Page 87 of The Moment of Letting Go

“Luke didn’t want you to know before,” she says, “because he thought it would scare you off. It always does with girls like you.”

“But what does—girls like me—I don’t understand.” I can’t decide which question to ask first.

Kendra smiles slimly, but it looks more apologetic than anything else.

“Sweet girls with their heads on straight and their feet firmly planted on the ground,” she says. “That’s all I mean.”

My gaze drops to the floor as I try to take it all in, but I’m just becoming more frustrated.

“What does he do, Kendra?”

“If he didn’t want you to know,” she says. “then it’s not my place to tell you. I really am sorry.” She fits her long fingers around the lever door handle. I get up from the bed and approach her. “About everything,” she goes on. “I didn’t mean to be such a bitch, and I think you’re a really nice person, not like those bitches that Seth goes through like socks.” She hesitates, but looks me right in the eyes. “Luke likes you a lot. I’ve never seen him as happy as he seems to be when he’s with you. Not even with any girl before Landon died. And Seth told me that when he talked to Luke this morning he didn’t seem himself. And it’s all my fault. And I’m just tryin’ to make it right by coming here and clearing the air. But Luke is in a lot of pain; not only because you left—that’s a given—but because he misses his brother and I worry about him a lot. We all do.”

Tears begin to well up in my eyes. I reach up and wipe underneath them. I want to know about this secret Luke has been keeping, this thing he’s so afraid will scare me off, but I want to go to him and be there for him, more than anything else. I want to hold him in my arms and let him use me to cry it all out if he needs to; I want to cry with him.

“Just do me a favor,” Kendra says at last. “It’s all I ask.”

I nod rapidly, eager to hear it and to oblige because, despite everything that happened before, I forgive her, and I feel really bad for her. And for Luke. My stomach is twisted in a thousand knots and my heart feels permanently broken, but for such a different reason than it did last night.

“If you decide to see Luke again,” she says with profound determination, “and if—when he tells you how Landon died, don’t let it scare you away. If you really like Luke as much as I think you do, remember why, and don’t let anything else change that.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been so baffled.

I nod, agreeing, even though I have no clue as to what I’m really agreeing to.

The door locks automatically behind Kendra after she leaves, and I’m left here alone, standing in a pool of confusion and dread. Why would how someone died scare me away? But mostly what I think about is the ominous feeling in my heart for Luke and what he must be going through. That’s what’s important right now. Luke lost his brother, and all I can think about is how much pain he must be in, how much he’s been in the whole time that I’ve been in Hawaii with him. I picture his smiling face and his infectious laughter and his vibrant, magnetic personality, and I wonder how he could be that way around me twenty-four hours a day and keep it together.

Then realization sinks in.

My shoulders slump with a long breath and I fall back onto the end of the bed and find myself staring at the carpet until the little specks of color bring weird spots before my eyes.

Luke always seemed distressed when it came to talk of his brother. I see it now for what it really was and I feel terrible for not pushing the issue further. I remember asking him about Landon once, about what was really bothering him, because I knew that something was. But I didn’t probe when he said nothing was wrong, and I feel nothing but guilt now. I should’ve dug deeper. I should’ve listened to my instincts.

TWENTY-THREE

Sienna

It’s raining again when I step off the plane on Kauai, and it rains on the taxi ride all the way back to Luke’s house. I pay the driver and step out into the downpour, covering my head with my hands until I make it up the steps, my purse hanging on one shoulder. My heart is beating a hundred miles a minute. I knew I’d be nervous to see him again after leaving the way I did last night, but things are so different now. I have so much to say, but, more important, I hope that Luke will give me so much to listen to.

The windows and doors are wide open like he usually leaves them, letting in the rain-cooled air and the ocean breeze. I hear music playing inside on the stereo in the living room, not too loudly but enough that he probably didn’t hear me pulling up in the cab or he might’ve come to answer the door already.

I stand in the doorway, looking into the living room through the screen, but Luke’s nowhere to be found. I knock lightly and wait. He never comes. Finally I open the screen door and let myself inside, feeling a little weird about it but knowing that Luke doesn’t mind and might even complain to me if he found out I stood out here and didn’t let myself in.

Unless he has a girl in there … No, I don’t even know why I thought that—Luke doesn’t seem the type.

“Luke?” I call out in a normal tone, walking through the living room. I set my purse down on the recliner as I walk by and slip down the hallway in my flip-flops.

A shadow moves along the wall from the room at the farthest end of the hall where Luke keeps his paintings. I step up to the open door to see him inside, wearing just a pair of running shorts, a paintbrush in one hand; a large canvas with familiar scenery stands nearly finished in front of him on an easel. There is paint everywhere—it looks and smells like fresh paint—even on Luke. A few splatters of green and yellow and brown are smeared across his shoulders. Paint streaks run down the backs of his hands as one moves furiously over the canvas; the other hangs at his side, his strong fingers arched. There’s paint on his muscled calves, clinging to his leg hairs. Little glass jars filled with paint are set on the floor beneath the easel. One has been knocked over, a puddle of blue pooling near Luke’s bare feet.

To see him standing there like this, I don’t just see a guy in front of a painting. I see a broken heart in front of a memory. As I study the scenery being created by his brush I quickly begin to realize where I’ve seen it before. At the community center. The enormous painting of the sheer rock wall covered by green that seemed to reach into the sky forever. A valley below, shadowed ominously, beautifully, by the rock around it. The painting I named the Bottom of the World. I wonder what Luke calls it.

My eyes move slowly about the room, the overcast light bathing the other paintings in a somber ambiance, most of which are of mountains and cliffs and the sky and the ocean seen only from above. But most of all, there are paintings of the Bottom of the World. Different sizes. Different angles. Different viewpoints. Some with sunlight beaming in thick, bright rays. Some with yellow trees instead of green. Some with fog. Some with rain. But all of them of the Bottom of the World.

This place, wherever it is it, holds a painful memory for Luke, and it tears me up inside to know that he’s still trapped there, that no matter how much he paints it, or how hard he tries to perfect it, it won’t relent and give him the closure he seeks. That’s what I see as I look at him; that’s what I feel.

With his back to me, I wonder if he even knows that I’m standing here, but he’s working on that canvas with so much passion and intensity that at first I can’t bear to interrupt him.

Then I see his strong shoulders rise and fall seconds later, just as his paintbrush falls away from the canvas and rests in his hand down at his side. I sense he knows now that I’m here, but he has yet to turn and face me.

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