Page 2 of Beautiful Savage
"Good. The girls are working hard." I take the coffee, careful our fingers don't touch. The first sip coats my tongue with vanilla and sugar, exactly how he thinks I take it.
"Listen, the parent committee is doing movie night Friday. Town square, big screen. The Princess Bride."
Of course. The safest movie in existence. True love and sword fights and nothing that would scandalize Pristine's delicate sensibilities. Nothing dark anywhere near its edges.
"I'm running the projector," he continues. "Thought maybe you'd want to come? Just popcorn and a movie. Nothing fancy."
Nothing fancy, but everyone would see us there together. The whole town watching while we share a blanket on the grass. Another step toward what they've all been waiting for: Daphne Gilles finally settling down with the nice boy who owns the hardware store.
"That sounds lovely." My voice is warm, the same deflection I've perfected over two years, though part of me wonders howmany more times I can say no before the yes comes out from sheer exhaustion. "But Papa needs help with the garden this weekend. We're transplanting the tomatoes. And I promised Miss Macie I'd help with the spring fair planning. You know how she gets when the details aren't perfect."
His smile doesn't falter. Two years of patient smiles that don't falter. He accepts the deflection with the same grace he always does, knowing this isn't really a no. It's a delay. We both know the town's clock is ticking in his favor.
"Maybe next time, then."
"Maybe next time."
He walks to his truck, a newer model than mine, cleaner, with a hardware store logo on the door. Waves as he pulls out. I wave back.
My smile holds until his taillights disappear. Then my jaw aches from the effort, and I let my face fall into something real: tired, hollow, honest. Just for these three seconds alone in my truck.
I pull out onto Pristine's familiar streets, safe and suffocating. In the rearview mirror, the town follows me all the way home.
Afternoon light fills our kitchen through windows that need cleaning. The humidity makes everything feel damp, even inside. Papa has made soup, something with lentils and vegetables from the garden. We eat at the wooden table that's older than I am, its surface marked with decades of meals and spilled paint.
"The Hendersons' girl still struggling with turnout?" Papa tears bread, his fingers stained with ultramarine and cadmium yellow.
"She's getting there."
"Patient teacher." He watches me over his spoon. "How are you sleeping?"
"Fine."
The pause stretches. His thumb traces the table's deepest gouge, the one from when Maman dropped the cast iron pot, laughing at her clumsiness. We both look at it. Neither speaks. Some ghosts are too familiar for words.
He sets down his spoon, and I know what's coming by the particular way he tilts his head when he's about to push past my answers.
"You look tired,ma belle."
"Just the heat. You know how it is in March. Everyone thinks it's winter but it's still eighty degrees." I deflect automatically.
He doesn't contradict me. Just keeps watching with those painter's eyes that see everything and say only half. His question hangs between us. He knows I'm not sleeping well, knows something is wearing on me, but he lets me deflect because that's what we do.
After our late lunch, we walk through the back garden to his studio. The path is overgrown with jasmine and wild flamevine, the scent thick and almost suffocating in the afternoon humidity. Spanish moss drapes from the old oak like torn lace. Inside, the studio smells like linseed oil and turpentine, like home. Canvases lean against every wall. The skylights need cleaning too, but the filtered light is perfect for painting.
"New landscape." He shows me his current work: the town square at dawn, the bandshell pale in early light. "Before the people come. When it's just itself."
"It's beautiful."
"Beautiful and empty are not the same thing." He doesn't look at me when he says it, but his words are loaded with meaning.
We walk back through the cottage. The living room walls hold his paintings of me, years of them. Daughter at window, staring at something beyond the frame, her face half in shadow,hand pressed against glass. Daughter in kitchen chair, hands folded, expression unreadable, the morning light making her look translucent. Daughter with hair covering her face, only the line of her jaw visible, shoulders curved inward like she's protecting something. I pass them without looking. They've been there so long they're just furniture now. The girl in those paintings is someone I used to know.
Papa touches my shoulder at the front door. "The garden can wait, you know. If you want to do something else next weekend."
He kisses my forehead. Paint smell and coffee and the warmth of the only parent I have left.
My bedroom door closes with a click. I turn the lock, the one I installed myself seven years ago. Pull the blackout curtains across the single window. The room becomes a cave, separate from the rest of the cottage, separate from Pristine.
