“Red hot. Fiery,” he murmured, his eyes darkening.
He reached for her and the artwork was forgotten. He was able to wipe her mind clean of all thoughts other than ones of him. His arms wrapped around her, his scent enveloping her, as he pulled her to him and kissed her like it was their last kiss.
It had been one of their last kisses.
“Sara?” Her eyelids flew open and wine-colored eyes met hers instead of blue. “Where were you just now?”
Sara shrugged out of Mason’s grasp, her stomach churning. She tried not to look at anything in the room, every single part of the room reminding her of him, but it was no use. Her eyes were drawn to all that had a piece of him to them. He lingered in the room. Sara thought she could smell him even. Coffee and cherry Carmex.
There was the rocking chair he would sit in and read as she painted. Pressure formed on her chest, pushing down, making it hard to breathe. There was the easel that still held her last painting, the one with the greens and blues. The pressure built. The walls they’d painted a cheery yellow, getting almost as much paint on each other as they did the walls. Her throat tightened painfully. Vision blurred with wetness, she stumbled from the room.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said in a shaking voice. “I want you to leave and I don’t want you to come back. This isn’t helping. It won’t help. You can’t just make me get over him. I can’t get over him. I’ll never get over him.”
Mason stood near the door and she had to look away. He was out of place. He didn’t belong here, in her house, standing where her husband used to stand.
“What makes you think I’m trying to make you get over anyone? I’m just trying to get you to stop hiding from everything, from yourself, from the world, from your emotions. There’s a difference. It’s been over a year, Sara. What are you waiting for?”
Her face crumpled and she hung her head. Staring at her purple-socked feet, she said quietly, “Do you know what happened?”
“Yes. Spencer told me.”
“Then you know why I am the way I am.”
“I’m no one to judge. I’m nowhere near an example of how to be. Derek died four years ago. I spent the first year hating myself and living in self-pity, doing every kind of drug I could get my hands on. It’s amazing I’m even alive, actually. I overdosed a couple times, had my stomach pumped. I have scars from other dumb things I did.” Mason held up his arm and slid the sleeve of his sweater back, revealing a jagged, raised line of skin pinker and paler than the rest of his arm.
Sara swallowed, tearing her eyes away. She crossed her arms, hiding the veins she’d studied so carefully more than one time.
“You and me, Sara, we’re two peas in a pod,” he said in a low voice. “But you…you have it better than me. Derek died instantly, without me having a chance to say I was sorry or goodbye or anything. Without me being able to tell him how much I loved him and admired him. You have that chance. Embrace it. Don’t hide away until it’s too late.”
“It is too late. He died a year ago. I keep…thinking he’ll come back. I know it’s crazy, but that’s what I keep thinking. Only I know he really won’t.” She blinked her tear-filled eyes. “Please, Mason, just go. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Mason’s eyes searched the kitchen, pausing on the fridge. He grabbed the magnetic pen and paper pad from it, jotting something down. “Here’s my cell phone number. Call me anytime, Sara. I’ll be back next Sunday. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. “I have a task for you. Open up your art room and work. Create something. Anything. See you in a week.”
After he left, Sara stared into the room, the door now open. She took a hesitant step toward it, and another, until she hovered in the doorway. Sara hugged herself, imagining it was him hugging her, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t even close. Sara let her arms drop away and walked to the painting. She trailed a finger along the clumpy surface, seeing his face, seeing his eyes. This time, though, they weren’t laughing or shining. This time, they were dim, unseeing. They were as they had been the last time they’d been open.
***
The phone was hard and cold, quickly warming from the heat of her ear against it. They were like a drug; these one-sided conversations with Lincoln. The soothing pull of his deep voice was an addiction; the peace Sara felt as she listened to him was unable to be imitated in any other way. She could hear the television in the background as she stared at the empty blackness of hers, almost able to see herself sitting beside Lincoln as he talked, watching the same rerun of ‘King of Queens’ right along with him. Absently twirling a strand of her long hair around a finger, Sara silently devoured his words.
“Remember that painting you made of the forest outside the house that Cole lost? I have a confession to make: I stole it. It’s in my bedroom, on the wall above my bed. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. “I think he knew. I mean, he had to have seen it, right? I’m sure he was in my bedroom at least once since you painted it. Never said anything. Maybe he thought I needed it more than he did.
“I don’t know why I took it. I suppose I could have just asked for it. But where would the fun have been in that? You’re so talented, Sara. You could paint a nondescript ball of nothing and it would be amazing. You know that, right?” Sara closed her eyes at his kind words, not really believing them, but thankful for them just the same.
Lincoln sighed, sounding tired when he said, “No, I suppose you don’t. You always think less of yourself than is warranted. I always hated that about you; probably the only thing. You never thought you were smart enough, pretty enough, talented enough, strong enough. But you are. You always have been. You’re so much stronger than you give yourself credit for. I mean it, Sara.”
How did he know her so well? She had always had an insurmountable mountain of insecurities, no matter how she wished otherwise. But Lincoln, Lincoln always seemed to know them all and denied each and every one as well. Sometimes Sara thought Lincoln knew her even better than her own husband, which was ridiculous. Warmed by his words, she had hope that maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to fall asleep now after hearing his voice. Before she’d called him, it had been futile.
“I got an early start tomorrow, so I’m signing off for the night. I’ll be seeing you soon. Good night. Take care, Sara.”
6
As the days came and went, pulling her closer to that fated day marked on the calendar, the nightmares didn’t remain during the nighttime like they should. Sara saw the pain in his eyes at the collision. She felt his hand tighten on her in fear. The immediate loss as his touch was wrenched from her. She saw it all, whether her eyes were open or closed.
The hollowness was growing inside her. At times she looked down, expecting to see a round circle of emptiness where her stomach should be. A gashing wound where her heart was. Time healed all wounds was the saying. That saying was a lie. Time made the wounds deepen; it made them grow. It was her enemy and it was winning the battle against her soul. Time was ruining her, dissolving her, destroying her. It was all she had and everything she hated. Time mocked her in vivid detail of that final moment.
The time it had taken for the car to crash, time as it had slowed down and sped up; the last minutes she’d had with him, the seconds his eyes had filled with anguish and disbelief and the seconds it had taken for the light to fade from them. The hours she’d sat in the hospital, hoping and praying and hating herself. The days and months she’d had to exist without him. It was all about time. And it was killing her.
Sara clutched the phone to her chest, her first impulse to call Lincoln and confess everything. Instead she set the phone down, grabbed keys off the hook by the door, and braced herself against the cold and snow as she walked to the short driveway. The icy wind snapped at her, his worn sweatshirt not enough to keep her warm against the frigid air. White, fluffy snow seeped through the soles of her old shoes, making her toes stiff and her feet uncomfortably wet.