21. Blair #3
I looked around at the rest of my work. At the years of stolen hours and secret hopes, finally given their due. At the life I’d almost given up on, finally coming into focus.
“I have something for you,” Will said.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, folded and worn at the edges. The creases were soft from years of handling, the corners slightly torn.
“I’ve been carrying this around for fifteen years,” he said. “I thought tonight might be the right time to finally show you.”
I took the paper. Unfolded it carefully, afraid it might fall apart.
A charcoal sketch. A study of hands, done quickly but with careful attention to shadow and form. The fingers were slightly too long, the knuckles not quite right, but there was a quality in the composition that showed promise. Raw talent, not yet refined.
My earliest work, from my first semester of art school, when I was still learning my way around the fundamentals.
“I threw this away,” I said. “The day we met. I was embarrassed by it.”
“I know. You showed it to me at that party, remember? Trip had dragged you along, and you were standing in the corner looking uncomfortable, and I asked what you were studying and you said art, and then you pulled this out of your bag and immediately started apologizing for it.”
“I remember.”
“You called it a disaster. Said you’d never get the hang of anatomy.
You were so self-deprecating, so quick to dismiss your own talent.
” He paused. “And I looked at it and I saw something. Not just the drawing itself, though that was good. I saw someone who was learning, growing, pushing herself to get better. I saw potential.”
“So you fished it out of the trash.”
“After you threw it away, yes. You’d crumpled it up and tossed it in the bin by the bar, and I waited until you weren’t looking and I retrieved it.”
“You’ve been keeping my trash for fifteen years?”
“I’ve been keeping the first evidence I ever saw of who you really are.” He shrugged, almost sheepish. “It’s been in my desk at Seacliff ever since. I look at it sometimes, when I need to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“That you were extraordinary before you ever met me. That everything you’ve become, you built yourself. That I’m lucky you chose me, not the other way around.”
I stared at the sketch. At the careful lines, the uncertain shadows, the clear evidence of someone learning their craft.
Fifteen years ago, I’d been mortified by this drawing, convinced it proved I didn’t have what it took.
Now I could see it for what it was. A beginning.
The first step on a path that had led here, to this gallery, to this night, to this moment.
“You kept this the whole time?”
“The whole time.”
“Even when you thought I was cheating on you?”
“Even then.” His voice was quiet. “I never stopped believing in you, Blair. Even when I was destroying everything else. Even when I was so lost in my own fear that I couldn’t see straight.
That belief never wavered. I just…” He paused, searching for words.
“I let other things get in the way. I let my fear of losing you turn into the thing that pushed you away. But I never, ever doubted what you were capable of.”
I looked at him. At this man who had broken my heart and was slowly, piece by piece, trying to put it back together. At the husband I’d loved for fifteen years, standing in my gallery, holding a piece of my history that he’d treasured when I’d wanted to throw it away.
I kissed him.
It was hard and fierce and urgent, full of things I couldn’t say. He made a small sound of surprise and then his hands were in my hair, and we stood there in my gallery, surrounded by my work, kissing like we were nineteen again and just discovering each other.
When I pulled back, his eyes were bright.
“You can ask me on a date,” I said.
His whole face transformed. Hope and joy and open wonder, breaking through the careful composure he’d been maintaining all night.
“Blair Beaumont,” he said, “will you-”
“Ask me tomorrow.” I put my finger to his lips. “Let me have tonight. Let me just be here, in this moment, with my work on the walls and my name on the door. Tomorrow you can ask me anything you want. But tonight is mine.”
“Tomorrow, then.” He was grinning now, younger and lighter than he’d looked in months. “I’ll call you at dawn.”
“Make it seven. I’m pregnant. I need sleep.”
“Seven. Sharp.”
He kissed me one more time, soft and quick, a promise of things to come. And then he was backing toward the door, still looking at me, reluctant to break eye contact.
“Your show was incredible,” he said from the doorway. “You’re incredible. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
He left. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
And I stood in my gallery alone, my name on the door, my work on the walls, red dots blooming across a decade of stolen hours.
I’d painted every one of these after Henry was asleep, in the dark, telling no one.
Tonight the whole of Newport had stood in this room and looked at them.
I shut off the lights one row at a time, locked the door behind me with my own key, and drove myself home.