Page 25 of The Leaving Kind

“First I had to kick Tholo out on his ass and then feel sad about it.”

Georgia smiled.

“Why are you smiling? I was very sad.”

“I’m sure you were. But now that you’ve shed your excess baggage, you can only be happy.”

What mockery was this? Victor put on an affronted expression. “Did no one like Tholo?”

“Nope.”

“Why didn’t anyone say so?”

“We did, Vic. At least once a year. Your standard response was to start describing parts of his anatomy. Artistically, of course, but I still didn’t want to hear about his dick.”

“He did have a rather spectacular—”

Georgia had clapped her hands to her ears and started singing.

“Fine. Fine. I’ll let it go. I have let it go.” His affrontery melted into a pout. “I shall never touch it again.”

“That’s the spirit. Now go home and recycle all those wine bottles in your kitchen.”

“What makes you think there are multiple bottles? Or that they’re not already in the recycle bin?”

At Georgia’s I’ve known you since we were in high school look, Victor held up his hands. “Fine, fine. This is why I had babies with Tez instead of you. In case you were wondering.”

“I was not.”

Flipping one of his hands upward in a dismissive wave, Victor spun on his heel and pushed out of the door, managing all of it with flair—none of it overly dramatic. “Keep telling yourself that,” he said as he crossed the lot to his car.

Georgia might have been snickering behind him. But the traffic and the birds and the sounds of a small town swallowed it all.

Two hours later, Victor stood in front of the canvas he’d daubed with a simple blot of paint some uncounted number of days before. Had that been Thursday? Friday? Lord, how on Earth had he managed to lose so much time? And why hadn’t he painted while he was drunk? His drunk paintings were often inspired.

Or they used to be.

Now they tended to show twenty minutes of brilliance and four hours of should I or shouldn’t I have another drink, followed by a day and a half of I really shouldn’t drink anymore.

Truth was, he painted better sober and always had.

He stared at the dot of paint on the canvas. What was it supposed to be? What had he had in mind when he’d started this piece? He’d planned his current series around the idea of movement, but the dot appeared rather static. Also, why was the canvas standing up rather than across the easel? He didn’t often paint tall.

Had he been trying for a waterfall?

A distant bell clanked somewhere far back in his skull. He had notes for this piece. Heck, he had notes for all of his pieces, commissioned and otherwise. Where was his sketchbook?

Victor flipped through the piles of sketchbooks balanced around the edges of the two tables at the back of the studio, knowing the one he wanted wouldn’t be there. His workspace might present as chaos to the casual bystander, but he knew where each brush, tube, jar, and rag was. Possessed an archeological knowledge of the layers of paper piled at each corner of these tables, including the splotches of paint beneath. Every scuff, every scratch.

Kitchen. He’d been sketching the flowers on the patio last night, hadn’t he? The muted palette of sunset and then the starker highlights and deepened shadows brought out by the outdoor lights.

Victor left the studio.

Yes! There it is.

He scooped up the sketch pad and flipped back past six pages of flower sketches to the notes regarding his latest series. He had a show in September, two pieces to complete, and this second-to-last painting was supposed to show a wave formation through foliage rather than water. He found a tiny sketch of trees.

Trees?