Chapter 18 #2
“Dad, why keep this from me?” I whisper to myself as I catalog the different sizes of metal files and pliers.
I start thinking about all the parts that I still don’t have clear answers about, and it makes me uneasy.
I want to close out this part of my life, wrap a legacy that doesn’t feel right anymore without him, and now I’m here and feeling like I’m sinking in information that I won’t ever fully understand, not without being able to ask him.
“An accident,” was what the officer had told me.
And his cause of death was a heart attack.
The injuries to the body had been postmortem, as his car collided with a building on the north side of Queens.
It all sounded like some kind of fucking mistake.
He was supposed to have been in Tennessee for a job, not up in one of the burrows of New York City. It still feels wrong to this day.
I drag my fingers through my hair, thinking about what he’d say to me about listening to my gut.
“Met a woman once who told me it isn’t your gut that tells you when something isn’t right. That the world is far more complicated than that. You have to look for all kinds of signs. And listen.”
I remember how he folded the blue paper down its center and the top left corner next. I’d already made three and he was still on his first.
Sunday morning coffee with my dad often turned into lunch on days we’d talk about the jewelry business. He’d always ask me,“Find a woman worth mentioning yet?” I’d always shake my head and tell him no. I never asked him.
I can’t help but smile thinking about what I’d say if he asked that question again now.
With a deep breath, I pull open the last drawer and most of it is just saved pieces of metal, steel nuts that have been filed down, and a pouch of small gemstones that are an interesting mix.
But there’s a polaroid beneath it that I don’t recognize.
It’s not me or an old one of my mother, but my dad smiling at the camera, holding up his glass with a much younger Birdie Crowne nuzzled into his neck.
“What are you doing out here?” Jo Crowne asks from behind the red pickup.
I shut the door to my Bronco and walk around as she stands to her full height, hauling a sack of something heavy from her shoulder and making the truck bounce as she drops it into the bed.
“Is Birdie inside?” I ask in response.
Stevie comes out from the old building, popping a pink bubble in her mouth. “Thought you’d still be here.”
My heart picks up pace at that idea. Wyn is complicated and the situation that keeps unfolding between us gets more and more messy.
I’d be fucking lying if I said she doesn’t make me feel things, but I’m a bit distracted after what I just found.
I don’t say anything about that, though.
Instead, I smile at the insinuation and say, “Sorry, just came looking for Birdie.”
Jo raises her eyebrows and smiles, wide-eyed at me first, and then Stevie.
Ignoring me, Stevie says, “We all watched that little spectacle last night at the bar, Julian,” Stevie says, hand propping on her hip. “You guys bang it out yet?” She wiggles her eyebrows.
“Stevie,” Jo warns with a roll of her eyes. “Ignore her. She watched too many soap operas growing up; turned her into a hopeful romantic. But Birdie’s not here.” She points to the wood and rolled-up canvas next to the truck. “Mind getting that?” she asks.
I move around to the back of the truck and grab what she’s asking for. “Any idea when she’ll be back?”
“She’s helping out some of her garden club girls prep barbecue for the Bluegrass Full Moon Fest this weekend. I think she said she had to pop up to Nashville and see a man about some meat.”
Stevie snorts out a laugh. “How long have you been wanting to say that?”
Looking at the decent-sized pile they had in front of them to load, I haul some of the wood into my arms and shove it along the far side of the truck bed. “This a music thing?”
“It’s a Tennessee thing,” Stevie says. She doesn’t elaborate any further as she heads into the garage and comes out with two gallons of paint in each hand a beat later.
“What is all of this?” I ask, looking at the truck being stacked with hardware. It’s loaded with art supplies, raw materials, and a rolled-up rug, while the front seat is already filled with greenery, with even more green leaves pressing against the back window and draping out the side.
Jo hops down from the truck, closing the foldable bed, and claps dirt off her hands. “I finally leased an art studio. Want to come see it?”
I’m nothing more than a stranger to these women—a dangerous one, if they know why I was brought here to begin with—but they talk to me like I’m a welcome friend. I know their mother and grandmother shared the real purpose for my sudden arrival.
“Don’t overthink it, Jules,” Stevie says, slapping my back as Jo starts the engine. “Follow us over. We could use the help.” The loud muffler almost drowns out what she says next.
“You might know my sister and my grandmother, but we don’t know you,” she says, pointing her finger between her and the truck where Jo’s sitting. “We can be exceptional allies or your worst fucking nightmare.” Popping another bubble, she hops into the truck bed before shouting, “You decide!”
I’m not good with threats. They usually make me want to push and do exactly the opposite of what’s being asked of me, but this is Wyn’s family. And like it or not, they hold far too many cards that I can’t see.
“Wouldn’t mind your opinion on a few of the pieces I’ve been working on.
Some rich asshole commissioned a series of paintings.
” She leans out, arm propped on the open window of her truck.
“Anyway, he gave me a word and asked that I deliver three paintings of my interpretation. He sent the first set back and told me I lacked originality.” She grins to herself.
“Kind of need another creative person to take a look.”
“Alright,” I say as I move back toward my truck. “I’ll follow you.”
Rumor, on the outside, looks like every other small town I’ve been to before.
Brick buildings housing small businesses, old Victorian homes operating as a combination of doctors offices, a dentist, or attorneys offices, but something about this one feels like there’s still room for growing.
It doesn’t feel like it’s peaked yet, despite the empty storefronts.
Maybe it’s because I like turning basic materials into shiny and pretty things, this place has possibilities.
Nosy neighbors and busy-bodies also linger outside in the late summer afternoon.
Some even stop what they’re in mid-motion of doing to watch the Crowne sisters in a red pickup truck park out front of the long, empty building.
When I shut my door and I look down the block, it’s more of the same. The police station is at the beginning of the long stretch that makes up Rumor’s downtown, and here, there’s a lot of run-down buildings and only a few local businesses peppered throughout.
“Nosy assholes,” Jo breathes out as she looks down the street. A woman with a broom stares at where we’re parked, and a few cars slow down as they drive past.
In the back of the truck, Stevie shouts, “Mind ya business, Mary Jo! Keep drivin’.”
The woman, whom I’m assuming is Mary Jo, opens her mouth wide and does the sign of the cross as she picks up to the twenty-five miles per hour that’s stenciled in paint across the road.
About an hour later, after unloading all the supplies, I’m staring at a painting that looks like it was stolen from the very secure walls of the Art Institute of Chicago, and wondering, again, who the hell these women are. “You painted that?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Fuck yes, she did,” Stevie croons from the kitchenette on the far side of the loft space. I glance around and see the corresponding oils on plates, rags smeared with dark greens and deep reds, brushes soaking in turpentine, and the smell of it all still lingers in the air.
I hum out thoughtfully. “Impressive,” I say, looking closer.
Because while my expertise lies in metals and gems, fine art is easily appreciated by most creatives.
It isn’t as cliché as Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Sunrise by Monet, but the late-night diner scene of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks oil on canvas would be recognized by anyone having taken an art history class in the last forty years.
There’s a story in it. The creative part of my brain used to live for the story surrounding any piece of jewelry I made.
Where would it be worn? Who would look close enough to see it?
Or what would its owner do while wearing it?
I trace along the leather cuff on my wrist. This one has a new story, and the matching one that’s folded in my pocket had a different owner for a while.
Seeing it on her lit something in me—pride, or maybe possessiveness at seeing her with something I’d made, I don’t know, exactly.
It made me want to adjust it for her—to tweak the size so it fit her better and fix along the edges that had been worn away.
It’s simple, but I haven’t felt a desire to make a damn thing for so long that up until now, I don’t think I realized how uninspired I had been.
Clearing my throat, I ask Jo, “What was the word?”
She moves to stand next to me, taking in the same painting.
“The one your benefactor gave?” I study along the painting's edges. There’s always a detail an artist could be known for. Sometimes, it’s the metals and tools used, or the method of creating. For painters, it’s about the edges.
“Pith,” she says with a smirk.