Chapter 7 Diane
Diane
There’s a ritual to entering a new space that I still haven’t mastered. I hover just inside the gallery’s front door, feigning a casual interest in the guest book while Cassie tugs at the sleeve of my cardigan.
“Mom, look!” Cassie’s voice is high and bright, slicing clean through the bubble of laughter in the vestibule. “There’s actual shrimp cocktail. With the tails and everything.”
I nudge her gently away from the hors d’oeuvres, my heart already drumming. “Let’s keep our hands to ourselves for a bit, okay?”
She bobs her head, but she’s already forgotten the rule, because the gallery is a field of color, and she’s a pointer dog, nose leading her from one canvas to the next.
I follow, running my fingers over the soft braided strap of my purse, a nervous habit as ingrained as the pinched set of my mouth.
A line of strangers filters past us—a man with sun-leathered cheeks, a trio of college girls with hair in matching buns, an elderly woman in a nautical blazer and pearls.
They all look like they belong, which is to say, they all look like they’ve read the unwritten manual on how to behave at coastal art openings.
Cassie presses her face close to the first painting, her nose almost touching the brushstrokes. “Whoa,” she says.
It’s a seascape, all raw energy, the sky a slurry of dark blues and the sea below it heaving, almost angry.
I recognize the view, but there’s something about the light, the way it creeps through the bank of clouds and slicks the surface of the waves, that makes the moment feel fragile, as if the whole scene might blink out if you looked away for too long.
I step up beside her. “Do you like it?”
“I do. It looks like it’s moving but also like it’s standing still. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” It’s exactly right, and I feel both envy and admiration for the man who can make time collapse on a canvas.
“Mom, are you nervous?”
I force a little laugh, try to sound as if I’m only nervous the way anyone would be at a gallery opening hosted by the man whose face you haven’t stopped picturing since you met him. “It’s just…crowded,” I say. “A lot of new people.”
She grins, exposing the gap where last week’s molar used to live. “You mean you’re nervous about Nathan.”
I fix her with my sternest teacher glare, but she’s impervious. “Cassandra Jade,” I whisper, “I will revoke your cookie privileges for the week.”
She snickers and runs off, ponytail flying.
I watch her go, then survey the room. The gallery is longer than it is wide, the floor a tongue of scuffed pine running from the front windows to a rear alcove where the lights are lower and the paintings more intimate.
The walls are a muted driftwood gray, the trim blanched white as sun-bleached bone.
Hung at eye level, each canvas seems to pulse with a life that the crowd only amplifies.
Wet sand reflecting the violent gold of sunrise, the muscular weight of storm surf, dune grass whipped sideways by wind that you can almost feel, if you squint.
I move slowly, reading the tiny placards with their polite bios and the titles: Return Current, Suspension, Liminal Hour.
I’m not sure if I love or hate the way artists name things, but I can’t deny the prickle of awe that comes from seeing so many versions of the world gathered in one place. Nathan’s world, anyway.
He’s easy to spot, even from across the room.
His hair is a little longer than I remember, and he’s shaved, which gives his jaw a blunt, unfamiliar geometry.
He’s posted up near the refreshments table, talking with a tall man in a dark-green Barbour jacket.
He laughs at something, full-throated and reckless, the sound of someone who’s still surprised to find joy in public.
Cassie is already orbiting him, making deliberate figure-eights between the food and the tall man’s elbow, as if staking a claim.
I linger near the periphery, smoothing my dress over my hips, then immediately wish I hadn’t.
It’s a nervous tell, and Cassie’s right; I’m not fooling anyone.
I focus on my shoes, the left one scuffed from a careless step on the boardwalk, and try to tamp down the urge to bolt.
It would be so easy to invent an emergency—an allergy attack, a forgotten medicine—but there’s no one here to believe the lie, and Cassie would see right through it.
“Are you going to say hi, or are you just going to stare at him all night?” Cassie’s voice is a whisper at my side. She’s doubled back, arms crossed in a parody of adult exasperation.
“I don’t stare,” I reply, smoothing the dress again. “I observe.”
She rolls her eyes, which I’m certain she’s been practicing in the mirror. “He keeps staring at you, Mom.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I say, and then immediately, “He does?”
She gives me a smug, knowing grin and hooks her arm through mine.
“Come on. You said you wanted to support the arts.” Before I can resist, she’s pulling me into the glow of track lighting and toward the table where Nathan is laughing, red-cheeked, a glass of something pale and sparkling in his hand.
He spots me, and his smile softens at the edges. “Diane,” he says, and my name sounds right, as if he’s dusted it off and set it gently in front of me.
“Nathan,” I reply, matching his nod, hoping my voice doesn’t betray the tremor under my sternum.
He sets down his glass and takes a step forward. “I’m glad you could make it. And you, too, Cassie,” he adds, with the easy warmth of someone who actually remembers children are people.
Cassie offers a regal wave, then zeros in on the food, transferring three cheese cubes and two shrimp to a napkin with surgical precision.
Nathan gestures toward the nearest canvas, a muted study in gray and white. “What do you think?” he asks, and I realize he’s genuinely interested, not just filling space.
I step closer, tilting my head. “I think…” The words snag, and for a second I can’t remember how to talk about art, only how to drown in it. “I think you made the wind visible.”
He laughs, softer this time, not performative, just pleased. “That’s a new one. Usually people tell me it’s depressing.”
“It’s not depressing,” Cassie says, through a mouthful of cheddar. “It’s dramatic. Like a hurricane, but not scary.”
Nathan looks at her, then at me, and suddenly I’m aware of the width of my shoulders and the possibility that my lipstick has migrated to my teeth. “You’ve got a sharp one,” he says, tipping an imaginary hat.
“She takes after her father,” I joke, and then immediately regret it.
Nathan doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m going to grab some more wine,” he says. “Would you like a glass?”
“Yes, please,” I reply, and this time my voice is steadier. Cassie shoots me a look—approval or amusement, I can’t tell—and vanishes, presumably to find more food.
I trail Nathan to the bar, watching the way he moves, deliberate but never slow, as if every muscle in his body is attuned to the idea of being useful.
He pours two glasses, hands one to me. Our fingers brush for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough to send a jolt up my arm, so sharp I almost drop the glass.
I try to recover with a joke. “I always thought artists were supposed to be tortured and reclusive. But you seem remarkably well-adjusted.”
He cocks his head. “I save my brooding for after hours. It keeps the paint from drying out.” He lifts his glass in a gentle salute.
“To brooding,” I say, tapping the rim against his. The wine is cheap, probably from the grocery store, but the sweetness of it is a shock after the briny air of the gallery.
Nathan leans against the wall, arms folded. “So, how’s the writing coming? Sara said you were working on a novel. Very ambitious.”
I wince, though I know he’s not being cruel.
“Not as ambitious as you’d think.” I swirl the wine in my glass to give my hands something to do.
“It’s more an exercise in futility at this point.
I get a couple paragraphs down, and then the tide pulls them out again.
Honestly, I thought I’d be further along by now. ”
“You’ll find it,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Sometimes you just have to stand in the water and let it knock you over a few times.”
“Is that an Outer Banks proverb?”
He shrugs. “It is now.”
I laugh, and the tension dissolves a little. “You know, if you’re going to plagiarize regional wisdom, you should at least charge for it.”
“I’ll add it to your tab.”
From across the gallery, Cassie is deep in conversation with the woman in pearls, who’s listening with a patience I haven’t seen since my mother used to read me the Sunday comics. I take a sip of wine, letting the silence linger.
Nathan clears his throat. “You know, I was nervous about this. The opening, I mean. I haven’t done the public thing in a while.”
“Could have fooled me. You seem in your element.”
“That’s a lie. I kept waiting for someone to throw a drink or ask for their money back.”
“Maybe after the second glass,” I say, and he grins, wide and delighted.
We drift along the wall, stopping at another painting, a study of the sound at low tide, herons balanced in the shallows. The brushstrokes are urgent, almost desperate, and I find myself leaning in, trying to see how the illusion holds together.
“Do you miss Charlotte?” I ask, surprising myself.
“Not the city, really. More the routines, I suppose. And the people—friends, family, neighbors. It’s the familiar faces you get used to seeing every day that you miss most when they’re gone.”
I glance at him, curiosity tugging at me. I want to ask about his past, about what had driven him away from the familiarity of home to this secluded stretch of coast. But the question feels too intimate, too invasive for our casual conversation, so I let it hang in the air between us.
Someone else approaches, a neighbor or a casual friend, and Nathan excuses himself with a gentle touch to my elbow—a small, protective gesture that lingers long after he’s gone.