“Yesterday. I meant to tell you sooner, but last night was good, and I didn’t want to ruin it with him.”
“Why did you call him and what happened?”
“I got this idea in my head that he might know what the value of the winery is outside the obvious, but the minute I heard his voice, I had second thoughts. I don’t trust him. I was afraid that if I alerted him to a potential payoff, that despite being a wealthy man, he might try to take it.”
Smart girl, I think. “Then what did you say to him?”
“I blurted out that my mother said that my father liked to watch my mother with other men and asked if he was one of them.”
“Holy shit, woman,” I say, scrubbing the new day stubble on my jaw. “What did he say?”
“He didn’t say no. He talked around it.”
“Holyfuck.”
“I know. But what doesn’t make sense is why my father would be furious about him sleeping with my mother if they’d already been together. As in all of them. Unless their fallout wasn’t about sex at all.” She shakes her head. “But then he swears he and my father made up before my father’s death.”
“Something with him doesn’t add up, but Beck can’t connect the dots between him and the bank. Whatever the case, I’m moving forward. I’m going to get in front of a judge and get you out of probate. But from a timeline standpoint, I may have been overly ambitious with that Thursday night dinner with Kasey. Let’s make it Friday night.”
“He’ll be fine with that. I talked to him today and I’m feeling really good about him running things without me.”
“Good. You’ve come a long way in a short while, sweetheart. And on that note. Show me what you painted this morning.”
She stands up. “Not what I was supposed to be painting,” she confesses as we start walking.
“What were you supposed to be painting?”
“Something appropriate for the show,” she says. We start up the stairs and she adds, “I’m obsessed with those eyes. And I don’t even think it has anything to do with the whole ‘face the past’ motto I’d used when I picked up the brush. It’s just different and challenging. I’m enjoying it.”
“You know the saying. Do what you love and success will follow.”
“I need to move on and work on my final show piece. Oh, and that reminds me. Sara wants me to do a mural in one of the offices.”
“What kind of mural?”
“It will cover one of the walls and it can be anything I want it to be, but it’s kind of intimidating. Chris painted her office.”
“You need to stop comparing yourself to Chris.”
“Funny you say that.Hesaid that.”
“Maybe he’ll be the mentor you need then,” I say, as we enter the studio and cross to stand in front of her canvas, which is now well developed. One of the eyes is now filled with a rainbow of colors. The other is red and black. Almost as if it’s her past and her present. And I can’t explain what it is about two eyes on a canvas, but it’s brilliant. “You have to put this in the show.”
“No,” she says. “Macom will read into it and I don’t want that drama. The entire point in this painting was to face the past and get rid of it.”
“You just said it had become about the challenge. And it shows. And if you want to stick to the original theme of facing your past, face Macom with this painting. Get rid of him in person. And if he doesn’t get the idea, I’ll handle him.”
She narrows her eyes on me. “You want trouble.”
“I love trouble.”
“You want trouble with him.”
“I want to beat the shit out him.”
“Nick. You can’t—”
“I can,” I say, pulling her to me, “but I won’t.”