9. Tony
TONY
The smell of linseed oil was still on my hands.
I'd scrubbed them twice in the kitchen sink. Hot water. Dish soap. The kind Sophia bought that smelled like lemons.
It didn't matter. The oil was in the creases of my knuckles, under my nails, ground into the whorls of my fingerprints.
And underneath it, something else. Vanilla. Coffee. The ghost of a woman who'd stood in my studio and taken apart every wall I'd spent a decade building.
I hadn't spoken to her since.
Two days. Two days of keeping my distance while she worked in Dad's study. I could hear her through the walls some mornings. Pages turning. The creak of the desk chair. I didn't go in.
Two days of Sophia's pointed silence at breakfast, her eyebrows doing the heavy lifting her mouth refused to.
Two days of pacing the studio at three in the morning. Paint drying on the palette. And the memory of brown eyes looking up at me like I was something worth seeing.
I wasn't.
The covered canvas sat in the corner of my studio. I hadn't touched it. Hadn't pulled the cloth back to see her face.
Didn't need to. She was behind my eyelids every time I closed them.
The sound she'd made when I kissed her. Quiet. Surprised. Like something breaking open after being shut for too long.
I knew that sound. I'd made it too.
My phone rang.
I almost let it go. Then I saw the name on the screen.
Charlotte.
She didn't call often. We texted about Avery. Photos, updates, the occasional video of my daughter negotiating an extra cookie with the precision of a defense attorney.
Charlotte and I had our rhythm. Calls meant something had changed.
"Tony."
Her voice was steady. Too steady. The kind of calm that comes after someone has already done all their crying in private.
"I need you to come to Phoenix."
"What happened?"
A pause. One breath. Two.
"Stage IV. Liver, lungs, and brain." She said it the way you'd read a grocery list. Careful. Organized.
"I've known for a while. I needed to have a plan before I told anyone."
The kitchen went white. Not the way my colors faded. Not the slow drain of pigment I'd been watching for months.
This was different. Every nerve in my body firing at once and producing nothing.
"How long?"
"Weeks. If I'm lucky."
I sat down. I didn't decide to sit down. My body made the choice without consulting me.
The stool scraped against the floor. My hand went flat on the counter. The wood grain under my palm was the only thing keeping me in the room.
"Tony? Are you there?"
"I'm here."
"I don't want you to fix this. I know you're going to try. I need you to hear me say that I've made my peace with it."
"Charlotte."
"Avery needs you. That's why I'm calling. Not for me."
I closed my eyes. Saw green. Not brown. Not Mia's.
Avery's. My daughter's face frozen in that photo on my phone. Dark curls. The grin that took up half her face.
"I'll be on the next flight."
Phoenix in late February was sixty-two degrees and dry. The desert light hit everything at a flat angle. No shadows. No depth.
Like a painting done in one value. I hated it.
The terminal at Sky Harbor was all glass and fluorescent lighting that made everyone look sick.
I walked past the baggage carousel, through the sliding doors, and scanned the arrivals hall.
Charlotte stood near the far wall. Thinner than the last time I'd seen her. Hair pulled back in a low knot. A white blouse that hung loose at the shoulders.
Her smile was real but the effort behind it was visible. She'd dressed up for this.
Next to her, a small person with wild hair was trying to scale a row of plastic chairs with the focus of an expedition leader.
My chest cracked open.
I crouched down. Got low. Put my hands on my knees.
"Hello again, Pickle."
Avery's head whipped around. Those green eyes found mine and the entire airport ceased to exist.
"Daddy!"
She launched herself off the chair. I caught her mid-air. She hit my chest with the force of a small cannonball. Her arms locked around my neck. Her curls were in my mouth.
She smelled like grape juice and sunscreen and I held on.
I held on.
"I'm not a pickle, Daddy."
"You're a little bit of a pickle."
"I am not." She pulled back. Cupped my face in both hands the way kids do when they want your full attention. "Your face is scratchy."
"I forgot to shave."
"You always forget." She studied me with the terrifying focus of a five-year-old conducting an inspection. "You look tired."
"I am tired."
"Mommy said you work too hard." She glanced over her shoulder at Charlotte. "She said you do not sleep enough."
"Your mom is very smart."
Charlotte watched us. One hand pressed against her collarbone, the other gripping the strap of her purse. She didn't look away. She let the moment be what it was.
I stood up with Avery on my hip. Crossed the distance. Kissed Charlotte's cheek.
"Thank you for calling me."
"Thank you for coming."
We sat in a booth at a diner three blocks from the airport. Avery was working through a stack of pancakes with architectural ambition, building a tower of butter pats between each layer.
Charlotte held her coffee mug with both hands. She hadn't taken a sip.
"The oncologist at Mayo gave me the full picture in December." She spoke like she was reading from notes she'd memorized. "The liver was first. Then the lungs. The brain showed up on the scan in January."
"I can get you into Sloan Kettering. Or Johns Hopkins. Anywhere in the world, Charlotte. Name it."
She reached across the table. Her hand found mine. Her fingers were cold and thin and steady.
"You are a remarkable man, Tony Rossi."
"I'm a man with a phone and money. Let me use both."
"I've spoken with four specialists. The answer is the same." She squeezed my hand once. "I'm not giving up. I'm being honest. There's a difference."
Avery looked up from her pancake fortress. "Daddy, do you want a butter?"
"No thank you, Pooh."
"It's a good butter. I picked the best one."
"Then you should keep it."
She considered this. Nodded. Returned to construction.
Avery pointed a sticky finger at me. "Daddy. Mommy told me there is a lady at your house."
I looked at Charlotte. She gave a small shrug. No apology.
"She helps me with some work," I said.
"Is she nice?"
"Yes."
"Good." Avery stabbed another pancake. "I want to meet her."
Charlotte watched her daughter with the kind of attention that made my throat ache. Every blink. Every sticky-fingered gesture.
She was memorizing her.
"I want to travel," Charlotte said. "Say goodbye to the people who matter. My parents in Tucson. My sister in Portland. My college roommate in San Diego."
She paused. "I'd like you and Avery to come with me. The whole trip."
"Done."
"And when it's over, Avery comes home with you. To Rockford. Permanently."
I looked at my daughter. She'd abandoned architecture in favor of syrup distribution. Her chin was sticky. Her hair was everywhere.
One green eye squinted shut as she poured from a container twice the size of her hand.
"She'll want for nothing," I said. "Especially love."
Charlotte's composure held. Barely. A flicker at the corner of her mouth. A brightness she blinked away before it could fall.
"I know she won't. That's why I called you."
The hotel room was quiet. Charlotte and Avery were asleep in the double bed by the window.
Avery was sprawled at an angle that defied geometry. One arm flung over her head. Curls tangled across the white pillow. One small hand curled under her chin.
I stood on the balcony. Phoenix at night was a grid of light. Orange sodium lamps. White headlights threading through intersections.
The desert beyond the city limits was a flat, dark nothing.
My phone sat on the railing. I'd called Sophia an hour ago. Told her about Charlotte. About the plan. About Avery coming to Rockford.
Sophia had gone quiet for a long time. Then she said, "I'll have everything ready."
That was Sophia. No questions. No panic.
Just the promise that the world would be arranged by the time you arrived.
I should have gone to bed. I didn't.
Three women.
The thought arrived without permission. Three women and I was standing in the center of them with no idea which direction to walk.
Charlotte, asleep inside. Dying with a grace I'd never possess. Planning her daughter's future from a hospital bed in her mind because that was the kind of mother she was.
She'd never asked me for a thing. Not money. Not time. Not even gratitude. Just the promise that Avery would be loved.
Avery. Five years old. Dark curls and green eyes and a laugh that could strip paint off walls.
She was going to lose her mother. She didn't know it yet. Not the full weight of it. She knew Mommy was sick. She knew Daddy had come to visit.
She did not know that the world was about to crack open and swallow the only constant she'd ever had. And it was my job now. All of it. The nightmares and the questions and the mornings she'd reach for a hand that wasn't there anymore.
My daughter. My responsibility. The center of everything from this moment forward.
And then there was the one I couldn't stop thinking about. The woman back in Colorado. In Dad's study with the reading lamp always on. Brown eyes. Paint on her skin because I'd put it there.
Mia.
I gripped the railing. The metal was cool under my palms. The desert air was dry and clean and nothing like the Colorado cold that bit through glass walls and settled in your bones.
My life was coming apart. My eyesight was failing. The woman who'd given me my daughter was dying.
And the only person who'd made me feel something other than numb in years was a woman I'd held in my arms and then avoided.
I was not a man who didn't know what to say. I was a man who chose not to say it. There was a difference. Charlotte had just taught me that.
The sliding door was open a crack. I could hear Avery's breathing. Slow and even and trusting in the way that only children breathe.
Like the world was safe. Like nothing bad could reach her while she slept.
I watched her through the glass. The rise and fall of her small chest. A strand of hair fallen across her cheek.
The cottage. The thought formed before I could stop it. The guest cottage on the Castle grounds. Two bedrooms. A kitchen.
Close enough to the main house that someone living there could help with Avery in the mornings. Close enough that I'd see her crossing the courtyard.
Close enough that she'd be part of this.
She could be part of this.
I pushed the thought away.
It came back.
I leaned against the doorframe. Green and brown. My daughter and the woman in my library.
The way they might look across a breakfast table together. Avery's laugh and Mia's warmth and the rooms that had been quiet for too long filling up again.
Not yet. Not now. Maybe not ever.
But the thought stayed. Stubborn. Immovable. Lodged in my chest the way certain colors lodge in your memory long after the canvas has dried.
And thoughts like that have a way of becoming plans.