Page 88 of Drawing Home
He pointed at her and waved his finger. “The past is never over. The past informs the present and therefore shapes the future.”
When they’d decided to create their own graphic novels, he said his story would be about his past. Penny said she didn’t know what to write about, and he advised her to just make something up. She tried, but there was a problem—she was a decent artist, but she wasn’t a great creative writer. That’s why she’d never finished the superhero story. But now, with the real-life drama unfolding this summer, the story was writing itself.
It was weird; in some ways, the boat accident was the best thing that could have happened to her. Yeah, the cast was annoying, and when she got an itch it was enough to drive her crazy. But given her own physical limitations and the fact that her friends were grounded, she was free of the pressure she usually felt to run around with them and try to fit in. She felt calmer. And with not much else to do, she focused on creating. This made her feel closer to Henry, like, yes, he was gone, but a part of their friendship was still alive. Of course, she wished he were there to see it. Maybe this was what he meant about the past informing the present. For the first time, she was looking back at something. It made her feel sad but also a little more grown up.
With a few quick strokes of her pencil, she began sketching her mother into the scene with Queen Bea.
That’s it!Penny thought excitedly, writing out the words. She had the title of her novel.
She reached for her laptop and opened her browser to a link she’d saved earlier in the week. It was a graphic-novel contest she’d found on an online art journal calledArtHub.Now that her story was really coming together, she was going to enter it.
It was amazing how things were turning around. Maybe Dr. Wang was right about thinking positively. For the first time all summer, she felt like things were going to be okay.
Emma paced in her bedroom and lit a cigarette, the first one she’d had since she’d been pregnant with Penny.
She opened the window and tried to wave the smoke toward it. Then she pulled out her phone and dialed. No one agreed with her on this, but she had to talk to Mark. Hand shaking, she tapped in his number. Her call went straight to voice mail.
Coward.She’d spent the last two hours Googling New York State child-custody law. She knew she should stop. It was like looking up symptoms on the internet when you felt sick; everything came back as cancer. Still, she couldn’t stop herself.
Someone knocked on her door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
Kyle. “Just a minute.” She flushed her cigarette down the toilet, wiped her tearstained face, and let him in.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“You doing okay?”
“Fine,” she said, closing the door behind him.
He sat on the edge of her bed. “You smoke?”
“No,” she said, looking at the floor.
“Emma, it’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The only thing you can do is fight back.”
She nodded. “I realize that. I’ve been making calls. Sean referred me to a lawyer he knows in town. I have an appointment the day after tomorrow.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I know I keep saying this, but I can’t believe this is happening.”
Her phone buzzed with a text.
I told you, I only want what’s best for Penny.
Heart pounding, she wrote back,Bullshit.
Have you told her what’s going on?
No. And I’m not going to. Mark, don’t do this.She watched three dots form as he wrote his response, then they disappeared.
She paced in front of the bed, glancing at the phone again, knowing it was useless to appeal to Mark’s decency. Kyle was right; the only thing she could do was fight back. She would move money out of her meager savings account. Whatever it cost. She could give up the Mount Misery house and put what she would spend on rent toward this legal battle.
