Images flutter from the long-ago. John would come home from the place where he did the work. The office. He would drive the car into the driveway and go into the house. Sadie was little in the long-ago, and Juliet was bigger, and Sadie would run to him, and he would pick her up and smile, and Juliet would wait in the kitchen doorway, and he would remember to give her a hug, too.

Then he would kiss Barb on the cheek, not really listening as she talked, but smelling the good smells of the kitchen, feeling like a husband, a father. A man.

He needs to get to that place again, to be that man. It is like crawling through a snowstorm, up a mountain in a snowstorm on the darkest night. But he will get there. He will find the flower. He will be husband and father again for a moment, and then he can go back to being the now-self, who listens to the birds and the little baby and the warm rain voice, the now-self who likes to have the dog close to him, who can go to sleep whenever he wants.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Sadie

The storm was full of bluster and drenching rain, a nice old-fashioned nor’easter, raging all day long. My little house sang and shook in the wind, creaking and groaning, sounds I decided to like, rather than worry that the roof was going to blow off. The rain slapped against the windows in sheets, and I couldn’t have been cozier. I’d ventured into my attic the day before and nailed up some tarp until I could really fix the roof, and so far, I only needed one bucket for the leaks. The sound of the dripping was strangely companionable. Pepper was asleep on the couch, curled into her little cinnamon bun position, snoring gently.

Me, I was painting. Painting something because I wanted to, not because it matched a comforter or a couch.

Without a lot of forethought, I’d gotten out my paints, set up my easel, taken a canvas, prepped it and, before I could talk myself out of it, squeezed out the delicious, shiny blobs of oil paint onto my palette—cadmium red, cerulean blue, burnt umber, titanium white, Naples yellow, magenta, black—and put paint on canvas as fast as I could.

The sky.

I was painting the sky, lost in the smell of the oil paint, the bite of turpentine, the swirl of colors, the gentle, wet whisper of the brush against the canvas. The sun, the clouds, the sea.

A sunset, the most painted scene in the world, and I didn’t care. I was lost in colors—and the infinite possibilities of mixing shades that created turquoise, lavender, purple, rose. Pushing the paint, dragging it, twisting it, dabbing, brushing, watching in an almost out-of-body experience as the sky began to form.