Chapter 19. Callan
Callan
We take my truck with the portrait of the woman, wrapped in a sheet, resting on the bench seat between us.
A two-lane road meanders through backcountry, where the woods are fiery and unkempt.
Lenore watches trees blur past the passenger-side window, only the back of her head visible to me, a tangle of long honey-brown hair.
Normally, there’s nothing like a drive to clear my head. But it’s not my thoughts I’m concerned with at the moment. Lenore hasn’t quite met my eye since that kiss. Oh, she’s acting all bright and cheerful like nothing’s changed between us, but kissing her has rewritten the contract.
A part of me wonders whether this is a repeat of the wedding—whether she kissed me because I was there, and she was feeling vulnerable.
I can’t quite get it out of my mind that she was recently engaged, and that this might all be some rebound for her, or maybe even a symptom of something more complicated than that.
Despite my reservations, it’s hard to keep pretending that I don’t want this.
Maybe I’m all right with being whatever she needs me to be, whether that’s a friend or a friend with benefits.
I keep telling myself that it would be simpler to keep things firmly in the friends bubble on that particular Venn diagram, but that isn’t working anymore.
If anything, trying to hold her at arm’s length has only made me want to pull her closer.
“Is that it up ahead?” Lenore asks, fracturing the fragile silence inside the truck.
I clear my throat. My voice crackles like it hasn’t been used in a while when I say, “Yeah.”
The antique mall is blink-and-you-could-miss-it, a cedar shake building folded into a copse of tall evergreens. I pull into the parking lot, dirt and pine needles crunching beneath the tires.
Knickknacks spill onto the porch beneath a sign hailing roadside pickers. We thread through weather-beaten Flexible Flyer sleds, wicker snowshoes, and soda crates filled with rusted license plates on our way to the front door. Blue plastic rain tarps tussle in the wind.
From an open steamer trunk, I lift a white leather figure skate by the shoelace and frown.
Lenore halts a few yards ahead. “Hello,” she says in a singsong voice, “we’re on a mission here.”
“Sixty dollars for these,” I say. “Highway robbery, I’m telling you.”
She rolls her eyes and hooks a hand around my elbow. Obediently, I drop the skate and let her drag me up the steps to the porch. Wood thumps hollow beneath our feet and wind chimes clatter overhead. “It doesn’t matter how much they’re charging people,” she says. “We’re not here to buy.”
Before I’m able to open the door for her, she’s already marching through. I trail in on her heel with the wrapped painting tucked beneath an arm, feeling a little like her hired muscle.
“Hi,” she says to the white-haired gentleman at the cash wrap. “Is June here today?”
“Not at the moment,” he says, eyes flicking curiously between us. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“We have an old painting we were hoping she might be able to help identify.”
His face lights up and he reaches for the phone. “Wait here just a moment. I’ll give her a ring.”
“Oh no, please,” Lenore rushes to say. “I wouldn’t want to bother her on her day off.”
“Juniper and I have been married for thirty-seven years. It’s my job to bother her.” His knobby fingers twirl around the dial on the rotary phone.
While he waits for an answer, I peer at the military medals and dingy costume jewelry displayed beneath the glass countertop. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but there is no way not to hear the jovial exchange happening over the phone.
“All right, sugar plum,” he says, “see you then,” and hangs up. I look up from the display counter. “We live about five minutes from here, so she shouldn’t be long,” he tells us. “Feel free to browse while you wait.”
Lenore drifts to a nearby booth filled with vintage kitchenware. I stare into a hutch filled with uranium glass, glowing a sickly green beneath a blacklight. “Imagine having an entire cabinet filled with dishes you can’t actually eat from.”
“Imagine having an entire bookcase filled with duck decoys,” she counters. Duck being used in the most general sense—weatherworn loons and eiders line the shelves, wooden waterfowl fissured with age. A bluebill stares back at me with a beady glass eye.
“Oh, I don’t have to imagine. I have a vested interest in decoying the local ducks.”
We browse tables filled with knickknacks. Lenore picks up an Annalee Doll with a hand-painted face that will haunt my dreams. “You ever think about how weird it is that your entire life could end up for sale in a place like this?”
I’m reminded that she has a lot more whirling around inside her head than our kiss. “Hey.” I reach for her hand to stop her from walking on ahead. Her eyes fall on our interlocked hands, and then, slowly, climb to meet mine. “Are you okay?”
It’s the most obvious question in the world, but prior to this, I hadn’t asked her outright. We’ve talked about her art, and her grandmother, and the house, and her engagement. All these seismic shifts happening around her, all the different places she might stumble and lose her footing.
Her lashes flutter, and her gaze cuts away. “I—” It’s like she chokes on the word.
I give her hand a gentle squeeze. “You don’t owe me anything.” I swallow. “All right? But you can talk to me if that’s what you need.”
The door chimes behind us. An older woman in a tatty Penny Lane coat steps inside. Her gray-streaked hair falls in waves to the middle of her back, and layers of beaded necklaces clatter together as she approaches us with a wide smile.
“You must be the ones my husband called me about. Juniper Sutherland,” she says, shaking our hands in turn.
Her middle finger is garnished with a large mood ring, tinted a serene blue.
There’s no convincing me that Bill knows this woman from anywhere other than the weed shop beneath the municipal office. “Let’s see what you’ve got there.”
I unwrap the portrait as we approach the counter, setting it atop the glass case.
June clicks on a banker’s lamp and unfolds a pair of reading glasses with teal frames.
The yellowed varnish glares beneath the light.
“You said you found this where, exactly?” she asks, bending to inspect a chipped bit of gilding at the corner of the frame.
“Do you know the old saltbox on Silas Road?” Lenore says. “Off-white, beside the apple orchard with the big red barn.”
“Oh yes! We used to stop by that farmstand for the cider donuts sometimes. I was heartbroken when they stopped selling them.”
I steal an uneasy look at Lenore at this indirect mention of her grandmother, but she takes it in stride. “We found it in the attic,” she continues, “along with a few other paintings, all with the same signature.”
June draws another pair of reading glasses from her pocket, tortoiseshell, and slides them on over the first. “It’s old,” she confirms. “You see the intricate design work along the molding here.” Her finger traces the outer edge of the frame.
“You can see in the places where the gilding has chipped that it’s wood underneath and not plaster. ”
I lean in to get a better look. “What does that mean?”
“Well.” Her head tips back and forth in an evasive way. “It’s not an exact science, but plaster is usually a sign that the frame was made later, most often during the Victorian Era. With wood … you might be looking at late eighteenth century, early nineteenth, somewhere around there.”
I nod because that timeline makes sense with what we know about the house.
“The varnish has developed a really lovely patina.” June looks up, her hazel eyes owlish behind the doubled lenses. “A painting this age and size could go for anywhere from fifteen hundred to ten thousand, to the right buyer.”
“Dollars?” I bark. Lenore exchanges a quick look with me.
“Do you recognize the signature at all?” she asks, pointing.
“‘Button.’ We’ve talked to the historical society and the town clerk, but we can’t find any record of someone by that name.”
“No,” June says mildly, “but that’s not uncommon. Far more names are lost to history than not.” Lenore’s face falls.
Frustration must read across mine, because June adds, “It’s very likely the artist was commissioned to complete this portrait.
You might have better luck looking into any notable people living in the Whitbury area around that time—anyone who would be able to afford the luxury of having their portrait done. ”
We thank her for her time. Lenore purchases the bluebill duck decoy, for reasons that are a mystery to me. “This is good,” I say while we’re crossing the parking lot. “Right? You could make a lot of money selling these paintings.”
“Sure.” Her voice shakes, and she picks up her walking speed, swiping a hand beneath her eyes.
Shit. I said the wrong thing.
We climb back into the truck.
“Lenore,” I say gently. I want to apologize for whatever I said to upset her, but it’s hard to do that when I don’t know which part upset her in the first place.
Lenore shakes her head and blinks hard, like she can will herself not to cry. I’m sure she can will herself to do a lot of things, but she’s fighting a losing battle here. She sniffles. A fist closes around my heart. “It’s nothing.”
A maple seed pinwheels through the air and lands on the windshield, settling behind the wipers. I want her to know that she doesn’t have to be tough all the time. I also know that that’s the last thing she’ll want to hear.
Lenore and her brother have been through a lot. More than most. It’s through sheer force of will, and the fierce love of their grandmother—making up for all those years their parents weren’t worth a damn—that they came out on the other side of childhood not completely broken.
Wordlessly, I hook an arm around her and pull her to my shoulder.
It’s awkward with the painting on the seat between us, not unlike the bathtub earlier.
I wonder whether it’ll always be like this, something getting in between us.
Even the wooden duck, still cradled in her arms like a weird substitute for hugging me back.
Not that she needs to. I press a kiss into her hair, and she nuzzles into my sweatshirt like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like we’re not reaching over a hundred different obstacles, trying to figure out how to meet in the middle.
After what might be seconds or minutes, she squirms out from beneath my arm. I let her go and she sets the duck on the dash so that she can open the glove box, digging out a few napkins to blow her nose.
I huff a laugh. “Why did you buy that thing?”
“I felt bad that we made Juniper come talk to us on her day off,” she whines. “I thought you could add him to your collection.”
I stare at her, equal parts confused and charmed. “You do understand that there is no actual wooden duck collection.”
“You have to start somewhere.” Lenore looks down at the napkin wadded in her hand. “Thanks for letting me drag you around to chase some ghosts.”
It probably comes out more on the nose than she intended—ghosts.
For my part, I’m a skeptic. I always figure people convince themselves to see things because they’re looking for some reassurance that we’re more than our fleeting lives here on earth.
In a way, we are. In the people that we’ve loved, and the people we leave behind.
“It matters to you,” I say finally. “That’s enough for me.”
Lenore sniffles and gives me a weak smile. “Well, thank you,” she says again.
I study her for a moment. Her nose is red from crying, her lashes sticking together. Even like this, she’s beautiful. “You can talk to me, you know,” I tell her again. “Anytime you need.”
A wet laugh sputters out of her. “Even if it’s the middle of the night?”
A smile tugs at my mouth. “You did already ask me to spend the night once.”
“God,” she groans, and buries her face in her hands. Her next words are muffled: “Why’d you have to remind me?”
“I wasn’t complaining,” I say.
Lenore peeks at me through her fingers.
“So,” I try again, “do you want to talk?”
It’s open-ended enough that she can interpret it however she needs. Her hands drop to her lap and her eyes drift out the passenger-side window, even though we haven’t moved. I wait for her to decide how she wants to answer.
At last, she shakes her head. “Maybe later.”
And just like that, I know that what she needs most right now is a distraction.