Page 103 of Drawing Home
“We have our first court date. July twenty-eighth.”
Hearing the wordcourt,she tensed. It suddenly felt ridiculous to be out having fun when so much was at stake. “And what happens then?”
“This is the custody conference that I told you about when we first met. Ideally, you and Mark will come to a compromise or some kind of agreement on this date and avoid further litigation. If that doesn’t happen, then we go to trial.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears.
“We’ll talk before then. But let me ask you while we’re on the phone—opposing counsel says you’re living with your new boyfriend and some other woman you just met this summer?”
“What? No—he’s not my boyfriend,” Emma said, glancing at Kyle. Kyle, who was next to her on the deck of a boat in the middle of the afternoon. “We’re just friends. I’m allowed to have friends, aren’t I?”
“Of course you are. Just…try to keep a low profile until the court date. Maintain normalcy. At this stage of the game, everything is fodder, you know what I mean?”
She did.
After she put her phone away, Kyle said, “What was that all about?”
“It was Andrew Port. The court date is set for the end of next week.” Kyle started to say something, but she cut him off. “I’m sorry, but I need to go back.”
“Okay, but—”
“Now!” she snapped, instantly regretting her tone, if not the sentiment.
“I’m trying to be supportive, Emma. Don’t keep pushing me away.”
She shook her head. “I need some space. And I really need for you to take me home.”
The woman at the circulation desk looked up at Bea, perplexed.
It was the same assistant librarian as the last time, the one with the long strawberry-blond hair and heavy bangs. The one who had not allowed her to take the drawings out of the library. The one who had somehow failed to mention that there was a Henry Wyatt graphic novel in the collection!
“Yes, ma’am. I do remember you being here last month and I do remember you asking to see the Henry Wyatt drawings. And I pulled all of the drawings for you.”
“But you never thought to mention that he hadan entire graphic novelhere?”
The woman consulted her computer screen, then looked back at Bea. “It’s actually listed here as nonfiction. It doesn’t say anything about format.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, never mind! Just show me where to find it.”
Bea followed the librarian up the winding marble staircase to the rotunda and into the same back room where the sketches were stored.
The woman consulted a Post-it note, then checked the spines of a row of books on one of the higher shelves. Finally, she pulled out a slim paperback volume.
“Here you go,” she said, handing it to Bea. “Would you like to check it out?”
Bea stared at the cover, marveling at the parallel to Penny’s. It was a drawing of the exterior of Windsong, so finely sketched, it was like she could reach out and feel the texture of the stone. At the bottom, his initials. There was no title.
“I’m going to check it out, yes,” Bea said. “After I read it. If you’ll excuse me.”
The rotunda was quiet. Who else would be in the library on a flawless July afternoon? Bea switched on the Tiffany lamp at one of the tables even though sunlight flooded the room. She didn’t want to miss a single detail, not even the faintest stroke of his pencil.
Henry, why did you make it so difficult for me? I suppose you wanted us to have one last adventure.
She turned the pages gingerly. Henry’s final work. Who would have imagined this was the form it would take? Life was a strange road, but perhaps never stranger than in the path of an artist. These were the people she’d chosen to surround herself with, and she should have learned by now to embrace their vagaries.
The first drawings were all familiar images—their old gallery on Spring Street, his apartment on the top floor, and sketches of himself and Bea. His rendering of Bea was much more flattering than Penny’s drawings. He’d captured Bea in her prime. How many people were left who remembered her like that? Now, thanks to Henry, that era was immortalized right there, in black and white. It felt like a love letter.
The images shifted from the industrial streets of 1980s SoHo to the two of them driving in the quiet backwoods of the South Fork of Long Island. The American Hotel’s exterior appeared in one frame. On the following page, a replica of a drawing she’d seen at the whaling museum, the one of the hotel bartender. The man Bea now knew to be Emma Mapson’s father.
