Chapter 11 Boone
BOONE
Hopper slides into the driver’s seat and immediately looks puzzled.
“Something wrong?” I ask, trying not to come out of my skin. Just be cool.
He snaps his fingers. “That’s right. You were driving. I don’t need to move it forward.” He shakes his head. “I swear, my nephews must be a foot taller than I am,” he cracks, his New York accent thicker than I remembered.
But you and I are the same height.
Hopper pulls away from the curb, and I watch as Holmes puts his arm around his brother, leading him inside.
I’m not shocked that Maverick kissed me, given his penchant for flirting. I’m floored, though, that I kissed him back.
I wish he’d been sober.
Settling back, I stare at the road ahead and try not to think about the fact that I exchanged numbers with him right at the end there. Or, in a panic-inducing turn of events, that I’m sitting next to my birth father.
“I suppose running by Pierce’s place and curb-stomping him until I feel better is highly illegal,” Hopper muses, stopping at the red light. “Right, Detective?”
Rainey Street, usually so busy and overrun with college students and tourists, is quiet. The high-end engine goes silent while we wait for the light.
“Very,” I answer, amused at the sincerity in his question.
“That’s too bad,” Hopper says with a wry grin. “Even though we’re not related, my friends are like brothers, and their children…”
He looks off into the distance, his silence telling me more than words ever could. I’m also stupidly relieved to have him verify that I’m not related to Maverick.
I mean, I kinda knew that, but still.
The light turns green, and Hopper chuckles to himself. “If you wanna see a grown man cry, just ask me about the first time they called me Uncle.”
His eyes develop a shine as he turns onto Cesar Chavez.
“Sounds like you have a special relationship with the Wildlings,” I say, using the popular nickname.
He nods.
“My husband and I…we lost the baby we were having through a surrogate,” he says, the casual revelation a shock to the system.
I could have had a sibling?
“I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“It really fucked me up,” he says, tapping his temple. “But Maverick, he was the first one to crawl up on my lap and tuck in against my chest. Like he could tell I was sad.”
I bite the inside of my lip, incredibly moved by that visual.
“He’s thoughtful?” I finally ask as we pass familiar downtown streets.
“More thoughtful than anyone gives him credit for, including himself.” Hopper shakes his head. “‘Don’t be thad, Uncle Hop,’” he says, imitating a little kid’s lisp. “‘I made you a pawt-hoder.’”
Hopper rubs his chest at the memory. “I still have that potholder.”
Maverick had once shared a throwback picture of himself and Holmes. They were maybe five years old, exact duplicates of each other, with twin manes of gorgeous corkscrew curls. I can picture his sincerity so clearly.
“Sounds like he was a special kid.”
“He’s a special adult too.” Hopper shakes his head. “We kept some important information from him, and I think it makes him doubt that.”
Curiosity piqued, I say, “He mentioned something about that. No details, just…he’s hurt.”
Hopper goes silent, and he presses his lips together, like maybe he wants to cry.
I wonder what that’s about.
“Anyway,” he says after a moment, “after he called me Uncle Hop, all the other kids started doing the same. And not just with me, but with all of their fathers’ closest friends.
They could see how important it was to us.
” Hopper hums to himself. “I’m lucky. I have a half-brother who would remind me that I am not half anything, and niblings who love me, even now that they’re all grown up. ”
“I’m guessing that if your baby had survived, they would have been loved by so many cousins.”
“Yeah.”
Hopper’s smile is genuine, I think, but unsteady.
“I wish I’d had it in me to try again,” he says, turning onto my street, even though I had yet to give him a single direction. “Liam would have been such a good dad.”
I’m a detective with the Austin Police Department. I should ask how he got my address. I wonder for a brief moment if he knows who I am, but I discard that theory immediately.
Hopper’s way too easy to read. If he had any clue, there’d be no hiding it.
I decide I’m not gonna ask a question when I don’t know if I want the answer.
“I’m sure you both would’ve been great dads,” I say instead, and not just to be kind.
It’s weird, sitting next to the man responsible for half of my DNA, feeling this ache for him. I would never trade the man who raised me for anything, yet Hopper feels like the piece missing at the center of me.
I’ve wondered so many times over the years what it’d be like to tell him, and each time, I’m that kid standing on a high dive, one foot out, trying to be brave. Invariably, I’m also the kid who chickens out and has to climb down past all the other kids.
I can’t even begin to imagine the conversation I’d have with my parents.
Hopper pulls into the space right next to my old Outback and puts the car in Park. The difference between Eleanor and Mav’s high-performance, six-figure machine—the two lifestyles, really—could not be more stark.
For one, I’m sure Maverick bought his vehicle from an exclusive dealership, not from a lesbian who was divesting herself of all her worldly goods to hike all of the great American trails.
“How did you end up at the fountain tonight?” Hopper asks, pulling me back to the present.
“A very surreal, very disturbing day at the office.” I shudder. “Needed to shake it off by going on a run, getting some tacos, and then visiting my favorite statues.”
“A bad case?” he asks, leaning in.
“Uh…yeah. Two men died ugly in the process of attempting something heinous.” I lift a shoulder, going for casual. “I won’t pretend that I feel bad when shitty people get what’s coming to them, but it still fucks with my head.”
“Conundrum.” He sneaks a look over at me. “You know those statues are mine, right?”
I dip my chin and smile. Busted.
“You started them the summer I volunteered at the camp. I’m familiar with all of your work.”
“That’s right.” He hums to himself. “You know my paintings.”
He’s oddly shy about this fact, and that little kid in me edges his way to the end of the diving board. One toe poised in the air.
I know every public work you’ve ever produced because I’m your son.
Adrenaline spikes in my chest, and I step back.
Scrambling for a new direction, I think about the print I have framed over my toilet and send him a too-large grin. “I also know where you got your name from.”
He taps his chin, amused. “Most people assume it’s because I bounce a lot.”
I shake my head. “Edward Hopper. I see his influence.” I’m quick to add, “Not that you copy him. The minor in art history helps me identify your influences, plus the parts that are just you.”
Hopper stills and sends me a searching look before saying, “His paintings always felt so solitary, which is how I felt when I first started painting.”
He looks out the window, off into the distance. I sit in silence with him.
Finally, he sends me the saddest smile, murmuring, “The loneliest little atom in the whole world.”
My heart breaks on that simple sentence.
I wish I knew how to tell him that he’ll never be alone again.
“Not anymore, though, right?” I ask instead. “You’re not lonely anymore, are you?”
He shakes his head. “Sometimes in here,” he says with a tap to his temple. “But too many people love me now.”
“Is that why you turned to sculpture? Why you started using bronze?”
His smile, which had been sad, broadens. His expression lightens. “My friends were so precious with their children around my paintings. Their little fingers wanted to reach out and touch because of how much paint I use.”
“Like Renoir’s impasto technique.”
He flushes. “Yes. I do like glopping paint on the canvas.”
“Me too,” I admit.
His eyes widen. “You still paint?”
I nod. “Not to display,” I’m quick to add. “Mostly just to get out of my head.”
“I know the feeling,” he says and goes quiet again.
“But you said that you went into sculpture for your niblings?” I ask, using his word.
It’s a good word.
“I wanted them to be able to interact with my art. My husband and I live in an old brownstone that we had renovated after his grandfather died.” He taps his fingers together. “We opened the entrance so I could set one of my sculptures right there. You pass it like a sentinel going into the house.”
“I bet the kids loved that.”
“You know how bronze statues go shiny in the places people touch the most?” he asks, his eyes bright.
“Of course.”
“The whole statue is so shiny because the kids loved climbing it.” He closes his eyes, as if picturing it. “Over the years, the brightness grew from the knees, to the hips, to the chest, to the shoulders, and now the face. Wherever their hands can reach.”
Wistful is an interesting look on such a heavily tattooed man.
“Who’s the statue of?”
Hopper leans forward and rocks back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
His answer, when he finally gives it, is quiet.
“I tried to imagine what my son would look like, and I created him.”
I inhale sharply, tears pricking at my eyes. What if it looks like me?
“Do you have a picture?” I ask, unable to fully steady my voice.
He nods and slides out his phone, quickly thumbing through the screens.
“Here.”
Some part of me, some pathetic part, hoped I’d be able to point to it and ask if he thought it looked familiar.
But the statue doesn’t look like me at all.
Before I can process the disappointment, Hopper flips to the next picture, a tow-headed boy, maybe twelve or thirteen. He flips back to the statue, and the resemblance is uncanny.
“You met my husband, Liam, at camp, right?”
I nod.
“We used his sperm with the surrogate, so I used pictures of him as a kid as my inspiration.”
“That’s beautiful, Hopper.” I take a deep breath, wishing I’d seen this on any day other than today.
“Thank you.” After a beat, he makes a face. Turning to me, he asks, “It’s not weird, is it?”
“Not at all,” I say, my heart heavy with a melancholy for something that never existed but should have. “You gave them a cousin to play with.”
“That wasn’t my intention, necessarily,” he says, his smile returning. “I just wanted something in the world that represented what we almost had. Something they could put their hands on, and maybe me too.”
“It sounds like y’all have a special family.”
“We do.” He shakes his head. “Where do you paint?”
I freeze for a second, surprised by the change in subject.
“I, uh…in my apartment,” I say, pointing to the second floor.
He looks around, gesturing at the trees. “I can’t tell because it’s dark, but how much light do you get in there?”
“I can barely keep a plant alive. So, very little.”
He clicks his tongue. “I have a space that I keep here in Austin. It gets lonely in there,” he says, tapping his temple again. “Would you join me? Will you paint with me while I work on this next sculpture? It’s about loss and will have a permanent residence at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden.”
My breath catches at his question, so casually posed. Ringing swells in my ear, warped and off-key, as if I’m underwater.
The father, who doesn’t know he’s a father, asks the son, whom he doesn’t know is his, to join him in an artistic space as he works through his own feelings of grief, likely around fatherlessness.
I’m in a Michael Cheval painting. That’s the only explanation.
Are there ballerina slippers flying out of my ear?
I should check.
Instead, “Hopper Hughes wants me to paint with him?” spills out of my dumb mouth, and I cringe at the earnestness.
“Yeah,” he says, amusement firing off the fine lines around his eyes. “Hopper Hughes definitely wants to paint with you.”
Too much.
It’s too much.
Say no.
“I’d love to paint with you,” I answer, rushing to fill the silence. “I-I’m just super busy these days, especially with this new case.”
Hopper pulls up his contact information and just…touches his phone to mine.
“I’ll be in town a whole bunch over the next several months,” he says, patting my knee. “We’ll figure it out.”
I stare at my knee.
Breathe.
I think about my parents and how they have no idea why I suddenly couldn’t live in Canyon, Texas, anymore. Hell, I could barely explain it myself. But Hopper Hughes is here. He’s here and wants me in his life.
I don’t know if I can handle painting with my birth father.
Neither can I turn him down outright.
I have got to get the fuck out of this car.
“I look forward to it.” I clear my throat and gesture to Angela Lansbury, glaring at me from the window above my balcony. “She’s, uh, gonna start shredding my shoes if I don’t go inside now.”
He follows my line of sight and laughs. “That is the biggest cat I’ve ever seen in my life. You should bring her.”
What?
I turn toward the passenger window, suddenly blinking away tears I can’t explain.
“You want me to bring Angela Lansbury to your warehouse?” I ask, proud of how steady my voice sounds.
In the window, there’s a reflection of his casually lifted shoulder. “Every artist’s space needs a muse.”
My nose is runny, a sniff covered up with a laugh.
Another miracle, casually offered.
As much as my parents love, appreciate, and support me, we have always had to put extra care into our communication.
“Let’s slow it down, son. Help me to understand.”
“Your mind fascinates me. I wish I could see the world through your eyes.”
“I need a Boone translator. Like one of those apps.”
I wondered, more often than I’d ever admit, if my birth father would just…get me.
Hopper knowing, without explanation, that Angela is a critical element of my creative process is barely worth noting.
I snag a small corner of my inner cheek, biting until the taste of copper pennies replaces the desire to throw myself into his arms and sob.
Deep breath.
One more.
Why does it hurt to be understood in such a minor way?
Because you’re exhausted and you need sleep.
Maybe I should lose his number and forget Maverick’s while I’m at it.
In the meantime, the car has gone entirely quiet. I turn to say…something, but Hopper is just sitting there. Happy in the quiet. No awkwardness. No need to fill the silence.
“Well, I better get up there before she files a complaint,” I joke.
He grins, bouncing in his seat. “I look forward to painting with you.”
“Me too.”
I exit the car and walk up the steps, numb as I register the familiar groan of concrete and metal. I open the door, and Angela Lansbury meows at me.
Pulling out my phone, I save Hopper’s number, and Maverick’s, under Favorites.