21. Tony
TONY
Jamie brought his equipment in a black case that looked like it belonged to a hitman.
He set it up in Dad's study as he always did. Portable slit lamp on the desk. The handheld retinal scanner. A flip chart of plates I'd been staring at since the diagnosis.
He moved with the practiced calm of a man who'd done this a hundred times. And I stood in the doorway like a man who'd rather be anywhere else.
"Sit down, Tony."
Dad's leather chair. The reading lamp was on. It was always on.
The bookshelves pressed in around us. Three walls of journals in Dad's small, precise handwriting. The man who had seen sunsets in Florence and wept at what his nine-year-old son put on canvas.
He held up the first plate. A circle of dots. A number buried inside the pattern.
"Twelve," I said.
He didn't react. Flipped to the next.
"Seven." A pause. "Maybe seven."
"It's forty-two."
My chest went tight.
The rest of the plates went the same way. Some I got right. Others were a guess that missed.
A few were blank to me. Just dots. No number. No shape hiding inside the pattern.
Back on the desk they went. Jamie picked up the retinal scanner. Leaned in close. The blue light swept across my eye, and I held still, staring at a point on the bookshelf behind his shoulder.
He sat back. Checked his screen. Checked it again.
The pause lasted too long. Every second of it carved a new line into whatever was left of my hope.
"Talk to me," I said.
Jamie pressed two fingers between his eyebrows. That crease. The one that never went away.
"The progression is faster than the models predicted." Steady. Professional. The tone he used when he was trying not to be my friend.
"Your cone function has dropped since the last scan. Reds and browns are the same to you now. Greens are following."
The rug under my feet. Bought in Tuscany with Dad when I was sixteen. It had been red then.
Now it was a shade I couldn't name.
"How long?"
Quiet. Too long.
"Jamie."
"At this rate, you'll lose most distinction within the year." He leaned forward. Elbows on his knees. Those kind hazel eyes too bright.
"Your peripheral vision is holding. You won't go fully blind. But the hues, Tony..."
The sentence died in his throat. It didn't need finishing.
The shelves full of journals. The lamp that never turned off. Dad had seen the world in full spectrum his entire life.
Written about the lavender in his garden. The green of the mountains behind the house. The gold of autumn on the lake.
All of it was leaving me.
"The Boston trial," I said.
"I'm pushing. They're reviewing candidates. Your profile is strong." A pause. "But even if you get in, it's experimental. It might slow things down."
The rest hung in the air between us. Unspoken but loud.
It won't reverse what's already gone.
A nod. That was all I had.
"Tony."
"I heard you."
"I know you heard me. I need to know you're going to be okay."
The study was too small. The books were too close.
The lamp was too bright and the rug was whatever it was now. Brown or red or a shade between the two that had no name.
"I'm going to the studio."
"Tony..."
"Thank you, Jamie. I mean it."
Those hazel eyes found mine. The same look they'd carried since we were seventeen. Back then it had been wonder. A kid who could see hues other people couldn't.
Now it was grief wearing a medical degree.
Down the hall. Through the kitchen where Sophia had left covered dishes on the counter and a note about Avery's vitamins in her careful handwriting.
Past the living room where Avery's coloring books sat stacked on the coffee table.
Her crayons lay scattered across the cushions like tiny soldiers after a battle.
My daughter's world was still full of every shade on earth. She grabbed fistfuls of them and pressed them onto paper with the confidence of a person who didn't know they could be taken away.
Past the windows that showed me the lake and the mountains in shades I couldn't trust. The pines along the ridge looked flat. Muted. A wash of green that might not have been green at all.
The studio door was open. Concrete floor. The workbench with its rows of labeled tubes. The stool. The easel in the center of the room with the piece I'd started three days ago.
Mia and Avery on the porch.
The image lived in my head. So sharp it could cut. Avery on Mia's lap. Both of them laughing. Light pouring through the glass behind them.
Avery's dark curls against Mia's shoulder. Mia's head thrown back, her throat exposed, her arms wrapped around my daughter like she'd been doing it her whole life.
I picked up a brush.
The tubes had labels on them now. Cadmium yellow. Burnt sienna. Titanium white. Naples yellow. Raw umber. Weeks ago, the mixing had gotten unreliable, and I'd started trusting ink on paper instead of what my retinas told me.
I squeezed what I believed was gold onto the palette. A warm tone. Between honey and sunlight.
No way to verify it.
The brush hit the surface and I painted.
Not the way I used to. Not with the precision of a man who could see every shade and grade and temperature of pigment. This was different. This was memory. Instinct. Twenty years of knowing what warmth looked like even when my body refused to confirm it.
I started with the background. The glass of the studio wall behind them, the way it caught the afternoon light and turned it into a sheet of white gold. At least, that was the memory. What the brush was putting down could have been anything.
Avery's laugh. How it took her whole body. Her curls bouncing, her face scrunched up, joy pouring out of her like water from a broken faucet.
Mia holding her. Not like a nanny. Like a mother. Like a woman who had chosen this child and would choose her again every single day.
Light through the glass in late afternoon, turning everything it touched into something worth keeping.
Hours disappeared. The glow in the studio shifted from white to amber to a muted warmth. My wrists ached. Paint on my knuckles, my forearms, the front of my shirt.
I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Because stopping meant looking at what I'd made and asking the question I couldn't answer.
What tone is it?
So I kept going. Every technique Dad taught me poured into this one piece. Everything the diagnosis was trying to take from me, I put on the surface instead.
If I was going to lose the world, I was going to capture the two people who mattered most in it before it went dark. Before the greens followed the reds into whatever place colors go when your retinas give up on them.
The shapes were right. The composition was right. The love in it was the most precise thing I'd ever put on a surface in my life.
How the figures held each other. The tilt of Avery's head. The curve of Mia's smile.
But the warmth? The gold? The green of my daughter's gaze?
A question I couldn't answer with my own.
I set down the brush. My grip was stiff. Paint had dried in the creases of my knuckles.
The largest piece I'd ever attempted stood in front of me. Two people I loved more than I'd known I was capable of. Rendered in choices my body had made and my vision couldn't name.
The studio door opened behind me.
"Tony? I brought you... oh."
Jamie. Come back. Or never left.
His footsteps crossed the concrete. Slow. He stopped beside me.
I didn't turn. Didn't need to. The silence told me everything.
Jamie stood there for a long time. Looking at the painting like it had changed the room it was in.
"Tony." His voice was rough. Scraped raw. "This is a masterpiece."
My gaze stayed on the canvas. Avery and Mia laughing in hues my hands knew better than my retinas did.
"Jamie."
"Yeah."
"What did I use for her skin?"
The silence came back. Heavier. It pressed against my ribs.
"Gold." His voice cracked on the word. "A perfect warm gold."
My lids closed.
"I thought it was brown."
Neither of us spoke. The studio held us in it. Concrete floor. Glass walls. A massive painting of a woman and a child laughing in tones I'd chosen from memory and instinct. Twenty years of a craft that was slipping through my hands.
His palm landed on my shoulder. Not a squeeze this time. Just the weight of it.
Two decades of friendship and medicine and a diagnosis neither of us could fix.
"I'll let myself out," he said.
Footsteps across the floor. The door opening. Closing.
Alone.
Mia. How she fit against me when we stood together. The top of her head reaching my chest.
Her shape was a map I could trace without looking. The precise height of her against me. The weight of her head on my sternum.
Arms wrapped around my waist. Her hands not quite meeting at my spine.
If every hue on earth disappeared, I would still know her.
Her hair between my palms. The sound of her laugh. The warmth of her skin.
How she said my name like it meant something she hadn't expected.
That didn't disappear. Touch didn't fade. Sound didn't lose its richness the way red lost its fire and green lost its depth.
If I was going to lose the visible world, I would learn her with my hands instead.
My palm found the painting where Mia's face was. Paint still wet. Ridges under my touch. Every brushstroke. Every layer.
The texture of love. In shades I couldn't see.
That first portrait of her came back to me. Months ago. Covered with a sheet because looking at it stirred something I wasn't ready for.
The tones were off then. Further off now. Getting further off every day.
Avery's voice in my head. Why do you stare at Mimi?
Because one day I won't be able to see her at all. And I want to remember every detail while I still can.
The sheet went over the painting. Not to hide it. Not like before, when covering a canvas meant shame or a confession I couldn't speak.
This time, protection.
Protecting all of them.
Mia. Avery. This life I was building in a house made of glass.
From the dark that was coming.
The dark that was already here.