Chapter 14 #2
He was looking forward to the summer in the Hamptons.
He had nothing to rush home to. He could stay for as long as he wanted.
He had a stack of business plans to read, of young companies he might want to invest in, or startups that might excite him.
He loved the idea of starting something new in business. He still had a passion for it.
—
On the spur of the moment, Charlie decided to visit Liam in France in June, and see him get his diploma for the classes and projects he had done there for a year.
Liam had given up the idea of graduate school at Yale.
He was looking for a job with an established landscape architecture firm, in France, England, or California, whoever offered him the best opportunity.
At twenty-three he could go wherever he wanted, and intended to.
He was still learning his craft, and he had talent with anything that involved earth and gardens and land.
He was a man of the earth, unlike his father.
Charlie met his girlfriend, Sabine, and liked her.
She was a nice young woman, with a green thumb.
Her dream was to own a high-end florist shop one day and do beautiful decor for fashion shows or big parties or balls.
She came from a family of doctors who wanted her to go to medical school.
Her mother was a gynecologist, her father a cardiologist, her brother an orthopedic surgeon, and Sabine couldn’t imagine anything worse than blood and gore and carving up bodies all day long.
She wanted to work with beauty and flowers.
And Liam said she had talent. She was the same age as he was.
They had a lifetime ahead of them to make good and bad decisions, and Charlie was sure they’d make many of both, just as he had.
He tried to stay open-minded about it, particularly since Faye always thought she knew best what Liam should be doing, and they argued constantly about it.
Charlie had no desire to run his son’s life and knew better.
It was a lesson Faye hadn’t learned yet, and maybe never would, like his father.
He realized now that he had married a woman who was very much like his father.
—
It was a new discipline for Devon, learning to paint only three hours a day when she was sailing along and could have gone on for ten or twelve hours longer.
She had the stamina to paint long hours, but she had to protect her eyes now until they were stronger.
They felt fine, but she had promised to follow the doctor’s orders, and knowing her work mode, Edward reminded her of it often when he called her.
He didn’t know what she was working on and she didn’t tell him, but he could guess that she had gone straight to her easel and paints when she got home.
Once Devon got going on a painting she couldn’t stop herself, but she had to now.
She set an alarm every day so she would know when her three hours were up and she had to stop.
Despite the shortened work hours, she finished the painting of Charlie in late June, and she loved it.
Because she had taken the photographs of him during a magical time for them, doing what he loved most on his little sailboat, with the woman he loved, the painting exuded pure joy, and the love of the sea, and his eyes had been full of love as he looked straight at her when she took the photographs of him.
It was a beautiful portrait, and she loved looking at it.
She could feel the wind fill the sails of the little sailboat, and almost smell the sea.
And he looked so real, he looked like he was about to speak.
She knew where the portrait belonged, and she was going to send it to him. His was the only commission she had canceled, not postponed, because he wanted no contact with her, and probably still didn’t, and she was fine with it now. But she wanted him to have the painting as a gift.
She called the gallery when the painting was dry, and asked them if they would ship a painting to California for her.
“Of course,” Edward’s secretary told her. Devon was sending it to Charlie’s office at the bank, which was the only address she had for him, and it had to be crated to get there safely.
She rented a van to get it to the gallery and dropped it off. Wendy came everywhere with her and was enjoying her new life. Devon kept her guide dog harness on her to show that she was a service dog in case anyone stopped them, which they rarely did.
She was sad to see the last of the painting, but she wanted Charlie to have it.
She had put her heart and soul into it. She asked Edward’s secretary to include a formal note with it.
“A gift from the artist.” And she scribbled on the note when she dropped off the painting.
“I owed you one for the cancellation. D.” She dropped the van off then, and she and Wendy walked home.
With a dog that size at her side, with or without the harness, Devon was safe anywhere.
She sent Brandon photos of her from time to time.
He was having fun on the movie, and the tabloids claimed he was having a white-hot affair with the star, who was twenty-five years younger than he was.
She had broken up with her boyfriend, and she and Brandon were about to get engaged.
Devon smiled when she saw it, and was happy Brandon was having fun.
She was grateful to him for Wendy every day. She and Wendy loved each other.
—
She left for East Hampton the following week, driven by a car service with a van big enough for Wendy, who sat on the seat next to Devon and looked out the window.
Devon was happy to be back. She hadn’t come all winter because of the accident.
Her cleaning service had cleaned the barn thoroughly before she arrived, and Wendy loved exploring the garden, barking at deer in the distance, and running down the beach with Devon.
Devon felt free and alive to be in the sun and the ocean again.
She had to wear goggles when she swam and dark glasses in the sun, but it was a small price to pay for having her sight back.
The doctors had released her at the end of June, and she could paint now for as long as she wanted.
Her life was back to normal after six brutally rugged months.
Edward saw the portrait of Charlie before they shipped it out, and he wondered who Charles Taylor was in San Francisco.
It rang a bell and Edward looked it up in their records.
He was the only commission Devon had canceled, and they had refunded his money.
And now she was sending him a gift. She had the right to do that, and Edward wondered who he was.
He suddenly remembered what Brandon had told him about the “jerk” who had shut her out and upset her.
Edward was curious about him, but he didn’t want to ask.
The painting was beautiful and Edward hoped Charlie deserved it as a gift.
They sent it to California priority two days later, to a bank, and Edward noted Charlie’s title, Chairman of the Board.
—
Devon was in the Hamptons by the time the painting arrived in San Francisco. And Charlie was preparing to leave for the Hamptons himself.
One of the assistants called to tell him a crate had arrived for him at the bank. A very large wooden crate.
“I didn’t buy anything,” he said, puzzled.
“It looks like it could be a painting,” she said.
“Take a look at the waybill, and see who it’s from. It sounds like a mistake.”
She was back a minute later. “Kingsley and Stone, on Madison Avenue in New York. Should I send it back?” she asked efficiently. Charlie’s heart skipped a beat when he heard who had sent it.
“No. I’ll come take a look at it tomorrow. I have to come into the city.” He was curious to see what they had sent him. Maybe they were trying to sell him a painting and had sent it on approval for him to see.
He thought about it that night, and about Devon, drove to the city the next morning, and went straight to the bank.
He got one of the maintenance men to lend him the tools to open the wooden crate.
He found Devon’s note before he saw the painting, and he couldn’t imagine what she had sent him as a gift.
He knew he didn’t deserve a gift from her, or anything else.
It was a moment in his life he wasn’t proud of and had handled badly, at her expense.
He knew he would remember their brief time together forever.
The painting was professionally wrapped, and Charlie peeled away the layers of paper and protection and wrestled it out of the crate.
It stood as tall as he was, and he had to turn it on its side to get it out, and when he leaned it up against his desk and saw it, it took his breath away.
It was painted in her extraordinary style of reality mixed with magic, with the wind and the sails and the sea and the joy on his face, and the love in his eyes that he had extinguished so quickly.
But Devon had immortalized it, and it was all there in the moment. A fleeting moment in their life.
Charlie had one of the assistants at the bank hire a van to take it to his home and he stood staring at it when it got there.
It was an exquisitely beautiful painting, and an enormous gift.
He didn’t want to call her or write to her, and he thought about stopping to see her in New York on his way to the Hamptons.
He owed her an apology as well as his thanks, face-to-face, if she would see him. He was afraid she wouldn’t.
He was flying east the next day, and he would drive in from Teterboro. He knew she didn’t go to the Hamptons until the end of June, and thought she might still be in the city.
Charlie thought about Devon all the way the next day on the flight. They had shared so little, but it had been so perfect. He remembered the Thanksgiving he had spent with her and the last time he’d seen her when he kissed her goodbye. Adam had been right. He was a coward.
Once he got to Teterboro, it seemed a long way to go just to thank her, and she probably wouldn’t see him.
But he knew it was the right thing to do.
He had to at least try. Sending him the painting was an enormously generous gesture—he could at least make a small one.
He had the car that was waiting to take him to East Hampton drive him into the city.
It was a long detour in summer traffic, but he felt compelled to see her and thank her in person.
Memories of her filled his mind and his heart as they drove down her street. He remembered how familiar it had all felt when he was there, a warm eclectic neighborhood filled with real people. Devon was real, like no one else he had ever known.
The car stopped at her address and he got out and looked up at her building.
He felt slightly sick remembering what he had done and how cruel he had been, and how hurt she must have been by it.
There was no way he could make up for it now.
All he could do was say thank you for the painting, tell her he was sorry, and wish her well.
There was a handyman painting the flowerboxes in front of the house.
He watched Charlie climb the stairs and ring the bell.
No one answered and the man in painter’s overalls called up to him.
“She’s not here, she’s gone.” Charlie wasn’t sure what to say.
He had nothing to deliver except an apology and his thanks.
“For the summer,” the handyman added. “You got a package to leave?” Charlie shook his head. He felt foolish standing there.
“I’m just a friend, stopping by to see how she is,” he said. A friend who obviously didn’t know where she was.
“Oh, she’s okay now. She got out of the hospital a couple of months ago.” Charlie’s blood ran cold when he said it.
“The hospital? I didn’t know. I live in California.” He wanted to know what the man would say now.
“Yeah, she had a bad accident. Real bad, but she’s good now. She was in the hospital for months. She was blind but now she’s good again,” the handyman said, filling Charlie in on the news. Charlie was horrified by what he’d said.
“I’m glad she’s okay,” Charlie kept up the conversation. “Is she in the Hamptons?”
“I don’t know. She don’t tell me. I think so. She left early for the beach this year. She’s not working yet.”
“Well, thanks very much,” Charlie said, and he waved and got back in his car as the man went on painting.
Charlie was stunned. She had had an accident and was in the hospital and had gone blind.
She obviously wasn’t blind now, if she had done the painting.
Or maybe she’d done it before. He felt even worse now for his silence.
And she had sent him the painting anyway.
He told the driver he was ready to head for East Hampton, and was prepared for a long drive in summer traffic.
It gave him plenty of time to mull over what the handyman had said.
He didn’t see how he could face her now.
He had told her he loved her and abandoned her cruelly.
He didn’t know how she could forgive him for it, and even less how he could forgive himself.
All he knew was that he had to see her one more time, to tell her he was sorry.
The painting was the icing on the cake, and yet one more sign of what a kind, gracious person she was, and he had never deserved her.