Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
CELESTE
So this is my new ‘project.’
The elementary school’s Christmas play. My job is the backdrop artwork. And with just under two weeks until the twenty-fourth and the big show, I’m feeling the pressure. Luckily, I have been assigned someone to help build the set and put in some creative hours to help out.
If only they would turn up.
Apparently, they’re a new family here. The dad was roped into this just as much as I was.
Poor guy is probably procrastinating. I know I was.
“Morning,” a low voice says before clearing his throat.
I spin around and—
Oh great.
“Good morning,” I say, feigning a happy tone.
Brilliant. The guy who barely tolerates my existence, except for when I’m entertaining his daughter.
Quinton.
“Sorry I’m late, Maise had a—”
I hold up a hand. “It’s fine. Let’s get to work.”
We stand in the gymnasium’s oversized open area, where art supplies and lumber are piled in their respective areas.
My side is filled with large canvas tarps that are waiting to be muralled into an inch of their fraying edges and the other side .
. . well, that is supposed to become the large frame to hang said mural backdrops from.
And we need a plan.
I will not be responsible for messing this up and wasting the school’s limited resources. If there is one thing I take seriously in my life, it’s art.
Someone has to.
It’s only the sole expression of our existence on this planet as a species, after all.
No biggie.
Not to mention this is for the children’s holiday play. Safe to say, the stakes are high.
“Where do you want these, love?” Dad wanders over with a container that he’s . . . mixed all the paints together in.
Shit.
“Um—”
“Hank, good to see you again. You free to help with this frame up?” Quinton asks, shooting me an empathetic look as his gaze sweeps over the mixed paint.
“Oh, Quin! Thought you’d never ask.” Dad shoves the brown soupy mess into my arms and nods with a smile like he’s just passed me over for men’s business as he follows Quinton toward the pile of lumber. Maybe he will have better luck with something hands-on and not artistic?
And did he just call him Quin?
Now I feel like the third wheel . . .
“Daddy, where do you want these?” Maisey walks in, a tool belt in one hand, a tray of three coffees in the other.
Okay, make that the fourth wheel.
“Hi Celeste!” Maisey hands the tray to her dad, who has returned to where I stand as I gawk at his daughter. Her five years are seemingly more capable than my thirty. It’s not every day you get showed up by a preschooler.
“Thanks, kiddo. Coffee, Celeste?” Quinton plucks a cup from the tray and hands it to me.
I stare at it like it’s a cobra, not a cappuccino.
“Not a fan of caffeine?” he asks, his eyes narrowing with amusement.
I take the cup from his hand, my fingers brushing over his. “I like caffeine just fine, MacKelvie. Just not the kind that comes with strings.”
“Strings?” His brows lower as he glances at his daughter.
I wait for Maisey to walk over to my father before saying, “You don’t need to butter me up. I can be professional about this circumstance.”
“I was—”
“Daddy, Hank says he doesn’t drink whiskey in daylight hours?” Maisey is staring at my father who is walking the length of the timber pile, his hands on his hips.
“He doesn’t, hey? Well, maybe Miss Francis would like one. I saw her in the hall when we got here,” Quinton says.
Maisey screws her face up but wanders from the gymnasium to find who I assume is her teacher.
“Actually,” I say, breaking his concentration from staring at the retreating back of his daughter. “Hank can’t have coffee. Not anymore.”
“Oh, damn, sorry. Noted.” He runs a hand through his hair, and . . . that awkward silence hangs between us again.
“Right. I’m going to make a start. You good?” I wave a hand toward the timber and my father.
“Yep.” Quinton buckles his tool belt around his waist as he glances to my dad. “Anything I need to know before we start?”
“About?”
“Your dad? The project?”
Huh. Look at us having a civil conversation that doesn’t involve Maisey.
“No, not really. He was a capable man before . . . I’m sure this will be great for him.”
“I’ll do my best to keep up, then.” He shoots me a smirk before walking over, slapping a hand on my father’s shoulder. “Ready to get your hands dirty, Hank?”
“Dying to, son.”
I can’t take my eyes off them both. It’s like giving my father something he’s done for his whole life was the key to keeping him in the here and now.
All of our fussing and trying to keep him safe at home feels like the exact opposite of what he needs.
I huff a shocked breath and turn back to the rolls of canvas and container of brown paint. Which is kind of useless for the images the play director has requested. Damn, I’m going to have to go and get more.
“Quinton?” I call across the gym space.
“Yeah?” He turns back, sliding a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear as his gaze finds me.
“I need more paints. You two okay here?”
“Course. Take your time.”
He turns back, hands moving as he explains what he needs my father to do. Who, right now, is enraptured in the task he is getting the rundown on.
I pick up my bag and slide it over my shoulder, sipping the coffee Maisey brought in as I walk from the gym and head back to the truck.
Outside, snow is falling in short, gentle bursts. The street that the school is on is glistening with the white assault.
I start up the truck and head for the Village Store. The one-stop shop for all things in Grafton. Always has been.
I find a parking spot and swing the truck into it. Killing the engine, I slip inside.
“Morning, Celeste. Hear you’re busy with the artistic endeavors for the school play.” Mr. Nolan winks at me like he has my entire life, every damn time I’ve stepped foot inside his shop. I think he thinks it’s friendly.
I have news for him.
Mrs. Nolan pops out of an aisle with an armful of cereal boxes. “Oh! CC, I thought that sounded like you. How are you, darling?”
I chuckle. Now Mrs. Nolan, I like.
“I’m good, here let me help you with those.”
I take half the pile of boxes precariously perched in her arms into my own.
“Thank you, sweetheart. Tell me, you met that new neighbor of yours yet?” Her eyes are lit up as she smiles over the remaining boxes in her hold.
“Yes, and don’t go getting any ideas.”
She laughs, so hearty it makes something small and light and happy tumble through my own lips.
“Oh, I would never.” She rounds the counter and places the boxes on one end where a half-price ticket is taped to the front of the counter. I narrow my gaze at her and help her stack the boxes in their groups.
“Thanks, hon. But I’m guessing you didn’t come in to help me rearrange the cereal. What are you chasing?”
“Tempera paint. Primary colors should be good enough.”
“You out already? The art department only collected the supplies for the play last week.” Despite the confusion wrapped around her face, she wanders to the aisle where the paints sit and hands me large bottles of red, yellow, and blue.
“There was an incident, and we now have one large supply of brown.”
She giggles, but it fades when my face hasn’t lit with amusement.
“Oh, sorry. Hank okay?”
“Yeah, the same can’t be said for the paints. I’ll pay for this lot.”
“No, you won’t. Consider this our contribution to the Christmas play.”
“Thank you,” I say softly, taking in her expression. There’s empathy, but not sympathy. Maybe this small-town thing isn’t so bad, after all . . .
I’m back at the school gymnasium before long and I haul the paint bottles in the crate that Mrs. Nolan lent me.
When my father sees me carrying the heavy load, he skips out on the measuring he’s doing, taking one end of the crate.
We set it down on the floor by the rolled-up canvas backdrop material.
“You good here, miss?” he says.
Letting the smile that I ensure is plastered over my face stretch my features, I nod. “Yes, thank you, Hank.”
A sheepish smile grows on his own face.
And I can just tell, all he is seeing at this moment is my mother. Who could blame him? She was an incredible human being.
A small hand slips into mine and I startle, turning to find Maisey. She looks up at me. Her face is wrapped in sympathy when she whispers, “I promise I won’t forget you, CC.”
Just like that, emotion fills my throat like frostbit maple syrup. Slow and unrelenting in its onslaught.
She called me CC . . .
Wonder which one of the people I grew up among told her about that nickname. Probably Marie.
“Thanks, lovely.” I scrunch my face, fighting back the burn behind my eyes and offer her a sad smile.
She takes off toward her dad, skipping as she waves her hands around. “CC thinks I’m lovely!”
Quinton spins back, a brow arched. “That so, kiddo?”
But his gaze isn’t on his daughter now, it’s planted on me as I stand and dwell in two very different warring feelings. Happiness and sadness. Although those words are too basic to describe what I feel right now.
“Give us a hand to set this frame out, hey?” he says, and she settles instantly, all business like her dad.
She picks up a triangle-shaped tool and walks to the opposite end of the timber laying at Quinton’s feet.
Next to my father, she starts chatting away, bending down to adjust the wood.
The triangle tool clatters to the floor, and she pushes it into the right angle she’s made with the two lengths.
“Square!” she calls.
My father bends down after receiving the nod from Quinton, nailing the timber together with a thwack from the power tool in his hand. Is that a nail gun?
Oh my god . . .
A little anxious, I decide to trust Quinton’s call and go about my large mural scene on this first canvas. I outline the image with a carpenter’s pencil I manage to steal from the team on the other side of the gymnasium and slide it behind my ear when I’m done.
I hash out the background colors before starting the next canvas. Deciding to attack this large project in layers. Adding the finer details that make it at the very end.
Hours pass before I surface for a breather.
I find my father happy and sitting with Quinton and Maisey, eating . . . is that a sandwich?
Would you look at that.
No complicated menu here. Just hard work and simple food that comes with something that looks suspiciously like happiness.
And as a hearty laugh spills from my dad’s throat at a story Quinton is animatedly telling with exaggerated hand gestures, I hug my arms around my body.
Why has this felt so hard? Until now.
I decide I’ve done enough for one day and mosey on over to where they sit. “How’s the frame coming along?”
I slide my hands in the back pockets of my jeans, tugging my bottom lip through my teeth. All three look up, and Maisey jumps up, grabbing my hand. She maneuvers me between her and her dad and insists I sit.
I do, and my own father greets me like it’s the first time we’ve met.
Quinton tilts his head toward me. “Hungry?”
“Starving, actually. I was going to go and grab something soon.”
“We made enough for everyone, CC.” Maisey hands me a wrapped-up sandwich.
“Oh, thank you. That’s so sweet.”
“Making progress with the backdrop?” Dad asks.
“Yes, the background elements are done. I’ll work on the foreground tomorrow.”
“Your art is important to you, isn’t it?” my father asks, like he doesn’t know me from the next stranger on the street.
“It is. Very much.”
“How long you been painting?” Quinton asks.
I blow out a puffy breath. “A while.”
“Is that what you were doing in the city?” Maisey asks.
I smile at her. “Yeah. At least, I was trying to.”
Her brows fall. “What do you mean?”
“My work never really took off, not like my mother’s did.”
“She was an artist, too?” my father asks.
A pregnant pause passes, causing something in my chest to rise and burst. “She was.”
My father stares at me, something like understanding passing through his gaze before he returns to his sandwich, washing it down with a sip from the bottle of water I assume Quinton supplied him with also.
“Well, I have actual work to get to. You good here?” Quinton says.
We all finish up and pack away the impromptu picnic.
“Great. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I utter.
He closes in as I make to leave to follow my father who has wandered off. “Just one more thing.”
I look into his eyes, lost as to what he could want.
His hand rises, sweeping past my ear, brushing my hair as his hand drops . . .
The stolen carpenter’s pencil between his fingers.
“That’s mine.”
Oh shit, I momentarily forgot I had stolen it from his toolbox.
“I’m sorry, I would have returned it . . .” When I remembered I had it. Probably when I went for a shower and saw it in the mirror. God, I forgot it was even still there.
He chuckles.
“Any excuse to cross the boundary fence, neighbor.” He adds a wink, and my face twists in shock.
Ah! Whatever, you ass. Where is the kind-hearted guy who took care of my confused father while I painted for the last three hours?
I find said father and usher him to the parking lot.
When I have him bundled up in the truck, I round the front and climb into the driver’s seat.
I drop my head to the steering wheel as I replay the last moment I spent with Quinton MacKelvie.
And to be honest, my father is not the only one confused in this truck.
Just when I thought he was tolerable, maybe even a nice guy, he goes and says something stupid.
Groaning, I fire up the truck.
“Where are we going?” Dad asks, snapping me back to reality.
“Home.”
“Sure, sweetheart, let’s go home.”
Huh. A sliver of hope sparkles to life like the sunlight shimmering on the snow outside.
I’ll take it.