Page 79 of Salvation
My eyes burn as I slowly drag them toward Campbell. He’s already looking at me, watching as if he needed to witness the moment himself.
“What is this, Campbell?” I ask, unable to bring my voice above a whisper even though it’s just us out here.
He stares straight into my soul when he says, “You gave me your reasons yesterday, Ivy—and I told you that none of themwere good enough—but you’ll never believe me if I just tell you. So, this is me showing you.”
“Showing me what?” I manage to choke out. My legs are shaking so hard that I’m not sure how I’m still standing, but I keep my eyes on him, waiting for his answer.
Campbell lifts his hand, wrapping his finger around my curl without looking. His eyes stay on mine as the corner of his mouth ticks up just an inch. “That you and I are inevitable.”
“Campbell—” I say his name, but then I stop because I don’t know what else to say. I don’t even know whatthisis.
“No, Ivy,” he says, shaking his head, “just let me show you.”
He drops my curl and grabs my hand, tugging me over to where the first canvas stands. It’s a landscape painting with orange and reds bursting through the skyline, creating a rudimentary sunset. Two silhouettes stand off in the distance, hardly recognizable, but I recognize the painting itself.
“This is the first painting you ever did,” he says, confirming what I was thinking. “It was your eighth-grade art project, and I remember begging you to let me keep it even though you thought it was terrible. You picked it apart for days, but I couldn’t help loving how the silhouettes reminded me of us.”
“I knew you kept it back then, but I—I thought you would have gotten rid of it by now,” I say, gently touching the brush strokes.
I hear Campbell move, and then I feel his breath tickling against the shell of my ear. “I kept everything that reminded me of you, Ivy.”
Just as quick as he appeared, he pulls away, giving me space before he drags me to the next painting and then the next and then the next. Each time it’s the same thing—memories disguised as paintings. A wrecking ball slamming into the walls I’m trying to keep in place. But as we walk from painting to painting, I can feel the chips in my armor.
One more painting sits at the other end of the clearing, beneath the limbs of the willow tree, but Campbell doesn’t have to drag me to this one. My feet move like I’m being drawn to it with the force of a magnetic field.
Just like all the other paintings, I recognize it, but this one is different because Campbell shouldn’t have it.
How does he have it?
I remember every painting I’ve ever painted because they all hold a piece of me, but this one holds more than just a piece. I painted every broken part of myself into it and never meant for it to see the light of day, and yet, it did. It started my career and simultaneously changed the course of my life.
The canvas sits unframed, emulating the willow tree it sits beneath. My eyes start at the bottom, knowing what I’ll find amongst the rough textures of gray and black oil paint. Leaves are ripped from the limbs, lying on incinerated roots stretching like dry bones across lifeless grass. The painting is colorless—except for the blood-red flames licking their way up the trunk. It’s a picture of devastation. Of destruction. Of me.
Campbell walks up beside me, and I reluctantly pull my gaze from the painting to him.
“Where did you get this?” I croak, my voice hoarse.
“I bought it at your first gallery show.”
“No,” I say with a slow shake of my head. “You didn’t. I know you didn’t because it sold to a—to a—” But I can’t finish that thought because something clicked in my mind.
“To a C. R. Benton? Yeah, that was me.”
My head feels like it’s spinning as I try to keep up with this conversation. Campbell Richards from Benton Falls. It would have been obvious enough, but I never dreamed Campbell would be at my show. I never thought it was a possibility.
“But if you were there, why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you come to me?”
Campbell scrubs his hand over his face, the sound of his calluses against his unshaven jaw sending a chill down my spine. “Because I was angry with you, Ivy. I was eighteen years old, and I’d just gotten onto the force. It’d been two years since your grandfather had convinced me that you had an abortion, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought if I could see you one more time, maybe I could start hating you like I should have. So I looked you up. I used my resources at the station even though it could have cost me my job. Then, I drove all night to see you. I found out about your gallery show, and I couldn’t stop myself from attending. When I got there, I stood outside on the sidewalk for a full hour, trying to convince myself to turn around and leave. Then I caught a glimpse of you through the window, and it was like those two years that you’d been gone hadn’t passed. You were the sun, and I was still drawn to you.”
“How did I not see you, Campbell? That art gallery was tiny.”
“Because I didn’t want you to. I stood in the shadows and watched you. You looked happy, and I hated you as much as I loved you because of that. I was miserable.”
I shake my head, denying what he’s claiming.“I wasn’t happy, Campbell. I just learned to fake it.”
“I know that now, sunshine, but I didn’t then. Anyway, I was about to leave when the willow tree painting went up for auction, and from the moment I laid eyes on it, I knew I needed it to be mine. I would have drained my entire trust fund to get it, but I didn’t want you to know I was buying it. Everything between us back then was so complicated.”
“It’s still complicated,” I say, resigned to the fact that I think it will always be that way for us.
