The Road Leads Back, page 8
“It is very serious. Cynical means you see the bad in things instead of the good.”
“Like you see the bad in coming to Iowa?”
Harry lifted his brows. Nice one, kid.
Kara reached over and tapped Jessica’s nose. “Don’t try turning my words around on me, little lady.”
“Harry’s nice.”
“Harry is very nice.”
“Think he’ll let us live here forever?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I think we will stay until we can find something for ourselves.”
“But we’re family, right? So we should stay here forever.”
“That’s what I think,” Harry said, finally making his presence known. Squatting on the floor next to Jess, he made a show of checking out the walls. “Holy cow, this is the best room I’ve ever seen.”
“Grandma is a famous artist.”
Kara laughed. “Hardly.”
Jessica jumped up and pointed at the fairies, telling Harry their names. Then she named the unicorn and started telling him the story she imagined playing out on the wall. Kara turned from Harry, focusing again on the final touches of her painting.
He leaned back on his elbows so he could see her face. She looked intent, just like she had in art class all those years ago. She was clearly more comfortable now, though. She handled the brush as if it were an extension of her. Even though she was no longer struggling to control the brush, she seemed off balance, and Harry didn’t have to ask why.
She may have been smiling for Jessica’s sake, but when she focused on her task, she looked haunted by whatever was going on in her mind. He imagined she’d spent a lot of time the last few weeks thinking back on the last time she was in Iowa—when she’d been tossed out like garbage. He was happy she was there with him, but he hated that she so obviously didn’t want to be.
A frown tugged at his lips. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and hug her, to let her know that she was wanted. Maybe it was too late. Maybe it didn’t make a difference now, but he did want her there. He did care about her happiness.
She glanced at him and cocked a brow as if daring him to continue to stare.
He grinned in response. “Looks nice. Want to paint my room next?”
“Sure. I’ll paint a mural of Mount Rushmore with the inclusion of Kennedy.”
He sat a bit higher. “They could do it. Right on the wall next to Lincoln.”
She smirked. “Yes, I remember the proposition you wrote for art class.”
“You remember that?”
She shrugged. “Your debate was the most logical. No one else took time to plan how their project could be done. They just tossed out ideas to be finished with the assignment.” She paused in her movements, as if thinking back. “That’s what got me in trouble with Mitch, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. When asked what famous piece of art he’d alter, he wrote about how all Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits should have two eyebrows. You took offense to that.”
She chuckled and glanced at Jess to make sure she was far enough away before whispering, “He was such an ass.”
“Yes, you told him that.”
“And you saved me from his wrath.”
“Nobody squirts paint on my girl.”
Her smile faltered. “I wasn’t your girl, Harry.”
“You were in my mind.”
“Hmm.” Her attention returned to the wall. “You never said anything about that.”
“I wasn’t nearly as bold back then.”
She leaned back so she could look him in the eye and narrowed her gaze. “Don’t go getting any big ideas about me being your girl now just because I’m living in your house.”
He brushed a wayward strand of hair from her face. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Mitch isn’t so bad now. You’d like his wife. She’s sweet.”
Kara’s brows lifted. “You’re friends with Mitch Friedman?”
“Not friends, exactly. He’s a financial advisor now. He helps me with the business.”
“I thought you knew everything, Harry. Why would you need a financial advisor?”
He smiled in return. “I do know everything, Kara. I just don’t want to do it all by myself.”
A quiet chuckle left her. “What did you say to Phil?”
“I’ve said a lot of things to him. It’s all part of the getting-to-know-you process.”
She gave him the look again, and it was his turn to laugh softly.
“I suggested he stop being angry long enough to see that your life wasn’t exactly what you had expected either. I let him read your letters.”
She lifted her brows. “Those were private.”
“They were a real look at what you went through. I don’t think anyone could ever accuse you of holding back, Kare. When you were excited, or angry, or lonely, it showed. He needs to know you went through all of those things so he can see you as a person instead of just his mother.”
“Don’t insert yourself into my relationship with my son, Harrison.”
“I’m not inserting. I’m…refereeing.” He winked as he sat up. “Hey, Jess, I’m hungry. What do you say we go out for dinner?”
“Daddy,” she screamed as she darted from her room. “Harry’s hungry!”
He pushed himself up and held his hand out to Kara. “Come on. I’m sure we can find something that hasn’t been chemically altered or mistreated to eat.”
Kara passed on Harry’s invitation for a glass of wine that evening. She walked away, leaving him and Phil chatting about work. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt stress run so deep. She’d developed a way of letting things roll off her back. So little in life could be controlled. She’d found a way to accept that a long time ago and very rarely let what she couldn’t change bother her.
Being back in Iowa, however, was within her control. She could leave. But she wouldn’t. Not as long as Jessica and Phil were there. And that meant she had to face a lot of things she had been ignoring most of her life.
The hurt hadn’t been so raw in years, but there it was whenever she stopped moving long enough to feel. Shaking the pain off, she refused to let the feelings take root. She still had a room to finish organizing, curtains to make for her doors, and paintings to finish so she could start making plans for how to sell or trade her work. The problem seemed to be that she couldn’t figure out what to focus on first.
She’d start one thing but then find herself staring off into space, recalling the way she had begged her mother to help her as her father pushed her out of the house. Or how sweet Elaine had seemed and how she now knew it had all been an act.
How had she been so gullible? Even at seventeen?
Kara dropped the material she had found to make curtains onto the sewing station she’d set up in the corner of her room. It was too late to start that project. She wasn’t in the mood to finish unpacking the clothes she’d brought. She turned her attention to the half-finished painting on her easel. Sinking onto the stool, she skimmed over the work. Her paintings had always varied depending on her life, but this was a first.
Unicorns jumping stars, leaving rainbow trails in their wake. Who the hell was going to want this?
She laughed at herself, but the sound didn’t hold the least bit of amusement. Phil had been telling her for years that if she could just focus on one thing, she’d be much more successful. He’d been so thrilled when she stepped in line with the crowd and signed on with that nitwit agent who set up the gallery opening. He’d been so excited, in fact, that he had done most of the marketing himself. He’d never shown an interest in her work before then—other than the frequent reminders that she couldn’t build a brand for herself if she couldn’t stick to one thing. Up-cycling clothing, sculpting, landscapes, portraits, abstract, cubism. None of it meshing with the other. Just random bits of things that she tossed out.
He seemed far more interested in her success than she did. The only time he wanted to talk about her art was how she could make it mainstream and make more money. She just wanted to sell enough to cover the cost of living, which would be substantially less now that Harry was footing the housing bill.
And what was that about anyway?
She’d spent so much of her life thinking he was a selfish jerk, she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around this guy who suddenly wanted to take care of her family without anything in return. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A knock at her door interrupted her thoughts. Harry smiled at her through the window and lifted a glass of wine, silently offering it to her. She sat for a moment, debating before gesturing for him to enter.
He opened the door and crossed the room as she focused on her painting again.
“For Jess?” he asked.
She laughed softly as she accepted the wine he held out to her. “I guess. I don’t think anyone else would want this crap.”
“It’s not crap. It’s every little girl’s fantasy world.”
She shook her head. “I get these ideas stuck in my brain, and they have to work themselves out. Then I just move on to the next thing. Drives Phil crazy. He tried to help me market my work, but he says it is impossible when I don’t have a common thread through anything I do.”
“Not impossible. Different. More difficult. But not impossible.” He sat on the stool next to hers. “He said you make all of Jessica’s clothes?”
“Most. Not all. It’s hard to find clothes in stores that fit her. We do a lot of alterations and up-cycling.”
“It’s great that you can do that. Do you sell your clothes?”
She shrugged. “Some. I trade for supplies mostly.”
“He said you weren’t thrilled at having a gallery showing in Seattle?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re quizzing our son about me?”
“Just conversation.”
“Hmm.” She focused on the unicorn again. “No. I wasn’t happy about the showing. In fact, I was almost as unhappy as my agent was when I told him I wanted to pull out of the exhibit. He dropped me. But that saved me the trouble of breaking the contract.”
“So, what do you want to do?”
Kara looked at him. “What do you mean?”
Harry shrugged. “I mean…what do you want? For yourself?”
She stared at him, uncertain what he was asking.
“In high school you wanted to work in a museum restoring art.”
“You remember that?”
“Of course. I wondered if that’s where you had gone. When I came home from college, no one seemed to know what had happened to you.”
She leaned back. “You asked about me?”
Harry simply grinned again. “I imagined you’d gone to Europe to learn your trade.”
She sighed. “Wow. That would have been amazing. Too bad your mother didn’t ditch me in France.”
“I’m not sure if that’s funny or not.”
“I’m not sure if I’m kidding or not.”
“Well, since you didn’t go to Europe and you aren’t restoring art, what do you want to be doing?”
Back to that question. “I don’t know. I mean, taking care of Phil and Jessica keeps me pretty busy, actually. Now that we are getting settled here, I expect that won’t ease up anytime soon. I’ve got to find out which school Jess will attend and take her there a few times so she feels more comfortable. I’m going to have to find a farmer to buy eggs, milk, and meat. I actually meant to start looking today, but with painting Jessica’s room—”
“Kara,” he said before she could continue. “What do you want for you?”
She focused on the painting to avoid his drilling gaze. “Not a gallery opening. That’s for sure. I don’t enjoy that much scrutiny. I don’t want to justify my work or be made to feel like I have to fit a mold. I’d rather fly under the radar and paint what I enjoy, not what sells.” She cast him a side glance. “Why does it even matter what I want? Being a mother, a grandmother, isn’t about what I want. It’s about doing what is right for Phil and Jess.”
“You’re more than just a mother and a grandmother, you know…”
She couldn’t remember the last time she felt like more than Phil’s mother or Jessica’s grandmother. Perhaps that was why she failed to be happy about having the gallery showing. She should have been thrilled. Honored. She knew that. Many artists strived for that one moment, yet she had wanted nothing more than to run from it. If she were honest, the only reason she ever agreed to it was to impress her son. To show him she was more than just some flighty, wafting-through-life artist. And he had been impressed. Then Harry swept in and took those two seconds of glory away from her.
Which was actually a good thing, Kara had decided. There was no way she could continually live up to the expectations she was setting. Moving to Stonehill, having to start over, those were both really good excuses not to be pursuing a new agent and gallery.
“I just want to be, Harry. I just want to do what I do without disappointing everyone around me. That’s not such an easy thing for me.”
“You’ve yet to disappoint me.”
“Yeah, well, stick around. It’ll happen eventually.” She looked at the still-full glass of wine in her hand and sighed before handing it back to him. “It’s late. You have a big day tomorrow, introducing your son to your staff. You should get some sleep.”
He accepted the glass but didn’t budge from the stool. “It is important to me that you find a way to be happy here, Kara.”
“Why?”
Instead of answering, he drank her wine in one gulp. “You have a big day tomorrow, too. Good night.”
She watched him leave, her brow creased in confusion. “Strange as he ever was,” she whispered to herself before looking at the star-jumping unicorns again.
Chapter Eight
Jessica was talking a mile a minute. Harry couldn’t understand a word until Phil told her to take a breath and slow down. Once she did, and quite dramatically, she told them about registering at a new school. The principal was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. She was dressed in a long pink sundress, and Grandma promised to make one exactly like it for Jessica. Then they went to the playground and there were kids, and they played with her, and they didn’t even treat her different. She was going to love her new school, she was sure of it.
And could she pretty please get a goat? And maybe a chicken.
She followed Phil upstairs as he questioned why she wanted farm animals. As interested as Harry was in the answer, he headed to the kitchen, where he found Kara cringing as she butchered a chicken.
“Whoa. Is that meat?”
She rolled her eyes at him as he shrugged out of his suit coat and sat at the counter. While she prepared dinner, she explained how the principal’s brother was an organic, free-range farmer. Kara and Jessica had gone to inspect the farm themselves before determining he was worthy of their business. He had a few birds and several dozen eggs ready to sell. She’d bought some of each so Harry could have meat on his plate. She also got some goat milk for his coffee, which Harry wasn’t completely sure he appreciated, but it had to be better than the rice milk he’d been drinking since she’d gutted his fridge.
Phil and Jessica came wandering in, and he encouraged her to tell all of them more about her day. As they set the table, Kara bounced all over the kitchen fixing dinner. Harry realized this was all he had ever wanted for his life. He tried not to get too caught up in the moment, but it was impossible. These people had been in his home for a week, and he was already more at home with them than he’d ever been with his ex-wife and her kids. The boys had resented him. Hell, his wife had resented him.
But when Kara looked at him, he felt connected to her. When Phil leaned back and talked about some inconsequential thing, Harry felt like the conversation meant something. And when Jessica grabbed his hand to get his attention, he couldn’t help but forget everything else around him and focus on her like she was what she’d already become—the most important thing in his life.
Sitting at the table, the four of them fell into a natural conversation. His feeling of contentment lasted even as he was helping Kara clean up dinner, chatting more about their day while Phil and Jess went to get her bath. Harry was drying a pan, laughing at the image Kara was conjuring of Jessica chasing a goat, when his phone rang. The ringtone told him who was calling without even pulling the device from his pocket.
“My mother,” he said quietly.
Kara’s smile fell as she looked away. “Something could be wrong,” she said when he didn’t answer.
He frowned and set the pan and towel down before digging the phone from his pocket. “Hello?”
“Harrison,” Elaine said, sounding uncertain. “You haven’t called.”
“I’ve been busy with my family.”
“Are you in Seattle?”
“No.” He looked at Kara. “I asked them to stay with me. We all thought it was time we get to know each other better.”
Kara’s ferocious scrubbing increased, and Harry walked away.
“Har—” Elaine started and then stopped. “I’m sorry. I have no excuse for what I did to you.”
“No, you don’t. But it isn’t just about me.”
“I made sure she was in good hands.”
“She has a name.”
“I know. I-I made sure Kara was looked after.”
“You sent her away. How the hell was that looking after her? Anything could have happened to her. To my son. They were alone. They could have been hurt. You didn’t look after her. You hid her away and never gave her another thought.”
“No, that’s not true.”
“I have a granddaughter now. Do you know what she calls me? Do you know what my son calls me? They call me by my name. Because I’m not Grandpa, and I’m not Dad. I’m just some guy who came into their lives from out of nowhere. You did that to us.” He closed his eyes and exhaled as his tone took a hard edge.
Sniffling on the other end on the line let him know she’d heard it, too. His mother wasn’t a crier. The act should have moved him. It didn’t.
“I can’t talk to you right now.” He ended the call and tossed his phone carelessly onto the table.
