Coming Home to You (Brightwater #2)
1. Cara
Chapter one
Cara
Stenton was already on the horizon when my son cursed in a way that would make even the most relaxed mother scrunch her nose.
With a huff, Riley put his teal-colored gaming console down and slumped back into the passenger seat. “The battery died again. The thing is trash.”
I tore away my eyes from the road for a moment to take a sideward glance at the little plastic handheld computer. Riley wasn’t wrong. That thing was pretty beaten up. I’d bought it secondhand, and like most twelve-year-olds, my son was obsessed with video games, so it had seen a lot of use in the past two years.
“Mom, you have to buy me the new PocketQuest 4 for Christmas. Please.”
I sighed, trying to focus on traffic again instead of my mom guilt. “Riley, that console costs almost four hundred dollars.”
“I know, but it has a super large screen, and it’s the only way to play Mystimons: New Dawn . And I don’t want any other presents for Christmas, just the PocketQuest. And the game, of course.”
“We’ll see,” I said reluctantly.
Riley was a good kid, and I wanted nothing more than to see him happy, but four hundred dollars was a lot of money, and I wasn’t exactly swimming in cash. Earning a steady income could be a struggle as a freelance photographer, especially in the winter months, with fewer weddings to shoot. I had to buy a new lens for my camera the previous month after a toddler broke it at a family shooting, and the parents’ insurance was slow to process the claim. On top of that, my old Ford Focus, which I’d bought when Riley was still a baby, had started making troubling noises, and the Check Engine light went on and off periodically. I kept putting off taking it to the mechanic because I was already dreading the bill, but I probably couldn’t delay it much further.
“Will you buy me one if I win the competition?” Riley asked with a half grin.
“No, too easy. I already know your picture will be leagues above anyone else’s.”
That was where we were heading. A middle school art fair, taking place at the Unity Lodge, a pretty posh hotel in Stenton. Not to brag, but Riley had inherited my artistic talent, and his picture had won the internal school competition and had been submitted to the county-wide art contest.
“You really think so?” he asked, a hint of nervousness in his voice.
“Yes, and I’m not just saying that because I’m your mom.”
“Do you think there will be a prize if I win?”
“The brochure that came with the tickets said the first three places win a gift card to some art supply shop in Stenton.”
“Better than nothing,” he said. “Are we almost there?”
I glanced at my phone, which was propped up on the dashboard, displaying the route to the hotel. I hadn’t visited the city in over three years. I avoided coming here after what had happened back when I got pregnant with Riley—too many uncomfortable memories. Also, some people were still living in Stenton, whom I would rather not run into.
“Six more minutes,” I said. “And then half an hour to find a parking spot.”
I’d been joking, but it really took us nearly half an hour to find a place to park the car in the densely packed inner city of Stenton. In the end, I was desperate enough to settle for the parking lot of a large shopping mall that cost eight dollars per hour and was a fifteen-minute walk away from the Unity Lodge.
When we made our way along the busy city street, Riley craned his neck to get a better look at the shiny steel-and-glass skyscrapers that dominated the city center. In our hometown, Brightwater, the tallest building had three stories, and the city council periodically squabbled over tearing it down because it was disrupting the small-town aesthetics, so Riley was a bit of a fish out of water in a large city like Stenton.
His eyes got even wider when we arrived at the Unity Hotel.
“This looks fancy,” Riley said, nervously fiddling with the sleeve of his winter jacket. We showed our tickets and invitation to a buff guy in a black suit and walked through the double-wide glass doors into the lobby.
The place was already packed with people strolling between the artworks hung up on makeshift drywalls.
Riley hesitated. He looked paler than when we left the car. “Wow, there’s a lot of people here,” he said with a hint of uneasiness in his voice.
I put my arm around him. “Come on, let’s go look for your picture.”
We made our way through the crowd, both adults and kids around Riley’s age, and most of them were dressed a lot more chicly than Riley and I were. Who would’ve thought a middle school art fair was an occasion to dress up? I certainly didn’t, so we stood out a bit in our jeans and sweaters.
Riley’s eyes wandered over the pictures. “Wow, some of those are really good.”
“So is your picture,” I said. “You didn’t win your school’s competition on luck. Your picture is amazing. Oh, look, there it is.”
That wasn’t just pep talk. As I spotted Riley’s picture, a summer landscape with horses in colored pencil, hung up in a well-lit and prominent place, I was once again in awe. Even without my motherly bias, it was obvious that he was very talented. He had an eye for composition, and his use of lighting was incredibly skilled for a child his age.
I stepped closer to take it all in. Of course, I’d seen it before, when I peeked over his shoulder as he worked on it, but it looked even more impressive amidst the other paintings. Those looked like preschooler drawings compared to his work.
“Is this supposed to be Atticus?” I asked, pointing at one of the horses in the foreground.
Atticus was a palomino quarter horse gelding at the Cedar Creek Ranch that Riley was especially fond of. My son loved horses. More than video games and maybe even more than drawing, and horses loved him right back. Atticus was a pretty hotheaded young horse who kept his distance from most people expect Riley. With Riley, he behaved more like a friendly golden retriever than a horse. They had a special connection.
“Yes, that’s Atticus. And the black one is Marigold.”
“You nailed it. And I love how the light reflects off their coats. Well done.”
Riley buried his hands in his hoodie pockets and mumbled something that sounded like “No big deal,” but I could tell he was proud.
“The brochure says the judges announce their decision at eleven p.m., so we have an hour. Do you want to go look at the other paintings some more?”
“Can’t hurt to check out the competition,” he said.
I steered us toward a hostess and grabbed water for me and a glass of orange juice for Riley off her shiny silver tray, then we started our tour of the exhibition hall.
Looking at the artworks and discussing them with my surprisingly insightful preteen son reminded me of my time at art school. Once upon a time, I’d had dreams of my paintings being shown in exhibitions like that one. Well, not exactly like that one—I was obviously no longer in middle school, but I’d dreamed of being a celebrated artist, praised by critics, selling my work for six figures to people from the Upper East Side and Beverly Hills. But then Riley happened, and my dreams became more mundane. Like fixing my fifteen-year-old Ford Focus or being able to afford that stupid PocketQuest 4 for Christmas.
As we made our way through the fair, we occasionally ran into people with tags pinned to their chest, saying Judge in bold letters. I couldn’t help but glancing in the direction of Riley’s drawing once in a while, checking if the judges had noticed how outstanding it was.
My dream of being a famous artist might have been over—I spent my time being peed on by newborns and trying to convince moody teenagers to smile for picture day—but maybe Riley would follow that path one day. Of course, I wouldn’t push him. I knew parents who pushed their own failed ambitions on their children, and I didn’t want to be one of them, but Riley had the talent—that was for certain. If he decided to pursue art, I would do everything in my power to support him. If he would rather work with horses, that would be wonderful as well. If he wanted to become a professional video game streamer … Well, we might have to talk about that one, but in the end, I just wanted him to be happy and healthy and safe.
My eyes followed a gray-haired woman wearing the Judge badge on her burgundy blouse as she walked toward the corner of the lobby where Riley’s drawing was being displayed. She stopped by another landscape for a brief moment, then she noticed my son’s work and headed straight for it. She took a long look before she leaned over to talk to a man, tall and slender with auburn hair, who was also looking at Riley’s pictures.
Then the man turned around, and my heart nearly stopped.
I knew him. The realization of who he was made me break out in cold sweat. My instincts took over, and I grabbed Riley by the arm and pulled him with me behind one of the drywalls.
He looked at me, confused and a bit indignant. “What’s the matter?” he asked, rubbing the spot I’d grabbed maybe a little too firmly.
My heart was racing. I swallowed, trying to steady my voice.
How should I explain to my son that we were currently hiding behind a drywall covered in acrylic paintings made by seventh graders because the man standing maybe fifty feet away from us, the man I had not seen in thirteen years, was his father?