False Impressions (28 page)
Yet, I suppose, I could also feel happy for the two of them. Because Madeline was no longer scared. Not in the slightest. And if there had been a hole in my friend’s heart, as Madeline said—a place that was empty, that knew something was missing—that hole seemed repaired now. Some part of Madeline’s heart and life had flowered. The twins were so elated together.
I glanced around. If I continued to believe in this concept of multifaceted emotional acceptance, I could feel many things about the man who had just walked up to our table.
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
My father smiled under his copper glasses. He shed a wool coat and nodded at Mayburn. He shook hands with Madeline, whom he’d met once before, and then my father slid into the booth next to me.
I felt the warmth of him, even through his clothes, as his forearm touched mine. If I believed in that multi-emotional concept then I could, I realized, hold many things about him in my mind, never having to go with only one. I could feel a little conflicted about the fact that my father was growing close with my mother’s best friend, Cassandra. (I felt a little like a piece of him was being taken away before I had a chance to enjoy it.) And yet I could be happy for him, too. I could be happy for the kids in me and Charlie, who were both thrilled that our father was around and that, for now, he wasn’t leaving Chicago.
“Hello!” I heard Bunny bellow. My eyes shot to her behind the bar.
When Bunny bellowed, it was rarely in a jovial way. But two of the few people Bunny loved—my mom and Spence—had entered the bar.
Bunny introduced them to Ella. My mother took to her immediately, even though I’d told her nothing about the case. I could hear her murmuring,
How are you? Lovely to meet you.
I watched them begin to talk.
In true Spence fashion, he began praising Bunny’s new property, pointing out aspects that were “Great! Just great!” He gestured toward the wood molding (it was truly molding, turning green), toward the jukebox (that held no songs past the 1980s), to the dusty wineglasses behind the bar. “Great!” he declared again. “Excellent!”
My mom and Spence—they were two people whom I felt a fountain of fondness toward. Nothing too conflicted about them right now, and for that I was grateful.
Another bellow. This time, Bunny moved around the bar, facing the entering patron, throwing her arms open like Evita Peron.
Vaughn.
The sight of Detective Damon Vaughn last summer? It would have slayed me, slit me open with fear.
But now he slayed me in a different way.
He searched the room for me with his eyes. I could tell by the way he looked, so anticipatory, so excited.
“Douchebag,” I heard Mayburn mutter.
“He’s gorgeous,” Madeline said.
He found me. Vaughn smiled a sly, sexy smile that I was starting (just a little bit) to adore. Who would have known that smile existed under the old exterior of him?
He stepped farther into the bar. “Hey, Iz,” he said, in a soft, familiar way. I let the thrill charge up my spine.
He held a wrapped package, the paper green and yellow. When I looked closer, I saw that it bore the Green Bay Packers logo.
“What is that?” I said, pointing.
“It’s a present for you.”
“That’s for me?”
“Yeah.” He sounded a little exasperated.
“You wrapped it in freaking Green Bay Packers paper?” Mayburn snarled. But when I glared, he had the decency to leave. Madeline smiled and went to her sister and my mom.
Vaughn sat and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. I looked down. “But I have to go with Mayburn for a second. Why would you wrap this in Packers paper when you know I love the Bears?”
What had we been doing this past month, I wondered, if not learning each other’s likes and dislikes? He knew, for example, that I followed the Bears and the Cubs. Vaughn? Packers (some twisted version of childhood revenge).
“I love the Packers,” Vaughn said.
“I
know
you love the Packers.” Was I supposed to climb on board with the archenemy of the Chicago Bears just because Vaughn and I were sorta dating?
He pushed it farther toward me across the table.
I twisted it around. The thing was maybe a foot-and-a-half by a foot, covered in brown paper.
I opened it. It was a painting.
Framed in an old wood frame, the painting was done in oils or maybe acrylics. It was about sixteen inches tall by twelve inches across. Depicted was a woman with long red hair, sitting in a bathtub, leaning forward over blue bath water, wringing out her hair.
I didn’t know what to say. I looked up from the painting into Vaughn’s brown eyes, the hazel rims seeming to almost glow.
“It looks like you,” Vaughn said. “Right?”
I looked back down at the painting. The woman, the way she was depicted in bold yet tiny lines of paint, made her seem avant-garde, and yet the image of her in the bathtub could have been from any decade. “Yeah. Where did you get it?”
“A garage sale.” He described the house on California Avenue he had stumbled across one Saturday when he was supposed to be working. “The guy said his aunt painted it years ago.”
When I didn’t reply right away, too surprised to know how to form words right then, he said, “I guess she was a high school art teacher.”
I thought about Madeline.
She would not, in the past, I knew, have approved of this piece of “street art.” But Madeline had grown into an even more accepting person, humbled by what few would ever know—that her twin sister was responsible for all her trouble.
Madeline wasn’t concerned the way Mayburn and I were. She reached out to Jeremy and Corinne, replacing the artwork they lost, and they agreed to be quiet about the matter. Jacqueline Stoddard, too. She would stay silent about the forgeries, she said, once she knew Madeline had forgiven her and would be silent, too—about Jacqueline’s obsession.
In the month that had followed the discovery of her twin, Madeline welcomed her sister into her life. The more time Madeline and her twin spent together, the harder it was to tell the difference between the two.
Life is art,
Madeline had said to Mayburn and me just ten minutes ago. She had looked between the two of us and back again.
And so every moment, one has to do what one feels truly and in their heart.
I looked at the painting now.
What was my heart telling me?
I thought about the other piece of art. Vaugh. That I wanted to see where that would go—that piece of art.
I looked at Vaughn. And then I kissed him.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Amy Moore-Benson, an author’s shining light, and my fantastic editor, Miranda Indrigo. Thanks also to the amazing team at MIRA Books, especially Donna Hayes, Margaret Marbury, Lorianna Sacilotto, Valerie Gray, Craig Swinwood, Pete McMahon, Stacy Widdrington, Andi Richman, Andrew Wright, Katherine Orr, Alex Osuszek, Dianne Moggy, Erin Craig, Margie Miller, Don Lucey, Gordy Goihl, Dave Carley, Ken Foy, Erica Mohr, Darren Lizotte, Reka Rubin, Margie Mullin, Sam Smith, Kathy Lodge, Laurie Mularchuk, Michelle Renaud, Sean Kapitain, Kate Studer, Stephen Miles, Malle Vallik, Tracy Langmuir, Anne Fontanesi, Scott Ingram, Diane Mosher, Sheree Yoon, Alana Burke, Margie Mullin, John Jordan and Brent Lewis.
Thank you so much to everyone in or around the Chicago art community who answered myriad questions, especially Richard Hull, Madeline Nusser, Andrew Rafascz, Shannon Stratford, Megan Carroll, Pam Carroll and Bill Zehme. Special thanks to Chicago artist, Jason Lazurus, for putting me in his art installation,
The Search.
Thank you, thank you to Carol Miller for holding down the fort. Thanks also to Tom Kinzler for his knowledge of Japanese law. Lastly, gratitude to all the members of the Chicago Police Department who graciously answered my questions about protocol as well as the joys and difficulties of their jobs.
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ISBN: 9781459237810
Copyright © 2012 by Story Avenue, LLC.
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