Page 106 of Drawing Home
“Bea,” Angus said, his expression softening. “I never thought you were a villain. I just knew Emma wasn’t at fault here. If anyone muddied the waters, it was Henry. He should have made his intentions clear to you.”
It was true. And she knew it wasn’t an oversight.
She turned to the last pages of the book and paused at the empty dining room of Windsong, the pool visible through the wall of glass.
Angus read through Penny’s book, chuckling at some of her dialogue. He pulled aside one page, a drawing of the four of them facing off around the dining-room table. It was the day Bea had first discovered them at the house.
“Henry knew you for many years, right?” Angus said.
“Over fifty,” she said.
“He might have guessed you would run out here, lay claim to the house. That you wouldn’t give up so easily. He could have avoided that if he’d told you his wishes ahead of time. Okay, let’s say he didn’t want to argue with you, didn’t want to debate it. He could have just left you a note with his will stating his intentions. And that could have prevented this scene.” He slid the drawing over to her. “You told me once he did everything by design.”
Bea took the paper from him.Every blank piece of paper is just a drawing waiting to be completed.
“What are you saying?”
Angus shrugged. “I didn’t know the man very well. I met him a few times picking up Penny from the hotel. But I do know that when my wife was ill, she was thinking more about me than about herself. That’s what you do when you love someone. She didn’t want me to be alone and she made me promise to stay with the Mapsons. She said she couldn’t rest in peace knowing I was alone.”
Bea turned to the back of his book, the final empty pages. And she slid Penny’s drawing of the four of them standing together in the dining room right into the end. She looked at it and shook her head.
“Henry would know I’d never want to live out here with some woman and her child. That’s not who I am! No, this isn’t the answer at all.”
And yet her hand shook as she closed the book.
Chapter Forty-Four
Her mother had sneaked off without saying good-bye that morning. She thought Penny didn’t know about the court date, but Penny knew everything. How could she not? Her mom did a lot of talking, and really, most of the house was just one big open room. It had been a lot easier to keep secrets on Mount Misery. That’s how Penny had gotten herself into trouble in the first place.
She didn’t say any of this to Dr. Wang.
“Your mother’s not here today?”
Penny shook her head. “Just me.”
Angus was outside in the waiting room. He’d told her on the drive over that her mother had a “meeting.” Secrets! Lies! The endless suckage of being a kid. This had to do with her life too. Didn’t anyone care about that? Just thinking about it made her squirm in her seat.
She considered a trip to the bathroom, but then remembered she didn’t have her Purell. She was trying, really trying, not to give in to her compulsions. She’d left her hand sanitizer at home on her nightstand.
“How’s the positivity board going?” Dr. Wang asked.
“I haven’t worked on it very much,” Penny said.
“And why is that?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Penny, if you don’t do your exercises and follow my directions, then I can’t help you.”
Maybe not. Butsomethingwas helping. She thought of the way she’d bossed it back at the ocean that day with her dad. She thought of the entire graphic novel she’d written without throwing away drawings to start over. She looked at the back of her hands, barely dry. No cracks. No bleeding. Didn’t Dr. Wang notice?
Art was her positivity board. But Dr. Wang would never understand.
Emma thought she had mentally prepared herself for the court appearance. But she realized, sitting on a long wooden bench in the corridor of the courthouse, that all along she had been in some degree of denial. Accepting the full weight of the situation all these weeks would have crushed her. Now, seeing Andrew Port walk in wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, there was no avoiding what was happening, no glossing over what was at stake. Her insides felt like liquid, like the only thing holding her together was the external shell. Even that was about to crack.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Just sit tight,” Andrew said. She watched him walk down the hall to consult with Mark’s lawyer, Carter Shift, a much older, stout man wearing a seersucker suit and a pink and silver tie. So far, she hadn’t seen Mark. The sight of him should just about do her in entirely.
She fumbled through her bag for the paperback she’d brought with her. It was a reread—she couldn’t focus on anything new. She opened the book and the words swam in front of her eyes, as impossible to process as if they’d been written in a foreign language.
