32. August
Ella’s house is oddly imposing without all the party guests and cars. I pull to a stop in the circle at the end of her long driveway, half expecting a butler with coattails to pop out and offer assistance.
I step out of Tiny’s Jeep and follow the path to Ella’s front door, staring warily at the endless white stone. Super rich people make me nervous. Super rich houses make me feel like my shoes are made of banana peels.
The doorbell mimics the sound of church bells, and it only takes a second before a woman in a maid’s uniform answers. She shows me inside, leading me through the round living room and out to the pool deck, where Ella is sunbathing in a lawn chair.
“Oh, hey,” Ella says, sitting up and lifting her sunglasses to the top of her damp hair like she’s the lead in an eighties movie.
She’s wearing a simple black one-piece, the type of bathing suit you might do laps in, but the smooth skin of her bare legs and arms makes it hard to look away.
Women are beautiful, sometimes in a way that steals your breath and makes your heart stutter. The way their necks curve into their collarbones and their hands are so much softer than mine. The way their hair smells good and their bodies curve. But even though I can appreciate their beauty, I never seem to connect in a way that makes me reach out, fumble to hold their hands, or ask if I can kiss them. Not the way Tiny does where she’ll date someone and lose herself in the person for a while. It’s not that I don’t want to lose myself; it’s that I don’t know how. Or maybe I don’t want to let go. Either way, I’ve never been good at romance. The truth of it just doesn’t reach me somehow.
“Hey,” I say, stumbling over the word and blushing at my thoughts.
She stands with a smile, pulling a flowy black dress over her head, and smirks. “Not this again.”
“What?” I say innocently, and I know she probably thinks I’m embarrassed because she’s beautiful, which I am. But I can also recognize how stupid that is. I live in a beach town. I’ve seen attractive girls in far less bathing suit my entire life.
“That look,” she says.
I clear my throat. “Your house is intimidating.”
She lets out an unexpected laugh. “Isn’t your mom on a yacht trip right now? I’m sure yours isn’t too shabby, either.”
I shrug. “Not like yours.”
She watches me for a second. “You know what, Holden? You’re definitely your own cat.”
“My own cat?”
“Yeah, like you march to the beat of your own drum,” she explains, handing me a glass bottle of water. “Cats just make more sense to me because they’re so nuanced.”
I smile. “I have a twenty-year-old cat, and I could not agree more.”
“Totally pegged you as a cat guy.”
“It’s my best feature.”
She smiles, too, and once again we hold eye contact.
“So painting,” she says, clearing her throat and gesturing to the far corner of the deck, where an easel is already set up in the shade of the trees. “Should we do this thing?”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to cover the hesitancy in my voice.
“Don’t worry,” she replies like she can hear it despite my efforts. “I’m way more nervous than you are.”
“Nothing to be nervous about,” I say to both of us as we cross the pale wood.
She sits down in a chair in front of the easel. “That’s because you haven’t seen me in action yet. I suck. And I’m about to show you how much and forever be embarrassed.”
I nod, and in a way her worry eases my own. You can’t talk someone down when you’re anxious yourself. I set my feelings aside for a moment and focus on her. “When I was a kid, my mom always said that there was no such thing as a bad painter, only unexpressed artists.”
She grins. “And you believe that?”
“Actually... yeah, I do,” I say, imagining Tiny’s shock that I agreed with something so optimistic. “I don’t think there’s any right or wrong to art. It’s one of the things I like best about it.” It doesn’t occur to me until I’ve already said the sentence that I’ve put it in present tense. I decide not to think about it.
Instead, I busy myself with looking over the wicker table piled with the supplies she gathered. I grab a simple set of watercolors and pour some water into an empty plastic cup. It’s disorienting handling paints again, almost like touching a piece of my own body that I haven’t seen in years.
“So first”—I place the watercolors on a small table near Ella—“you need to choose what you’re going to paint. It should be something you relate to, but not something overly complex or exacting.”
She scratches her elbow. “Okay...” She glances around her deck and backyard. “Maybe the pool? I’ve always loved being in the water.”
“Perfect,” I agree.
“That’s it? I should just paint the water?”
“You should just paint it.”
She gives me a look that suggests I’m breaking my end of the bargain by not walking her through it, but she also doesn’t ask for help. She chooses a brush, dips it in water, and then in blue paint. Ella turns to the canvas, staring at it like it might bite her. She lifts her brush but after a long second puts it back down.
As the time stretches, she exhales. “You think my house is intimidating. I’d argue this canvas is much worse.”
“Good.”
She shoots me an accusatory look. “Good?”
“You’re being honest.” I gesture at the canvas. “That’s all you need to do.”
“How’s this for honesty? I’m fairly certain I want to hit you with this brush.”
I laugh. “Okay, tell me... what’s intimidating about the canvas?”
“I don’t know; it’s blank?” She gestures at it.
“And that’s scary?”
“It’s not scary. It’s...” She huffs. “It’s all on me. It feels like performance pressure.”
“So you’d rather I told you what to do?” I say, making a veiled point about her boyfriend, her friends, and even her parents that I hope might spark something.
“Wow. Dick move. I’d rather you taught me, which is what you said you were going to do in the beginning.”
“Right. But I can’t teach you until you’ve at least tried to do it yourself. And anyone who claims they can wants you to do their version of art, not yours.”
We stare at each other, the silence between us thick with her frustration.
“Fine. Whatever.” She drags her paintbrush across the canvas in a few fast strokes. “There, a pool. Happy?”
“Are you?”
“Oh my god. Is this your talent? Driving people crazy?”
I smile. “Maybe. But that’s definitely not what I’m trying to do here.”
She rolls her eyes and looks at the canvas. After a minute of brooding, her shoulders drop. She glances at the pool and back again, dipping her paintbrush in some green. And this time when she places it on the canvas, she appears to actually be trying. She could have gotten up and walked away, but she didn’t, and I admire her for that.
We’re like this for a while, Ella needing to look at the pool less and less, until she forgets about the visual and is fully immersed in her colors. She abandons the idea of painting a rectangle with blue squiggles in it and instead brushes blues, greens, and whites over the entire canvas, creating a lighter patch of water through the center that gets darker toward the sides. Suddenly I realize what it is she’s doing.
“You’re painting what water looks like when you’re submerged in it, aren’t you?” I ask, and now I’m looking at her differently.
“Yes, yes, I am.” Her frustration is gone and there’s an uptick in tone like she feels seen. “And what it feels like.”
“Wow. I’m... well, I’m impressed.”
She laughs. “I mean, it’s obviously not very good but—”
“I disagree. I think the perspective is actually great.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “And here I thought you weren’t the type to blow smoke.”
“I’m not,” I say and look at her so she can see I mean it. “It’s not the technicality of it. You’re a beginner. It’s the feeling. You captured something of the peace of being submerged, and you did it on your first try.”
She looks momentarily downward, then back up at me like she’s hesitant to believe it. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And if this is what you do with a blank canvas... damn, you might change the world.” I can almost hear Tiny clapping and saying, Take a bow, Holden. Only I’m not using a line; I (August) actually mean what I’m saying.
Ella tries to contain a smile but fails. “God, you’re the worst. Why do you always have to say the right thing?”
Now I’m smiling, too. “You might be the first person to ever say that to me.” I lift my water bottle to my lips.
“Unlikely. I bet girls tell you that all the time. Speaking of which, why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
I choke on my water. She didn’t subtly mention a girlfriend wondering if I’d refute it; she just outright asked. “Uh... hmmm,” I say, wiping water from my mouth with the back of my hand.
One corner of her sun-pink lips quirks up. “Well, this is entertaining.”
“Glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
I sigh. There’s no saying no to this girl. “Truth be told... I’m not that good at connecting with people, friends or otherwise.” It doesn’t escape me that I was just thinking about this, that she somehow plucked my worry from my psyche the same way I often do on cases. Only she did it without trying.
She lifts an eyebrow like she doesn’t believe it.
“Attraction is easy,” I say with a sigh. “Actually connecting? Not so much.”
For a second, she’s still. “Wow, you’re admitting that?”
I scratch my shoulder, more surprised than she is. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Huh,” she says and leans back in her chair. “And what are you doing here? Connection or attraction?”
If I were drinking water, I’d choke again. It’s not that these conversations never come up when Tiny and I are doing these cases, but they’re never this direct. So I do what I normally do and steer away from the topic, saying, “You have a boyfriend,” but the words feel stilted and I think she can tell.
She leans back in her chair, one strap from her black sundress sliding down her shoulder. “That’s not in debate.”
Despite my best effort I look at the strap. And swallow. Like a complete effing chump. “You really like to put people on the spot.”
She shrugs. “Future journalist.”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and breaking eye contact so I can think.
She laughs lightly. “How about this, tell me about painting instead.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask, looking back up. It feels strange that I’m relieved to be talking about painting of all things.
“What you almost told me in the crêpe place but didn’t,” she says, and my relief vanishes.
I pause, scraping my teeth along my bottom lip.
And to my shock she sighs and says, “Sorry.”
My eyes flit up to meet hers. “Wait, why?”
“I just...” She shakes her head, her long wavy hair sliding across her tanned arm. “I was doing that thing I do when I’m nervous. I start asking pointed questions and putting the other person on the spot. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why are you nervous?” I ask before I can decide if I should. Because I no longer know where August ends and Holden begins; the line is all but gone.
She lifts her shoulders and drops them, twisting a simple gold ring with slender fingers. It occurs to me I never realized how delicate her hands were before, that if I held them to my own, I’d dwarf them.
“I honestly don’t know,” she replies. “Maybe it’s the painting? Or the things we talk about? But there’s something about the way our conversations always seem to strike at the heart of things, and it makes me wonder if I’ve...” She looks out past her yard to the trees swaying in the warm summer breeze. “Never mind.”
Only now I want to know. “Does it make you wonder if you’ve been... numb for a while?” I ask, not because I know I’m right, because it’s how I feel.
“Yes,” she says with relief. “Numb. So numb.”
This time when silence descends neither of us looks away. We just stare at each other for a long moment like the other might be a mirror, one we desperately needed but didn’t know to look for. I think I forget to breathe.
Then I hear myself talking, telling her things I haven’t said aloud, and what really shocks me is, I want to. “I didn’t just paint. I also sketched,” I say, just to see how it feels. “And I gave that up, too, when Des died.”
She waits, not pressuring me this time.
“But”—I study my hands—“what no one knows is that... I still draw in my thoughts.”
“In your thoughts?” She leans forward in her chair like she’s genuinely interested.
I look up. “It’s like this... I’ll be concentrating, trying to figure something out, and just start sketching on the surface in front of me—the sky, the ocean, whatever. I think it’s a way of processing, like having a conversation with myself. But honestly, I hate it.”
“Why would you hate it?” Her voice upticks in surprise.
“Because I gave it up, you know? Because it feels like failure. Because I can’t stop. Even if I close my eyes, the sketch keeps going.”
“That’s not failure,” she says so adamantly that I almost believe her.
“And because...” I say, with a big exhale, “I used to leave sketches for my sister. I’d hide them in her things, like in her journal or under her pillow. And she...” I shake my head. “This probably sounds ridiculous.”
Suddenly Ella reaches across the short distance between our chairs, made smaller by the fact that we’re both leaning forward. Her soft fingers lightly touch my bare knee. “Not even a little,” she says reassuringly.
And so I go on, unsure, but somehow bolstered by her touch. “Des used to celebrate every time she found one. Make a big deal about how much she loved them. Drawing them now, with no one to give them to, just makes me angry.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but she doesn’t take her hand back, either. And I’m not sure what it says about me, but I’m glad she doesn’t. That spark of warmth against my skin feels like an embrace, one I didn’t know I needed. I have the urge to place my fingers over hers and to rub the tips of them on the underside of her silky palm, but I know I shouldn’t, so I just sit there, feeling simultaneously raw from what I shared and anchored by her presence.
She gives me a small smile and pulls her hand back. It’s for the best, I tell myself.
“It’s okay to be angry,” she says. “No one really says that. They say it’s okay to be sad or quiet or worried, but no one wants to deal with anger. It’s too heavy and unpredictable. But how can it be wrong to be mad that someone you love is gone? How can you not blame the world?”
I nod while she speaks the words I’ve so often thought.
Ella pushes back wisps of hair from her forehead. “Remember how I told you I hated astrology after Nonna died? Most nights I used to climb out my bedroom window because I felt like there wasn’t enough air. And I’d lie on my balcony, gasping and crying. I’d have screamed at the stars, if I thought it’d have made a difference.”
A moment of sadness flashes across her face, and I wait for her to go on.
She lifts her hands. “Believe me, I absolutely understand why you’d want to give up your art. I, too, thought that if I could just forget astrology that the whole thing would hurt less. And for a while that worked, until it didn’t. Until I started doodling star constellations in the margins of my notebooks without meaning to and guessing people’s signs in my head. The worst part was when I’d realize what I’d done; it felt like getting hit by a grief truck.”
“I can relate,” I say with weight, agreeing with everything she said, especially the truck part.
Ella twists her ring again before continuing. “And then one night, when I thought I was finally moving on, I felt like there was no air in my room. Again. I went out on my balcony and still, nothing. I thought I was going to suffocate.” She drops her hands in her lap. “I don’t know why, but I started reciting the signs over and over. Saying my grandmother’s chart. Saying my own. And I know this sounds crazy, but I heard her reciting with me.” She hesitates. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“I’m glad you’re telling me this,” I say, and I mean it beyond just this case.
“Now every time I work on astrology, I hear her telling me to look deeper, or to stop being so judgmental, to trust myself.” She sighs. “So maybe, and I’m not saying I’m right, your sketching is similar, like a love letter to your sister. Maybe it’s not a failure but an opportunity to reconnect with her?”
The words love letter to my sister hit me hard. My heart speeds up and I look away, not wanting her to see how much they affect me.
“I’ve never actually told anyone about the balcony,” she says in a quieter voice.
I look back at her. “And I’ve never told anyone about the drawings.”
“Not even Mia?”
I shake my head. “Like I said, I’m not good at this kind of thing.”
“I always thought I was. But the more we talk about it, I’m not so sure.”
I don’t know why, but this admission gets me and I feel it in my bones, that you can be in your own head every moment of every day, witness to every thought, and yet not know yourself.
“What you said about popularity the other day...” she starts and glances at the pool. “It bothered me.”
“You know I—”
“It bothered me because it’s true,” she says, steamrolling over my objection. “And not just about Justin, about me, too.”
I open my mouth to protest.
“Shush, or I might lose my nerve.”
I watch her attentively, struck by her bravery, even as she’s telling me to shut up.
“What I just told you about feeling lost? Well, being popular was kind of a Band-Aid for that. You’re one hundred percent right that when you’re popular, people don’t scrutinize you the same way. And I didn’t want people scrutinizing me or seeing me at all actually. I told you my friends and I had a falling-out? What I didn’t say was that dating Justin fixed that, sealed the deal on our collective popularity. When he showed interest in me, my status rose fast. I guess it was my version of hiding in plain sight?”
For a brief moment, I’m dumbfounded by her courage. I know how hard it is to really look inside at the things that aren’t pretty and shiny, but admitting those things to another person is damn near impossible. “Wow... I...”
She flinches, and I realize in one horrible flash of a second that she thinks I’m stumbling because I’m judging her.
I self-correct. “You might be the most incredible girl I’ve ever met.” Fantastic. Now I’ve swung the pendulum a little too far and I feel like an idiot.
She looks as surprised as I am.
“Sorry, I just meant...” I try to shake my thoughts clear. This part of the job is usually so easy for me—right ideas at the right time and people make better choices. But the connection that Ella and I share over our grief is real, and I have no rulebook for that, no helpful one-liner to speed her along to reevaluate her relationship. So, at a loss, I once again tell the truth. “What I mean is... I wish I was as brave as you.”
Her expression relaxes and with it her eyes, a small smile pulling at her bowed lips. “Well, I think you’re pretty brave. You’re teaching me to paint. You’re talking about things that make you uncomfortable. Those are big steps.”
Her words hit me hard, some part of me really wanting her approval. For the first time in a case, I experience regret that I can’t talk to Ella simply as myself, and guilt that if I told her the truth, I might hurt her. “Ella...” I rub my forehead.
“Connecting,” she says, and I meet her eyes. “I asked you what you were doing here, connection or attraction... a totally unfair question. And now I’m answering. I’m connecting with you. And if I’m being honest, you’re the most surprising guy I’ve ever met.”
I’m instantly reminded of what I told her in the crêperie, that my type is surprising girls. Heat rises in my cheeks so fast that I have no way to stop it. And in what can only be described as the worst timing ever, a man clears his throat. I launch out of my chair.
“Dad?” Ella says, standing, too, both of us horribly aware that her father likely heard the last things she said. “What are you doing home?”
“Forgot some paperwork,” he says and looks from Ella to me. “And you are?”
“Holden, this is my dad. Dad, Holden,” Ella says, gesturing in the space between us, but never looking directly at me.
I’ve done this plenty of times; I know how to remeet parents, I remind myself, but it does nothing to stop the feeling that I’m free-falling.
“Hi, Mr. Becker,” I say, extending my hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
He shakes it. “I take it you two are friends?” he asks his daughter.
Ella laughs. “Dad, you’re being awkward.” Parents are never good at this part, and that’s when they’re not already annoyed over forehead profanity and possible discussions about connection or attraction.
He assesses me. “Holden, is it?”
“Yes it is, sir.”
He gives me a hard stare.
Ella pulls her hair over her shoulder and twists it. “Well, he’s not going to be my friend for long if you keep looking at him like that.”
But Ella’s dad makes no effort to adjust. “I’m perfectly okay with that.”
I swallow.
Ella frowns. “There was a message for you earlier. A call from London? Sounded kind of urgent.”
Whatever this means, it has the desired effect of grabbing his attention. And they exchange a few quick sentences that I can’t focus on because I’m stress-texting Tiny.
He walks away with no goodbye.
Ella looks embarrassed. “Sorry,” she says, but it’s obvious that our time is up. Neither of us knows what to say about our talk, her father, or the strange feeling of having shared too much. So I excuse myself politely and then play back our conversation a thousand times in my head on the way home.