“Correction.” Brit peeked behind the beer mirror to see how it was hung, glad to find a thick wire and two big hooks. “You like a guy who’s a challenge. I like nice guys.” Ones who didn’t suck the emotional energy—the lifeblood of Brit’s creativity—out of her. “Grab the other side of the mirror and lift.”
“Hanging your sculpture here worries me.” Despite her reservations, Reggie did as asked and helped Brit store the mirror in the back room. She returned to stare at the mermaid. “Don’t put this up. It’s a barbershop, Brit. There’s no future for you here.”
“Agreed. But that doesn’t mean I want to work in a plain box, or give up hair and go halfsies on the B and B with you.” Brit pulled two utility hooks from her coverall pockets and considered where to put them in the wall. “This is just to fill the gap until my art career takes off.”
“Do you know how many artists are self-sufficient?” Reggie, being Miss Glass-Half-Empty, said. “You wouldn’t be on your feet all day if you owned half the B and B. You’d have plenty of energy and time to make more pieces like this.” Was that a hint of desperation in her voice?
Impossible. Reggie had emotional shock absorbers to take life’s bumps in the road effortlessly. She planned her future like an airline pilot planned the route to his next destination. She’d never be desperate. Besides, she’d been talking about running the B and B for years. It had been her favorite topic with Dad.
Brit studied Keira’s flowing lines. The effortless wave to her hair had taken days to achieve, with Dad on the sidelines cheering her on. She’d never sell Keira because she’d never create anything as perfect as the mermaid again. If she created anything ever again. Geez. Now, that’s maudlin. And Reggie was waiting for an answer. She tossed her a question instead. “Do you know how many B and Bs make a profit?”
“Touché,” Reggie murmured. That didn’t stop her from presenting her case. “But owning the only rooms for rent in this town will be profitable when the winery becomes more popular.” Wine-thirsty tourists were already making the trek to this far-flung corner of Sonoma County. “Can’t you see that?”
“The only thing I can see is a blank wall. You know white space bugs me.” Brit walked to the truck for a drill and a hammer.
A few minutes later, Keira hung on the wall. Her aluminum hands held the handlebars and the rest of her swam whimsically above the bike as if she was riding underwater.
Reggie stepped back to view the piece. “People will want their hair cut just to get a look at her.”
“My wallet hopes you’re right.” Regardless, there was something about the mermaid’s balanced, carefree movement that made her breathe easier. “This sculpture... It’s the first one I’ve created that made me feel like a real artist.” One that other artists could respect. One that Dad could be proud of.
Before Keira, people had looked at her creations and said, “How nice.” Which was their polite way of covering their real opinion: What is that supposed to be? Brit could always sense the truth by their carefully modulated tone of voice. Which made her resentful of their need to try to be kind. Which made her hate anything other than the truth in all aspects of her life.
Reggie hugged her. “Leona wants you to come to dinner tonight. And I want you to be my partner in the bed-and-breakfast, but if you become the next art world sensation, I won’t complain.”
“Much.” Brit smiled at her twin. “Lighten up. You’ll buy out Grandmother Leona and be a success without me.”
Reggie didn’t look so sure.
“YOU SHOULD’VE SOLD the lady the grille.” Sam spoke with the gravitas of an eleven-year-old who knew everything as she washed her hands in the chipped kitchen sink in the apartment over their repair shop.
Joe couldn’t smile like a good dad should’ve at his daughter’s wisdom. His smile had gone the way of cement shoes off the end of a deepwater pier. “She wasn’t serious about paying.” If Brittany had been, she would’ve gotten out her cash then and there.
“We don’t work on wrecks,” Sam said. “We work on performance machines.”
Oh, for the luxury of ego.
Gone were the days of big-screen TVs in every room, recliners with heating massage and vehicles with air-conditioned leather seats. Joe took in the neglected bachelor pad. The brown couch with wooden arms must be from the 1950s. The small Formica table in the cramped dining area didn’t seem any newer. And he’d bet no amount of scrubbing would remove the scuff marks in the gray linoleum.
Joe had traded in the good life. In return, he hadn’t been arrested and had kept custody of Sam. He’d get used to the lack of finer things. He might never get used to being forced to choose between the uncle who’d saved him half a lifetime ago and Sam.
Sam, who needed to understand this was their new reality. Uncle Turo and his larger-than-life lifestyle was no longer an option.
“Those cars in the field?” Joe pointed out the window. “Those are the kinds of cars I used to work on when I lived here as a kid.” The kinds of cars that were going to provide for him and Sam for the next five to ten years. Less for good behavior.
“Ew.” She’d said that the first time they’d entered the apartment this morning. And again when she’d seen the hard-water stains in the toilet. And once more when she’d spotted a garden snake slither into a hole in the wall of the garage office.
That had made Joe want to say ew, too.
Once they were rid of the trespassers, they’d finished unloading the truck and trailer that had their beds and few belongings—the possessions the FBI let them keep. Only then had he spared a glance to the house he’d grown up in. The one he refused to live in.
Besides bad memories, there’d be too much square footage to heat or cool for it to make sense for him and Sam to move in there. He’d barely looked at the barn in back where the family had once kept their personal vehicles. It was practically drowning in blackberry bushes and would probably have more spiders and snakes than either he or Sam was comfortable with.
Instead, he’d chosen the apartment his grandfather, and later his Uncle Turo, had lived in. He focused on being thankful that he hadn’t done anything illegal, and concentrated on rebuilding his life and his daughter’s.
“We’ll inventory the cars in the field later and find out which ones we own.” He wouldn’t sell a car he didn’t have the legal title to. He led Sam downstairs, noting midway he needed to repair a soft tread. “We’ll start work on whichever one’s in the best shape once we get some paying customers.”
“Dad,” Sam said with lawyerly seriousness. “There is no best shape in that field.”
There was no best shape in his memories of this place either. Everywhere he looked he saw Uncle Turo. Around the field there were still remnants of the dirt track Uncle Turo had made for him and his brothers to race their motorcycles. In the kitchen cupboard he’d found an old container of Uncle Turo’s favorite spice, and his business cards were stacked behind the service counter. Everywhere he looked there was a memory of how Uncle Turo had shown up and held the family together after Mom left and Dad fell apart. It made Joe’s decision all the more painful.
He’d made the right choice, the only choice, a father’s choice. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel the consequences of his decision in the guilt rooted in his throat, the anger planted on his shoulders or the regret twined around his heart.
For Sam’s sake, he’d bound his guilt, his anger and his regret deep inside him. Only occasionally did the bindings unravel,