Chapter Twenty-Six
ARIA
Do not check your phone again.
Do not.
I check my phone again.
I've already looked at it twice in the parking lot and once sitting at a red light like some kind of teenager with a crush and no self-respect, and now I'm walking down the hallway at Brookhaven scrolling Instagram like it's going to tell me something different than it told me four minutes ago.
The post is still there.
One photo. Not even a good one—just a work-in-progress shot from the studio Everett built me.
A seagull mid-heist, wings spread wide, an ice cream cone clamped in its beak like a trophy.
Below it, the blur of a man's hand still reaching.
Villefranche. The harbor. That ridiculous blue.
No caption except a paint palette emoji and starting again.
I almost deleted it six times before I actually hit post last night. It felt too exposed. Too much like handing someone your diary and hoping they have the decency not to read it out loud.
And it's not the only one. That's the thing. I can't seem to stop painting Villefranche. Different angles. Different light. The harbor at golden hour. The rooftops after rain. The balcony where Everett stood while I sketched and didn't know yet that I was already gone for him.
I keep telling myself it's a series about Villefranche. About my mother's memory. About the place.
But if someone lined them all up—the golden hour one, the rain one, the balcony one, the harbor from the morning he drove me to the village —they'd tell a story I didn't mean to write.
You could track exactly when I started falling by the way the light changes.
The early ones are cooler. Observational.
By the fourth or fifth, everything is warm.
Everything is golden. Everything looks the way the world looks when you're in love and too stupid to say it.
If Gabriel ever puts these on a wall, anyone paying attention is going to see right through me.
I'm not painting Villefranche. I'm painting what it felt like to fall in love with my husband, and the village is just the backdrop I'm hiding behind.
Gabriel liked it twenty-three minutes later.
Not that I was counting.
I was absolutely counting.
Then he commented.
This deserves walls, not just an easel. When you have enough for a collection, call me. I'm serious.
A collection. Like he can see where this is going before I can. Like one Instagram post of an unfinished painting told him everything he needed to know about what's happening in my studio.
I didn't answer. I still don't know what I'd say. Thanks, that means a lot coming from the man whose gallery I cried in feels like too much for an Instagram reply. And I don't even know what I'm painting yet feels like a lie, because I think I do know. I just haven't admitted it.
He wasn't the only one, though. A few names from art school are sitting in the likes too—people I haven't spoken to in years. People who knew me when I actually painted. Before the accident. Before I stopped.
That bothers me more than it should.
Not because I mind them seeing it.
Because I want them to.
When did that happen? When did I go from hiding everything to wanting people to look?
There's also a text from Shannon Burbank I still haven't fully opened. Just enough to see the preview:
I knew this day would come. Call me when you're ready.—Shannon
Shannon handled my last gallery show. She's checked in on me every few months for five years, never once making me feel guilty when the answer was always the same. No. Not yet. I'm not painting.
Now I am. And apparently everyone can tell except me.
And maybe that's the thing that gets me the most. Not the likes. Not Gabriel already planning wall space. Not even Shannon reaching out again. It's that I posted a piece of my work on the internet and the world didn't end. Nobody laughed. Nobody said wasn't your mother the real artist?
I slip my phone back into my purse and keep walking.
There's another painting waiting on the easel back at the estate, though. Not the Villefranche one. A new one. The man in the doorway. The one I keep trying not to paint and somehow keep painting anyway. Broad shoulders. One hand braced against the frame. Watching.
Everett has started doing that in real life too.
Standing in the studio doorway with a cup of coffee while I work, as if five quiet minutes watching me paint is a reasonable use of a billionaire CEO's morning.
He doesn't say anything. Just drinks his coffee and watches like I'm something worth being late for.
I hate that it works on me.
No. That's a lie. I love that it works on me, and that's so much worse.
Because here's the thing I keep not saying out loud, even to myself.
I don't know when this became love. I really don't. There wasn't a moment.
There wasn't a lightning bolt or a grand realization or some dramatic scene where I collapsed into his arms and the music swelled.
It was more like... I kept waking up and he was already there.
Already making coffee. Already texting call me after like my day belonged in his schedule.
Already building things, like art studios and apartment add-ons, and acting like I was the unreasonable one for being emotional about it.
I keep thinking about France. About his hand on my back walking through the village. About the way he looked at me in the museum like I was the thing worth studying. I keep hearing him say I see it about my painting, like it was obvious. Like everyone should see it.
I keep feeling his mouth on my neck in the studio, his hands on my hips, his voice in my ear telling me to think about him every time I sit at that table.
And I do. God help me, I do.
I am so hopelessly in love with my husband that it's almost embarrassing. Almost. If I'm being honest, I blew past embarrassing about three weeks ago. Now I'm somewhere in the vicinity of completely pathetic and weirdly okay with it.
"Aria?"
I stop.
Dr. Patel is standing in the doorway of his office, tablet in one hand, reading glasses pushed up into his hair like he forgot they were there.
"Do you have a minute?"
My stomach drops. Nothing good has ever started with do you have a minute in a hospital hallway. That's up there with we need to talk and I have some thoughts about your bangs.
I follow him into the office.
"I wanted to update you on your father's progress," he says, settling into his chair. "Overall, he's improving faster than we projected."
I want to feel relieved. I do feel relieved. But I've been through enough of these updates to know there's always a but coming, and Dr. Patel doesn't disappoint.
"Recovery still isn't linear," he adds. "He had a rough patch while you were away. A day of more confusion than usual, some fatigue, a little regression. Nothing unusual for where he is. And he recovered from it well."
I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding.
Okay. Not perfect. But okay. I'll take okay. Okay is a damn miracle compared to where we were six months ago.
"What does this mean long-term?"
Dr. Patel lowers the tablet slightly. "I don't think your father will recover every memory or every function exactly as they were before the accident. That may not be realistic."
I nod. I know. I've known for a while. Knowing doesn't make it easier to hear out loud.
"But independent living is starting to look possible," he continues. "With support, check-ins, and ongoing therapy. A year to eighteen months feels reasonable now."
I blink. "A year?"
"Possibly sooner than we thought."
A year. He could be out in a year. Having coffee in the morning and reading his books by a window and being Henry again — not a patient, not a room number, not the man in 4B.
My dad. Living his life. In the apartment with the wide doorways and the big windows and the PT gym connected to the studio so he could do his exercises and then come watch me paint.
Because that's what Everett built. Not just a room. A life.
"The biggest thing is continued stimulation," Dr. Patel says. "Familiar people. Familiar environments. A life outside these walls."
"Then we'll give him that," I say. And I mean it in a way that surprises even me.
Dr. Patel smiles. "He's having a very good day today. Sharp. Present. Enjoy it."
"Thank you."
He nods, and I head down the hall toward my father's room trying to keep my heart from doing something dramatic.
He's in his chair by the window when I walk in. Book open in his lap, sunlight stretched across his hands.
He looks up immediately.
"There's my girl."
No hesitation. No pause where he searches for my name or looks at me like he's trying to place where he knows me from. Just my dad. Sharp and present, exactly the way Dr. Patel promised.
I practically melt into the floor.
"Hi, Dad."
I bend and kiss his cheek. He smells like his usual soap and clean laundry and that warm, familiar something underneath that always makes me feel like I'm twelve years old and nothing bad has happened yet.
He studies me for half a second. "You look happy."
I laugh, because apparently everyone can see it except the one person I need most to say it to. "I think I am."
"That sounds suspiciously important."
I sit down across from him and tuck one leg under me. "France was..."
"Transformative?"
"That's annoyingly accurate."
He smiles.
So I tell him. Not every detail—obviously I'm not telling my father about the drafting table situation, or the shower, or the.
.. yeah. But the important parts. That I'm painting again.
That Everett took me to Villefranche because he remembered the story Dad told at the rehearsal dinner about Mom.
That something shifted there and I haven't figured out how to shift it back. That I don't think I want to.
My father is quiet for a moment.
"And?" he says.
And.
There it is. The and. The part I keep circling like a painting I'm scared to finish because what if the last brushstroke ruins everything?