“Wow,” he said again, almost as if he wasn’t sure what elsetosay.“How did I not know this?”
She shrugged.“I sketched as a kid and teen but I didn’t start painting until I went out there.”
“I didn’t even know you could draw.”
She looked over at him and held his gaze this time.“When I was here, it was just a hobby.A little thing I did sometimes.Doodling almost.”
“Still seems like something I should have known.”He was frowning now, as if not knowing this really bothered him.
“We dated for a month,” she reminded him.“Before that I was really just your friend’s little sister.You wouldn’t have known then.Not many people did.And when we were together, it was so short.So…crazy.We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about our hobbies and stuff.”
He took a deep breath.“I guess.”
She frowned, thinking back now.“And you know, I probably didn’t draw much when we were together.”
“Oh?Why’s that?”
Well, she’d been busy with other things.Like losing her virginity and burning down sheds.But she didn’t say that.Because that wasn’t really it—and she was just realizing it.
“Like I said, I didn’t draw a lot of important things back then,” she said.“But when I do—did—draw, it was always because I was emotional about something, reallyfeelingsomething.I drew whenever I was pissed at one of my friends or after I failed a math test or when you started dating Sarah.”
That clearly surprised him.
“You were emotional about that?”
“I had a huge crush on you and I was super jealous,” Maddie said with a nod.
“Huh.”He looked almost smug.
“Anyway, my art is always inspired by emotion and that’s why it really came out when I was in California.I was feelinga lot—grief, anger, loss, heartbreak, guilt, fear—and it all came pouring out.”
“What do you paint?”he asked.
Stupidly, Maddie felt her cheeks heat.The subject of her art was very telltale.But she blew out a breath and said, “The bayou and Autre.”
Both of his eyebrows rose.“Really?All the time?”
She nodded.“The paintings are all different.It’s different parts of the bayou.Sometimes the cypress trees.Sometimes the old cabin.Sometimes alligators and turtles.Sometimes it’s stormy—okay, a lot of the time it’s stormy—sometimes it’s at night or at sunset.And I paint different perspectives on Autre.Sometimes just a building, sometimes a street, sometimes a bird’s-eye view over the whole thing.Anyway, it’s always about something down here.And I think that’s why people in California like them—they’re so different.It’s actually how I met Bennett Baxter.He was in San Francisco for business and walked by the gallery, and the painting of the bayou stopped him.He came in and we started talking about the bayou and where we were both from and the tour company and everything.”
Owen was just staring at her.
“You paint the bayou stormy and at night a lot,” he finally said.
She nodded.
“How about the town?The same thing?”
She nodded again.“I paint the cemetery.Our old house.And yeah, it’s dark a lot.”This didn’t take a PhD in psychology to understand, and Maddie watched Owen work through it.
“That makes sense,” he finally said.
“Does it?”
“If it’s all about your emotions, then yeah,” he said.“It was pretty dark and stormy down here when you left.”
He meant figuratively, of course, but he got it.
“I saw a therapist when I first moved out there.She encouraged me to draw and paint to get it all out.It really worked.”