Page 109 of Midnight Valentine
I shut off the car and get out, the keys shaking in my hands. He speaks as soon as I’m within earshot.
“Did you ever meet Theo before you moved here?”
Suddenly, I’m breathless. My heart starts to hammer. “Why do you ask?”
He works his jaw, looking off into the distance for a moment. Then he pushes away from the car and pulls a set of keys from his pocket. “Let’s go in.”
I follow in rising panic as Coop ambles toward the barn, gravel crunching under his boots. It’s a bright, beautiful day, the air clear and cold. Coop unlocks the shiny padlock on the chain around the barn doors and drags the unwieldy wooden doors apart. They groan on rusty hinges, cantankerous as old men. With a jerk of his chin indicating I should follow, he disappears inside.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Hazy rays of light filter through cracks in the wood roof, lending the interior an otherworldly air.
Empty horse stalls line one side of the long room. On the other side, a tall, rickety wooden ladder leads up to a loft. Discarded pieces of lumber litter the dirt floor, and several of the wide beams supporting the roof show signs of water damage. A whisper of animal musk—dried dung from long-dead horses—hangs in the air.
So does the sharper, newer tang of oil paint and acetone, scents I’d recognize blindfolded.
“Doesn’t seem like a good place to store documents,” I tell Coop, trying to keep my voice steady though my pulse is racing and I’m starting to sweat.
“Guess Theo moved ’em out when he took up his secret hobby.”
He’s standing next to the ladder, looking at me with that odd, unnerved expression. I don’t bother asking which hobby he’s referring to, because I already know.
I look up at the loft, then back at Coop. He says quietly, “I hope you don’t spook real easy, ’cause this near scared the livin’ daylights outta me.”
He starts to climb.
I watch until he reaches the top and steps off the ladder, then I follow. When I get to the top, Coop grasps my hand to help me off, then steps back without a word, watching me closely to see my reaction.
But he’s already disappeared. I’m alone, all alone in what can only be described as a shrine.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of oil paintings in different sizes are stacked upright, leaning against the barn walls. More crowd every inch of the walls, hung haphazardly from nails. More are scattered carelessly on long rustic wood tables and all over the floor, piles and piles of them, an unending sea of canvas.
Some are unfinished. All are unframed. And every one of them depicts the same subject in various clothing, poses, and stages of undress:
Me.
Me walking in a vineyard with a glass of wine. Me in a bubble bath, laughing. Me riding a horse, washing the dishes, reading a book.
Me walking down the aisle in my wedding dress, holding a bouquet of purple sweet peas, the light of true love aglow in my eyes.
He even got the details of the scalloped neckline and the seed pearls on the bodice right. I press a hand over my thundering heart as tears threaten to crest my lower lids.
Coop’s quiet voice barely penetrates my cocoon of shock and memory. “They’re dated. I didn’t check them all, but enough to gimme the willies.”
I find enough presence of mind to turn my head and look at him.
Keeping his gaze steady on mine, he says, “Theo painted these before you moved to Seaside, Megan. The oldest one I found, near the back of that stack in the corner, is dated one month after his accident five years ago. How’s that possible?”
I drift over to the nearest table and run my fingertips over a half-finished painting of me sleeping, my hair spread over the pillow, a small smile on my lips. There’s a frenzied quality to the style, lots of quick, short strokes, as if he raced through it, abandoning it halfway in dissatisfaction.
You make all my broken parts bleed.
How awful it must have been for him, how terrifying, to finally see in flesh the person who’d been haunting all his waking hours like a ghost. No wonder he looked at me with such fury that first night at Cal’s Diner. He probably thought he was losing his mind.
I murmur, “Maybe he painted them since we met and dated them wrong. He’s been ill, you know that.”
Coop snorts. Spreading his arms wide, he says. “He painted all these since September? I don’t think so. And I found other weird shit in his office in the house too.”
“Like what?”
