“I’m here now. Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Things you need to know when you have a girlfriend.”
There was nothing I wanted to talk about less. “Dad, we don’t have to—”
“I have a lot of experience, you know. Your mother taught me a thing or two about women over the years.”
I started planning my escape route.
“If you ever want to talk about, you know…”
I could hurl myself through the study window and squeeze between the hedge and the house.
“Feelings.”
I almost laughed in his face. “What?”
“Amma says Lena’s having a hard time with her uncle’s passing. She’s not acting like herself.”
Lying on the ceiling. Refusing to go to school. Not opening up to me. Climbing water towers. “No, she’s all right.”
“Well, women are a different species.”
I nodded and tried not to look him in the eye. He had no idea how right he was.
“As much as I loved your mother, half the time I couldn’t have told you what was going on in her head. Relationships are complicated. You know you can ask me anything.”
What could I ask? What do you do when your heart almost stops beating every time you kiss? Are there times when you should and shouldn’t read each other’s minds? What are the early warning signs that your girlfriend is being Claimed for all time by good or evil?
He squeezed my shoulder one last time. I was still trying to put together a sentence when he let go. He was staring down the hall, in the direction of the study.
The framed portrait of Ethan Carter Wate was hanging in the hallway. I still wasn’t used to seeing it, even though I was the one who had hung it there the day after Macon’s funeral. It had been hidden under a sheet my whole life, which seemed wrong. Ethan Carter Wate had walked away from a war he didn’t believe in and died trying to protect the Caster girl he loved.
So I had found a nail and hung the painting. It felt right. After that, I went into my dad’s study and picked up the sheets of paper strewn all over the room. I looked at the scribbles and circles one last time, the evidence of how deep love can run and how long loss can last. Then I cleaned up and threw the pages away. That felt right, too.
My dad walked over to the painting, studying it as if he was seeing it for the first time. “I haven’t seen this guy in a long time.”
I was so relieved we had moved on to a new subject, the words came tumbling out. “I hung it up. I hope it’s okay. But it seemed like it belonged out here, instead of under some old sheet.”
For a minute, my dad stared up at the portrait of the boy in the Confederate uniform, who didn’t look much older than me. “This painting always had a sheet over it when I was a kid. My grandparents never said much about it, but they weren’t about to hang a deserter on the wall. After I inherited this place, I found it covered up in the attic and brought it down to the study.”
“Why didn’t you hang it up?” I never imagined that my dad had stared at the same hidden outline when he was a kid.
“I don’t know. Your mother wanted me to. She loved his story—the way he walked away from the war, even though it ended up costing him his life. I meant to hang it. I was just so used to seeing it covered up. Before I got around to it, your mom died.” He ran his hand along the bottom of the carved frame. “You know, you were named after him.”
“I know.”
My dad looked at me as if he was looking at me for the first time, too. “She was crazy about that painting. I’m glad you hung it up. It’s where he belongs.”
I didn’t escape the fried chicken or Amma’s guilt trip. So after dinner, I drove around the Sisters’ neighborhood with Link looking for Lucille. Link called her name between bites of a chicken leg wrapped in an oily paper towel. Every time he ran his hand over his spiky blond hair, the shine got shinier from all the grease.
“You shoulda brought more fried chicken along. Cats dig chicken. They eat birds in the wild.” Link was driving slower than usual so I could keep an eye out for Lucille while he beat time to “Love Biscuit,” his band’s terrible new song, on the steering wheel.
“Then what? You’d drive around while I hung out the window with a chicken leg in my hand?” Link was so transparent. “You just want more of Amma’s chicken.”
“You know it. And Coca-Cola cake.” He hung his drumstick bone out the window. “Here, kitty kitty…”