Page 89 of A Photo Finish
“And what was her response?” There’s no hint of judgment in her voice. For some reason, I was expecting a scolding for being such a self-centered prick. I’m always expecting people to see the worst in me.
“In much kinder words, she said something along the lines of fuck you and get your shit together.”
“I do like this woman.” Trixie adjusts herself in her seat and watches me thoughtfully. I can feel the old crone’s eyes on me. I can hear the wheels turning in her head. “Tell me, what do you like about her?”
“What are we doing? Making a pros and cons list here?”
Trixie gives me a look as if to say,Are you done yet?I sigh, feeling lame waxing poetic about a girl on my shrink’s couch. I’m a walking fucking stereotype.
“Okay. Most of all, I like how driven she is. She hit the road on her own, to carve her own path, and has worked her ass off to get it. I admire that. She’s calm and quiet, soothing, but not a pushover. I don’t feel agitated by her, even when she never stops asking questions. She’s thoughtful. She lets me have my issues and doesn’t look at me like I’m a puppy who’s been kicked a few too many times. She just reroutes, like I’m not an inconvenience to her at all. She’s just . . . She’s like sunshine on my face. Warm and bright. I feel like I’ve been living in the shade, in a dark corner, and rather than dragging me kicking and screaming out of it—like so many people have tried to—she’s just shifted over a little bit to share her light.”
I watch the multicolored dots move across the ceiling from the prisms, the pattern swaying slightly as the crystals do. They’re hypnotic. My voice comes out hoarse, “I don’t want to live in the dark anymore.”
Trixie looks up at the ceiling too, her neck stretching out above the big wooden beads of her necklace. “Pretty, aren’t they?”
I swallow audibly, trying to clear my throat before I say anything. “Very,” is what I manage.
“It’s fitting, you know. Those crystals in the window are called suncatchers.” I blink rapidly. “They’re good feng shui.” I snort, but Trixie ignores me. She knows I’m not into that kind of stuff but carries on anyway. “They take the sun’s energy and cast it around, breaking up negative energy. Positive light. Healing light. Brightness and color.”
I know it’s my turn to respond, but I’m too choked up to do it. I just make a gurgling noise. Caught up in what she’s telling me, without really saying it. What are the chances I message Violet? What are the chances we forge a friendship? What are the chances she ends up working for my family? What are the chances I think of her as the sun while I’m staring up at a fucking suncatcher? Everything about us feels so unlikely, and yet so fated. After all the bad things that have happened to me in my life, it’s hard to wrap my head around the universe shoving a gift like Violet in my face over and over again. But it’s too much to ignore.
“You fell in love with that woman’s drive. Her passion. Her spark for life. Herlight.What if, rather than throwing that all away, you became her suncatcher? Take that light and amplify it in every way you can. Bask in it. How wondrous to have found it!” She claps her hands excitedly. “But light is tricky. It slips through your fingers. It’s fleeting. It comes and goes. We never get to possess it; you can’t hold it in your hand. We just get to enjoy it. And if you can figure out a way to just let go andenjoy it, well, Cole, you’ll be one of the lucky ones.”
Lucky.I’ve never considered myself to be lucky. My dad, my leg, my engagement, my mental health. Money doesn’t matter when everything else around you is shit.
I can’t hide the crack in my voice when I respond, “And what if something happens to her?”
“But what if nothing happens to her, and you spend the rest of your life missing out on all that light?”
One voice in my head screams out louder than all the other ones. All the doubting ones. All the hateful ones.
I don’t want to live in the dark anymore.
* * *
One stepI need to take with getting my life back is rekindling some sort of relationship with my baby brother. Trixie only confirmed this for me as our conversation went on this morning. Which is why I’m here, sitting on the front step of his cottage while he’s not home, waiting for him to get back. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him.Hey, want to sit down and drink a bottled water while I tell you about how I’ve been pretending not to be an amputee for the last six years? Cool, right? Super normal, I know, thanks.
I groan and cross my arms, kicking at a rock before me. I’m frustrated. I’m impatient. I want this all fixed now.Yesterday.
I want Violet back now.
How did I let this get so far out of hand?
I’m ready to jump into berating myself when Billie’s truck pulls up to the house.Great. Just what I need.
“Hey, big bro!” she calls as she hops out, just perpetually in a good mood or something. “Good to see ya.”
I eye her speculatively. I’d have thought Billie was mad at me for the shit I’ve pulled with Violet. But she’s acting totally normal instead. Annoying. She’s acting annoying.
“Do you call me that specifically to annoy me?”
Her brows knit together as she approaches the front porch. “No. I call you that because we’re going to be family, stuck together until we’re old and gray and wrinkly, and I’m going to soften you up eventually. I’m very likeable. You’ll see.”
Her ponytail swings as she stomps past me in her signature Blundstone boots. She enters the cottage saying nothing else to me, leaving me with my thoughts about how she just automatically assumes we’ll be family for the rest of our lives. Like it’s a fact, an unavoidable truth. I wish I had that kind of optimism where permanence is concerned. Nothing feels very permanent to me most of the time.
“Here.” She startles me as she reappears, dropping to my right on the step, and handing me a cold, brown bottle of beer.
I take it from her and trail my thumb across the condensation forming on the outside. “I don’t drink much.”
