Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 41577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
It didn’t matter how many times my father fucked me; his love had a way of making me feel brand new.
With my hair straightened and my lips stained candy-apple red, I squeezed into a white lace dress and red heels and then headed out.
The gallery, a hip, modern space with walls that didn’t quite reach the vaulted ceilings, was already teeming with people when I arrived. I recognized most of the pieces from my father’s collection, still life paintings of antique children’s toys and sketches of my body—throat, earlobe, the arch of my foot. Lines clean and crisp, yet impossible to distinguish unless you knew my body as well as he did.
I said hello to our artist friends, then went to stand with his agent, Michelle, and her husband, whose hand lingered at the small of my back a little longer than was necessary.
“You must be really pleased with how it all turned out,” he said.
I nodded. “I was with him when he bought all those old toys.”
“Wait,” said Michelle, “have you seen the main exhibit?”
“There’s another exhibit?” I asked.
Michelle smiled warmly and captured my arm. “Come with me.”
She steered me through the crowd, toward a wide archway leading to an interior space I hadn’t realized was there.
“This has to be some of his finest and most personal work yet,” Michelle said.
I steeled myself for the reveal.
We waited for the mob to dissipate, then stepped inside. The walls were covered in drawings of children.
No, not children. One child. Me.
My heart expanded to fit my ribcage. They were the drawings from my father’s sketchbooks—the ones my mother had returned—blown up, sharpened, splashed with color and arranged with care.
“They’re remarkable,” said Michelle, squeezing my hand. “You can really feel how much he loves you.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
Suspended from the ceiling were three full-length pieces that had been mapped out and elaborated to make them appear three-dimensional. At the center of the room lay another 3D rendering of a very small, sleeping me curled around a stuffed rabbit that was almost as big as I was.
My eyes stung with tears. My father had given me that rabbit. I was pretty sure my mom still had it somewhere, packed alongside other keepsakes from my childhood.
“Where’s my dad now?” I dabbed my eyes with the napkin Michelle handed me.
“Upstairs being interviewed by a journalist from The Times. I’ll let him know you’re here as soon as they’re finished.”
“Thank you.”
She squeezed my hand again, then left me to take in the exhibit on my own. I circled the room slowly, floored by how my father had succeeded in taking something my mother had deemed criminal, and turning it into the most beautiful display of filial tenderness I’d ever seen.
I stopped in my tracks when I noticed Maddox standing off to the side, watching me. So much of his previous allure had dissipated now that his role in my parents’ life was no longer a mystery. He hailed a server and picked up two glasses of wine, then strode over to me.
“Here she is,” he said. “The muse.”
I made him stand there with his arm extended long enough to let the moment turn awkward, then accepted the glass of red. That’s one thing I appreciated about these events: no one ever asked to see my ID.
“I’m surprised you were invited,” I said.
“The owner’s a friend.”
“You seem to have a lot of those.” I wondered how many of them knew the real Maddox, the wolf behind the suave veneer. “Does my dad know you’re here?”
“He’s been keeping his distance.” Maddox made a show of scanning the room, then leaned in close as if he intended to tell me a secret. “I suspect he still needs a little more time to cool off.”
“Try a lot more time,” I said. “Or forever.”
He sipped his wine. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that your mother was a champion grudge-holder. But Henry? Not so much.” Maddox’s expression turned solemn; it was an odd look for him. “Paige, I want to apologize to you for overstepping my bounds last summer. I never thought I’d get a chance to meet you. When you turned out to be lovelier than I could’ve envisioned, I let myself get carried away. I hope this doesn’t mean you and I can’t be friends someday.”
“It’s going to take more than a glass of wine and an apology to make us anything resembling friends.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “But, once upon a time, your folks meant a lot to me. We were a family. As much as we drive each other crazy, we’ll always be family.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it when I remembered that Maddox was in fact related to me in a roundabout way. He was my half-brother’s biological father. If my young parents had been in a position to keep the child, that boy would have been raised as my brother.