Page 136 of Left on Read

“All of them?” He gaped at me.

“Well, all that they had.” I tugged him over to the cabinet and pulled open one of the drawers to show him the stacks of books I’d put in there for safekeeping. “There’s twenty of them. Not enough to last forever, but hopefully a while.”

He swallowed, his throat working.

Uh-oh. Had I miscalculated this surprise? He looked like he was about to cry.

“Babe?” Worry crept into my voice. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” He blinked a few times. “Not wrong. I’m just a bit overwhelmed, but in a good way,” he added quickly. “I love everything about this. I’m just processing.”

I squeezed his hand, then let it go to give him some space to think. “Would this be the wrong time to tell you that I also found some of those pencils you like, the ones that were discontinued?”

“You did?”

“In there.” I pointed to another drawer.

He put his sketchbook on the desk and opened the drawer. “How did you find these? I searched everywhere.” He pulled out one of the packages and ran his finger over the label.

“The same art teacher. He had those in his studio and gave them to me when I told him they were your favorite. I wish I could have found more, but those were all he had.”

I didn’t know much about the different types of pencils, but River had explained how that particular brand, and that set, were his favorites and were most comfortable to work with when he was sketching.

His drawings were incredibly detailed, to the point they looked like photographs at first glance. I’d seen the difference in the quality of his work when he used subpar materials. I was glad I had other artists like Noah and the teacher at my school to educate me on the proper tools for an artist of River’s caliber.

“Do you know why I started using these?” he asked softly, his gaze still on the pencils.

“No.”

“They were the ones my mom gave me before…before we lost her.”

River never talked about his mom or her death. I stepped closer and put my hand on his lower back, offering some comfort if he wanted to tell me more.

“She and Dad didn’t really encourage my art. The same with Zane’s music. They fell into that ‘starving artist’ bullshit and wanted us to focus on things that would help us get good jobs in the future.”

He put the pencils on the desk and stared off into the distance.

“I know they just wanted the best for us, and it wasn’t because they didn’t love us or anything, but I didn’t really understand that as a kid. I just saw it as them trying to force us to be what they wanted us to be instead of who we were.

“Things changed when Mom got sick. Life pretty much stopped for us, and we spent two years watching her die. That was the hardest part, like slowly losing her every day as she got worse and knowing there was nothing anyone could do to give us more time with her.

“She gave Zane a guitar and me my first artist-quality sketchbook and pencils so we could spend time with her while she was bedridden. Zane would play for her and I’d draw, and Dad would sit in the corner cracking dad jokes and doing crosswords with her like we weren’t watching our mom die in front of us.

“Just before she went into hospice, she gave me that brand of pencils and one of these sketchbooks and told me she’d asked around and done all sorts of research to make sure I got the right supplies to draw her a family portrait to put next to her bed.”

He paused; his unfocused eyes slid to the package of pencils on the desk.

“She had the portrait next to her bed for three months before she passed. Dad put it up in her office after we buried her. Then he died, and we had to go live with our aunt and uncle. We weren’t allowed to take much when we left, just clothes and school stuff. We have no idea what happened to the portrait—or Zane’s guitar.”

He slid his gaze to mine, his eyes shining with tears. “I started using these books and pencils because they made me feel closer to her, like maybe she was looking down on me and could see that I was still thinking about her.”

“I’m sure she knows.”

“I hope so.” He blinked rapidly, like he was trying to clear his tears. “I really miss her. I miss both of them so much.”

Not knowing what to say, I opened my arms to him.

He fell against me. I held him tight and let him take whatever comfort he needed.

---