The Law of Moses (44 page)

“He does?” her voice was faint and she peeked at me almost shyly. It was strange to see her that way. Self-conscious in a way she’d never been.

“I seem to remember you wanting me to paint you. Before.”

“I wanted a lot of things, Moses.”

“I know.” And I was determined to give them to her. Anything and everything within my power.

“Did Eli like to paint?” I’d never asked her if he was anything like me. I hoped not.

She began to shake her head and then she stopped and laughed. And just like that, I could see the memory of a forgotten moment, just a glimpse as if I had looked inside her head. But it wasn’t coming from her. Eli sat cross-legged in the window seat and smiled like he had missed me. Missed us. And Georgia’s eyes grew soft as she narrated the scene, without even realizing I could already see it in living color behind my eyes.

“It was late. I’d been up since dawn and hadn’t stopped all day. Eli was crying, Mom and Dad were out, and it was way past bedtime. Eli still needed his dinner and a bath, and I was ready to cry with him. I warmed up some leftover spaghetti and opened a can of peaches, trying to soothe Eli who wanted chicken noodle soup for dinner.

“He wanted homemade soup with the fat noodles. But I told him we didn’t have any more and that I’d make homemade soup on the weekend. Or Grandma would. Hers was better than mine. And I tried to make him happy with leftover spaghetti.

“But he didn’t want it, and I wasn’t very patient. I settled him at the table and made him a plate, trying to convince him it was exactly what he wanted every step of the way. I set a glass of milk in front of him and filled his favorite tractor plate with noodles and sauce on one side and sliced peaches on the other.”

She stopped and her lips trembled a little. But she didn’t cry. And Eli picked up where she left off. Eli showed me the moment he’d taken his plate and dumped it over his head, sauce and peaches pooling in his hair, sliding down his chubby cheeks and dripping down his neck. Georgia had just stared at him, stunned. Her face was almost comical she was so incensed. Then she sank to a puddle on the kitchen floor and started naming the things she was grateful for, the way some people count to ten to try to keep from exploding. Eli knew he was in trouble. His concern colored the memory in a hazy wash, as if his heartbeat had kicked up while he watched his mother try not to come unglued.

The view changed as he climbed down from his chair and trotted over to Georgia. He squatted down in front of her, and without missing a beat, rubbed his hand through the spaghetti sauce in his hair and wiped it on her cheek, very, very gently.

She reared back, sputtering, and he followed her, wiping his hand down the other cheek.

“Hold still, Mommy. I’m painting you,” he demanded. “Like my dad.”

Georgia froze and Eli continued rubbing his ruined dinner all over her face and arms as if he knew exactly what he was doing. She watched him silently, and her eyes slowly filled with tears that ran down her face and over the globs of spaghetti sauce and smeared peaches.

“He wanted to paint me,” Georgia said, and I separated myself from Eli’s memory so I could be with her in the moment. “He wanted to paint me. Just like you. He knew your name. He knew you painted the story on my wall, he knew you painted the picture I framed and hung in his room, the picture you sent me . . . after you went away. But that was the first time he did anything like that. Or said anything like that.”

I didn’t know what to say, the knowledge that Georgia hadn’t withheld the knowledge of who I was from Eli left me speechless.

“That was right before he died. Right before. A day or two. Strange. I forgot all about it. He’d never shown any inclination to paint, yet he pulled that out of the blue. But I don’t think I want you to paint me, Moses,” Georgia whispered, her eyes on the graceful spine and the bowed head I’d just begun to create.“No?” I didn’t know if I could honor that request. With her so close, all I wanted to do was trace the lines of her figure and lose myself in her colors.

“No.” She kept her eyes trained on the painting. “I don’t want to be alone. I’d rather you paint us. Me and you.” She lifted her gaze to mine. “Together.”

I pulled her in front of me, her back against my chest so that she faced the canvas, and I began to draw, her head notched between my shoulder and my chin, my cheek resting against her forehead , my left arm wrapped across her chest, my right arm raised to the task at hand. Within minutes, I brought my profile into the picture, just my face and neck, bowed above hers. It was rudimentary, just outlines and suggestions, but it was still us, and my hand flew, filling in the details of the two of us together.

I forgot about Eli, sitting on my new bed, the bed I’d purchased to replace the narrow twin I’d slept in whenever I’d visited Gi, and lost myself in the sensation of Georgia close to me and the picture in front of me. And when Georgia turned in my arms and looked up at me with shining eyes, I forgot about the picture too.

I don’t remember putting my paintbrush down or whether or not I screwed the lids back on my oils. I don’t remember exactly how we got across the room, or how midnight became morning. I just remember how it felt to close the distance and bring my mouth to hers.

The kiss wasn’t hard or fast. It didn’t involve wandering hands or practiced seduction. But it was promise-laden. Heartfelt. And I didn’t move to make it more.

I could have.

It shimmered there between us, the memory of how it had felt to fall headlong into the heat. But I didn’t want more memories. I wanted a future, so I let the soft hue of hope wrap itself around us. I reveled in the sensation of mouths moving, lips touching, tongues tangling, the feel of Georgia’s hands curled against my chest, the glide of color against my eyelids as the kiss deepened from lavender to purple, to midnight blue. And when it did, I lifted my head so that I wouldn’t forget completely. Georgia’s mouth stayed lifted as if she wasn’t finished, her eyes like dark chocolate and her lids at half-mast. I wanted to dive back into those dark pools and pull the covers over us. But we weren’t alone.

And as I looked beyond her rumpled hair and sweet mouth to the child who quietly observed, I sighed and bid him a soft farewell. Time for little boys to turn in. I tugged on my watery walls and whispered as I did.

“Goodnight Stewy Stinker.”

Georgia stiffened in my arms.

“Goodnight, Buzzard Bates,” I added gently.

“Goodnight, Diehard Dan,” Georgia said quietly, and her lips trembled as her fingers twisted in my shirt, trying desperately to hold onto her composure. My arms tightened around her, acknowledging her faith and her effort.

“Goodnight, Eli,” I said, and felt him slip away.

Moses

I LAY IN THE DARK, listening to Georgia breathe beside me, and hoped Mauna and Martin Shepherd didn’t lay awake across the way, worrying about their daughter who had loved and lost before. Give me joy or go, she’d said. And I really didn’t want to go.

Georgia and I had talked for several hours, lying in the darkness of my room, watching the moonlight illuminate the stick figure story Georgia had drawn on my wall. Georgia seemed pleased that I didn’t have the heart to cover it up and promised to draw the next chapter the following morning. With her head on my shoulder, touching but not tempting, kissing but not tasting, holding but not taking, we spent our first night together in seven years, and it was markedly different from the last. Maybe it was our desire to get it right or to not repeat the mistakes of the past. And maybe it was the knowledge that even if we couldn’t see him, Eli was near. For me, he felt ever-present. For now, it was enough just to hold Georgia, and I kept the fires banked.

When I mentioned walking her home as midnight became one and then became two, Georgia wrapped her arms around my mid-section, laid her head against my chest and defiantly told me no. And I hadn’t argued very hard. Instead I’d stroked her hair and felt her fall asleep against me, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the fears that had only deepened as the hours passed. I wondered if the way I was feeling was simply a byproduct of love. Now that I had it, now that I acknowledged I needed it, I was terrified of losing it.

At dawn, I crept from the bed and across the room, pulling on my boots and a jacket, not planning to go much farther than my back deck. It needed to be refinished and if snow really was on the horizon, I wanted it done soon. As I left the room I caught a glimpse of the painting I’d begun the night before, the picture of Georgia’s graceful back and my head bent above her. I would do more. I would fill my walls with paintings of us, if only to convince myself that she was mine and I was hers. Maybe then I would lose this sense of dread.

The morning was cold, colder than the day before, and I considered going back inside for gloves. I considered too long, though, and my hands were already two steps ahead of my brain. I dove in, working quickly to escape the chill, my breath puffing out around me as I got started on the deck, the smoothing out of all the rough spots strangely therapeutic. The sun rose without warmth, peering above the eastern hills, slinking over the shadowy valley and drawing my eyes from the deck to watch her slowly climb. A rooster crowed belatedly, and I laughed at the shoddy effort. I heard a horse whinny in response to the rooster and looked across the grassy field to see Georgia’s horses gathered a little ways off. Calico separated herself from the others and whinnied again, tossing her head and stretching her legs, as if she knew I was watching her. She galloped across the field and then turned and galloped back, shaking her mane and kicking up her heels as if she was grateful for the sunrise. Sackett joined her, nipping at her, nudging her playfully, and I smiled again, remembering how I’d compared the Palomino to Georgia once upon a time. I watched them prance and play for several minutes when my eyes were drawn to something I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it was because my attention had always been riveted on Georgia when she worked with the horses, or maybe it was because the only time I’d gotten close to Calico she had stood at my back, but Calico had a brand on her hind quarters that was different from Sackett’s.

I set down the bucket of stain, laid my brush across the opening, and made my way across Gi’s backyard to get a closer look. Sackett and Calico watched me come, and though Calico tossed her head and trotted in a circle, neither of them ran from me. Progress. But when Calico drew up beside the fence between us, I stopped short. Calico had a circle A brand on her left flank—an uppercase A inside a circle. Like the circled A on Molly’s math test. Like the Circle A truck stop that bordered the field where Molly’s remains were found. I felt the hair rise on my neck and the knot in my stomach increase in size. Eli kept showing me Calico, right from the start. And I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to it than just his very real affection for the animal.

I considered going inside and waking Georgia up, but pulled my phone out of my pocket and tapped in Tag’s number instead, hoping he would hear it ring at seven a.m. on a Tuesday morning and actually answer it. He was not always an early riser.

“Mo,” he answered on the third ring, and I could tell he’d been up for a while. He had that amped up ring to his voice that he got after spending a couple of hours pounding on someone in his gym.

“Tag.”

“Now that we got our names out of the way, what’s up?”

“Calico, Eli’s horse, has a brand on her butt that’s different from Georgia’s other horses. Why would that be?”

“They bought her from someone after she was branded,” Tag said simply. And I nodded, though he couldn’t see me doing it.

“Calico has a circle A brand, Tag. A circle with a big A inside it.” I waited, trusting he would know the significance.

Tag was silent for several long heartbeats, but I let the silence stretch without filling it, knowing his wheels were turning.

“It could just be a coincidence,” he said at last, but I knew he didn’t believe it. In my experience there were no coincidences. And Tag had spent enough time with me to know that.

I swore, using one of Tag’s favorite words, and I heard the fear and frustration echo the exclamation.

“What’s going on, man?” Tag asked.

“I don’t know, Tag. I’ve got my dead mother sending me freaky dreams, more dead girls popping up on my walls, a son trying to tell me something that I am clearly not understanding, and a woman in my bed that I’m terrified of losing.” I scrubbed at my face, suddenly tired, wishing I’d just stayed in bed with Georgia. I couldn’t lose her if I never left her side.