Page 69 of Painted

“Around the room you will also find lovely works from the various classes that are taught here at Hawthorne Community Arts Center,” she went on. “Raina was so proud of her students and of the work of our family and the community.” She started to choke up in earnest, which was Rhys’s cue to step in. “I’ve asked my son and Raina’s brother, Rhys, to say a few words about those efforts.”

Rhys hugged his mum briefly, then moved into her place as she slipped back to his dad’s side and hugged him.

Standing in front of a room filled with people who expected him to say something about Raina, Mariel, the accident, and the money they hoped to raise was far more intimidating than Rhys had expected it to be. He didn’t know how he was going to get the words out, or how he was supposed to move on.

“Raina and I were close,” he began, speaking a little too quietly, too much emotion in his voice already. “When you come from a family as large and eclectic as ours, it’s only natural that some of you stick together more than others. Robbie and Nally have a special bond, and our cousins Bax and Blaine are particularly close with their brother, Braydon. And as I understand it, Mariel and Nancy were very close as well.”

Rhys glanced at Nancy, smiling at her, hoping she could see that he understood.

He cleared his throat and continued.

“When you lose someone who you’re so close to, it’s like losing a part of yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lived your entire lives together or if you lose them after a short time, it leaves a hole in your heart that isn’t easy to fill. You can never fill the place where those people belong, you can only patch it with the memories of the love you’ve shared.”

The room was heavy with quiet, and Rhys spotted more than a few people dabbing at their eyes or fighting not to let their emotion show. But that was the point, really. Everybody lost people. It didn’t matter if it was death that took them away from you or conflict and misunderstanding. The set of people you started life with was rarely the set of people you carried with you throughout your entire life. It was the truest and hardest thing that anyone had to accept.

“Raina and I had a spot out in the garden where we liked to sit and figure out the world together,” Rhys went on. He had to pause to clear the burr in his throat that talking about Raina in such intimate terms gave him. “We both painted that viewdozens of times over for various projects and different reasons. Shortly after she died, I started a large-scale painting of that same view. My intention was to paint something that would fit in one of the large spaces we have in the front entrance hall. But almost from the start, I could feel that something wasn’t right about it.”

All those emotions welled up within him again, and he quickly sought out Early to be his anchor so that he could go on.

Early and Rebecca clung together, and Early watched him with a wealth of emotion in their eyes, sorrow as well as love. It may have been true that losing the important people from your life was inevitable, but finding new people to fill your heart was equally inevitable, as long as you didn’t let the darkness eat your heart entirely.

“It took Nancy here to make me see what was missing from this painting,” Rhys went on, smiling gratefully at Nancy.

“Me?” Nancy asked, blinking rapidly in surprise.

“Yes. You were absolutely right when you told me that I needed to find the emotion in the work. And the other night, even though it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever discovered,” his voice broke as he spoke, “I found it.”

He stepped aside to the curtain that he’d set up at the last minute. Without anyone’s knowledge but Early’s he’d moved Raina’s landscape into the dining hall and concealed it, waiting for that moment.

When he moved the curtain aside to reveal the painting, the room filled with gasps. His hands shook as he handed the curtain off to Nally, who rushed to help him. As difficult as it had been for Early to strip their body in order to pose for an art class, it felt equally as hard for Rhys to strip his soul so that the world could see that as well.

He peeked anxiously at the room filled with stunned faces as he inched his way back to the center of the dais. He knew somepeople wouldn’t understand the work. They would see a ruined landscape and nothing else. But others might see what it felt like to lose someone in the mess he’d made.

“The work is called ‘Grief’,” he explained, focusing on Early in the crowd so that he didn’t lose his nerve and try to hide his emotion when it was so important for people to see it. “I don’t think it needs more explanation than that.”

“No, it doesn’t,” his dad spoke behind him. “It’s wonderful.”

Rhys swallowed the lump and turned to smile at his parents. He wasn’t sure how they would feel about the work, but seeing the tears in their eyes now reassured him. They got it. Everything would be okay.

“It isn’t just about this painting either,” he went on. “The process of creating this work has taught me a lot about grief, about love, and about how we need to express those feelings of pain and loss instead of running away from them and pretending everything is fine when it’s not. Because of everything I’ve learned, I will be developing a unique painting class that I’m hoping to include as part of an art therapy program. I’d like to work with therapists and other professionals to create a program that can be offered free of charge to those with the most need for artistic expression like this.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, darling,” his mum said encouragingly, wiping her eyes with her free hand.

One or two people in the crowd began to clap, and within a few seconds an embarrassing swell of applause filled the room. Rhys was grateful for it for Raina’s and Mariel’s sake, but he didn’t feel right standing there on the receiving end of it.

“And now,” he spoke above the noise in order to quiet it, “Martin Flint has a few words he’d like to say about the silent auction, and then we can all have a seat and enjoy the amazing food that’s been prepared for us tonight by Leland Page and his crew.”

Rhys’s mum stepped forward to throw her arms around him in a tight, proud hug as Martin came up onto the dais. His dad hugged him as well as Martin started to speak. Rhys didn’t really hear what Martin had to say, but it didn’t matter. His part in the fundraiser that he’d been so deeply against at first was over. He had the future to look forward to now.

When his dad let him go, Nick stepped forward to shake his hand. “Thank you,” he said, tugging Rhys into a brotherly hug. Coming from a man as large as Nick, who had blacksmith’s arms, it almost felt like being crushed. “Raina would be so proud of you. She always was.”

“Thanks,” Rhys said in reply, squeezing Nick.

He moved to the side to listen to the rest of Martin’s speech about the money they would raise and how it would go to help CADD. Martin spoke about Mariel as well, and while Nancy listened with love and sadness in her eyes, Rhys felt like the two of them still had a long way to go before things were right between them. At least he had been able to help them start down the right path.

As soon as Martin was finished speaking, Rhys couldn’t get off the dais and across the crowded room to Early fast enough.

“That was beautiful,” Early said after Rebecca had taken a turn to hug him, too. “And the idea of art therapy classes is wonderful.”

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