Page 10 of The Write Choice

I take a few steps inside the bedroom, and that’s when she notices me. She slides her headphones off so they rest around her neck, letting the soft music escape into the room. She taps her phone a few times and the music stops.

“You’re drawing.” My voice is quiet. I don’t mean to sound surprised, but I am.

She quickly flips the sketchbook closed. Her eyes fall to her hands, and if I’m not mistaken, her cheeks flush slightly. Is she embarrassed I saw her?

“Oh,” she says, and when she raises her eyes to me again, that steely look I’ve become so accustomed to over the past few months is back, but it’s lost some of its edge. She stands and comes around to the side of the bed toward me. “You said I should do whatever I want, and the light here was perfect today, so I thought…” She trails off, looking back toward her easel. She shakes hear head, avoiding my gaze. “Anyway, I’m done now.”

I study her for a moment, willing her to look at me again. I take another few steps toward her, but she won’t meet my eyes. “You don’t have to stop on my account. Christine is sleeping, and I can take care of her when she wakes up.”

She shrugs but doesn’t say anything, so I reach out my hand to gently cup her cheek. Her skin is so fucking soft.

“Hey,” I say, drawing her jaw up gently so she’ll look at me. “Is this what you want? Time to do your art again?”

She swallows, her eyes finally meeting mine. “Maybe? I don’t know. It was just the first thing I thought to do with my time.”

I nod slowly, my mind racing. I can do this for her. I can give her the time and space for her to do whatever she wants, whatever makes her happy.

“It feels a little pointless, though,” she continues.

I pinch my eyebrows together, my hand still on her cheek. I’m heartened that she hasn’t pulled away yet. “Why?”

Her gaze falls to something over my shoulder. “Who’s even going to see it?”

“Do you want people to see it?” I ask, my voice still quiet. This is the most intimate conversation we have had in a long time, and I’m trying really hard not to say the wrong thing and blow it.

She shrugs, still not meeting my eyes. “Maybe.”

I press my palm into her cheek a little more, and she finally looks at me, allowing me to see the uncertainty in her eyes. I fight against a soft smile, not wanting her to think I’m mocking her. “Art now, audience later,” I say. It’s something she always used to say to the artists at the gallery where she worked when they were feeling particularly vulnerable. She parroted it to Mason last year when he decided to enter an art competition at his school.

Ever so slowly, a smile starts to spread across her face and holy shit, it’s so bright and beautiful that I can’t breathe. Seeing her dazzling face makes me realize how long it has been since I’ve seen her truly smile like this, and my chest physically hurts with the desire to make her smile more often.

She leans almost imperceptibly closer to me, and my fingers brush a few tendrils of her platinum blonde hair that have fallen out of her bun. I reflexively curl my fingers around the back of her neck, and her eyelids flutter closed.

After months of the cold shoulder, I’m going to kiss my wife. Do not screw this up, I tell myself as I lean in close enough to feel her sweet breath on my lips.

The moment our lips brush against each other, a retching sound comes from Christine’s bedroom followed by a miserable wail.

“Moooooooommy,” she cries. Katie’s eyes snap open, and she backs away, moving around me toward the door.

“I’ve got her,” I say, but Katie shakes her head and wordlessly opens the door to Christine’s room, disappearing inside.

I hear their muffled voices, and I know I should go to help, but before I can grab a towel and get in there, Katie’s sketchbook catches my eye. Confident that they won’t be coming out any time soon, I flip it open to the page she was working on.

It’s a familiar scene of a man holding a small child in his arms. The child is holding a pumpkin, and there’s another, older kid reaching for it. It looks strikingly similar to the scene we encountered when we found Daniel and Mac’s friend, Ben, in the pumpkin patch with his nephews last fall. We were on our way to “help Jenny with her grand gesture,” as Katie put it. The kids hit it off after that, which made me even more certain this move would be good for all of us. But why would she be drawing Ben and his nephews?

I take a step closer, squinting at the shape of the man’s body. Real-life Ben is jacked and spends an inordinate amount of time at the gym. This man doesn’t even come close to him. He’s got a little bit of a dad bod, to be honest, and the kid he’s holding is clearly a little girl, not a boy.

Then, it hits me. She was drawing me and the kids. That little light in her eyes that she tried to hide from me was brought on by her drawing us playing and having fun together.

It doesn’t escape me that she had to put me and the kids in a fake scene because I’m gone so often, but I can work with this. I can be around more and have fun with the kids. I can give her time to create this art if that’s what is going to make her happy. I can make her smile like that again.

“Brandon,” she yells from Christine’s room. “Can you get a bath started?”

“Sure,” I call back, making sure to flip the sketchbook closed again. “Whatever you need.”

Chapter 4

Katie