Page 56 of Painted

“Ms. Flint, have you spoken to a grief counselor at all about your sister?” he asked, even though he knew it was potentially throwing a lit match on paraffin.

“No, I have not spoken to a bloody grief counselor,” she snapped back. “I’m not some sort of loony that needs to be carted off to Bedlam.”

It said something about the entire Hawthorne family that everyone in the room seemed to take a collective breath of understanding and relax.

If Nancy had left it there, they might have been able to put out all the fires sooner, but she charged on with, “What sort of bleeding-heart, left-wing playground is this? Obscene art on the walls, trying to force me to talk about my feelings, and this person who obviously doesn’t know what God intended for them trying to touch me.”

They’d been so close to coming to an understanding.

“I will not have you insulting Early like that,” Rhys said, raising his voice when he probably shouldn’t have. He squeezed Early’s hand tightly in his as well. “They are a valued member not only of the staff of the Hawthorne Community Arts Center, but a beloved friend of my family as well.”

Nancy opened her mouth like she was going to argue the point, but Rhys cut her off with, “How dare you come in here demanding respect and understanding from us when you can’t even be bothered to show it yourself? Is that how your sister would want you to behave?”

Again, with an inward cringe, Rhys was certain that was the wrong thing to say. But he had Raina on his mind and had all morning, since he’d gone down to his studio early, hoping theamazing and wonderful weekend he’d just had would help him break through the block he was having where Raina’s landscape was concerned.

Those hopes had failed him, though. He’d only stared at the imperfect landscape for half an hour before shuffling and muttering his way around his classroom, setting up for the day’s lessons and preparing for the new model who had taken Early’s place. Raina had stayed with him the entire time, and she was right back with him now…shaking her head at him from the great beyond.

Except instead of flying into a fit, Nancy went rigid with emotion for a few seconds before bursting into sobs.

Early sucked in their breath, squeezing Rhys’s hand, hugging his arm, and glancing up plaintively at him. That quick, simple show of compassion reverberated through Rhys, spurring him on.

He let go of Early’s hand and stepped close to Nancy. Knowing full well it might backfire on him, he enclosed the sobbing woman in a hug.

To his and everyone else’s surprise, Nancy leaned heavily into him, closing her arms around his waist and burying her head against his chest. He was at least a foot taller than her, and she nearly disappeared in his hug.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she moaned, her hands fisting in his shirt. “She was there and then she was gone. I never even got to see her again. And now my bastard of a brother wants to rush in and use her death to bring attention to himself.”

Rhys breathed in, glancing at his dad. The expression his dad wore seemed to confirm that he’d come to the same conclusion, that they’d unwittingly been thrown into another family’s internal drama.

“Why don’t we take you for a tour of the house,” Rhys’s mum said, stepping forward slightly. “If you see all the work we’vedone preparing for the event on Friday, maybe it will change your mind about the whole thing.”

She looked pleadingly at Rhys, passing on the responsibility for the alarming woman’s wellbeing to him.

“I’d be happy to come with you,” Early said, surprising Rhys with the kindness of their offer when the woman had said such ignorant things about them to their face.

Rhys got another surprise when Nancy rocked back, sniffled, wiped her face, and said, “Alright.”

Things moved relatively quickly from there. Early took Nancy into the breakroom so she could wash her face, and Rhys’s parents and Rebecca circled around him.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Rebecca whispered.

“This is a terrible idea,” Rhys murmured back. “But I know what she’s feeling, and…and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we can’t have her force us to call the fundraiser off this close to the day. We’ve invested too much into the whole thing.”

He hoped his family would think he was just talking about the silent auction and the money they would raise for CADD, but as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was now emotionally invested in the questionable tribute to Raina as well.

“If anyone can calm her down, it’s you, son,” his dad said, clapping a hand on Rhys’s shoulder.

Ten minutes later, as he and Early walked Nancy around the first floor, showing her the various classrooms and explaining the sort of art classes they taught there, he wasn’t as sure.

“You turned a perfectly good aristocratic estate into a bohemian arts center?” Nancy asked incredulously after they’d visited Robbie’s ceramics studio.

“Technically, it was turned into a convalescent hospital at the end of World War One first,” Early said in their soft, soothing voice. “Then it was made into a boys’ school after the Second World War. The school folded in the nineties, at which time thehouse reverted back to the family, who transformed it into the wonderful community arts center you see now.”

Nancy blinked at them.

Rhys smiled and slipped a hand to the small of their back in a gesture of approval and affection. He had no idea that Early knew the entire family history or that they could deliver it as if they were one of the Hawthornes.

Early should have been one of the Hawthornes. As far as Rhys’s heart was concerned, they already were. His mind might have been cautioning him not to get ahead of himself and write his own fairy tale, but even that part of him agreed Early had managed to leave the nest and land exactly where he belonged.

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