly from both of them, but other than that, April hadn’t wanted to press Daphne too much for details.
This was Daphne’s moment, Daphne’s success, and April wanted her to experience it however she wanted.
Now, April clicked on the article, which led her to the site of a contemporary art magazine based in London. April’s eyes had teeth, quickly devouring the words about the show’s details, about Nicola, about other artists, chewing ravenously to get to Daphne.
Her heart nearly stopped when she saw Daphne’s name in print.
The shining star of the exhibition, however, is a newcomer from across the pond.
Daphne Love hails from Crestwater, Tennessee, and her six-piece series, eerily entitled Preacher’s Daughter, drew in viewers with her emotional use of texture, color, and theme.
An autobiographical series, the paintings depict a young woman unbecoming and becoming, a true evolution of mind, body, and spirit.
April’s eyes welled suddenly with tears, a huge smile on her face as she wiped them away.
“She did it,” she said to Sasha, laughing. “She fucking did it.”
“Of course she did.”
April nodded, tears still streaming. The article went on to talk about some commissions Daphne had gotten as a result of the show, a couple of big names in the London art world, as well as invitations from a few reputable galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
April’s heart felt full and electric, a new rhythm under her ribs.
She kept scrolling to where the article featured photographs of Daphne’s series.
She took in the first four familiar paintings, still as resplendent and moving as they ever were.
Then she got to the fifth piece.
She’d never seen this one, of course. She assumed Daphne had created it, along with the sixth, once she got to London.
In the painting, Daphne stood on a cobbled London street, rain falling from a gloomy gray sky.
She wore the same white dress, the hem tattered and more than halfway up her thigh, and the sleeves were ripped, revealing her upper arms.
Revealing her tattoo.
Her hair was lavender, blond roots just starting to grow out, creating a lovely ombré effect, and the rain hadn’t quite soaked it to her scalp yet.
Her eyes were cast upward toward the sky, and she had a smile on her face, her expression serene, but also anticipatory.
Her features though…they were just a hair shy of perfectly clear. April had to zoom in on the digital image, and she still wasn’t completely sure, but it definitely looked like her face was still a little bit off, a little blurred.
She scrolled to the last piece, her heart in her throat, and when she saw it, she clapped a hand over her mouth. She couldn’t help it.
“Holy shit,” she said through her fingers.
“What?” Sasha asked, leaning over Gertie’s center console to try and get a glimpse of April’s phone. “What’s happening?”
But April needed a second to process what she was seeing on her screen.
Daphne’s sixth and final painting.
In it, Daphne’s facial features were completely clear. It was a closer image of her, just the chest up, and she was smiling widely, showing all of her teeth, her eyes cast down, lavender hair beautiful and curling over her shoulders, the roots just a bit more grown out than the previous painting.
And the white dress was gone.
In this piece, she wore a sky blue dress with a sweetheart bodice, thin straps over her lovely shoulders. It took April a second to place it, but this was the same dress Daphne had worn the night of the solstice party.
The first time she and April had kissed.
But that wasn’t what had made April gasp, what had stolen her words and her breath.
A person stood behind Daphne, their arms circled around her shoulders, holding her back tight against their chest. Their face was mostly hidden, only below their nose visible at the tip of the canvas, their head turned to the side, iridescent hair hitting right at their neck.
They wore a gauzy-looking off-the-shoulder top, dark blue and dotted with moons and stars.
And their arms.
Their arms were covered in tattoos. Scorpion girls and flowers and trees, the edge of a tiny pair of scissors visible just inside their elbow, ink curling over their collarbones and shoulders and down their wrists.
“Fuck,” Sasha said when April finally angled her phone so Sasha could see. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Do you think it’s me?” April finally managed to ask, her voice dazed, her brain whirling.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Then I think you’re right.”
“Hey, you’re here!”
April looked up to see Ramona running down the diamond-patterned driveway in a pair of cutoffs and a purple T-shirt with a black cat printed on the front. Dylan was behind her, smiling and waving.
April couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. She stuffed her phone into her pocket, eyes welling with tears, and fell into her best friend’s arms.