Page 82 of The Leaving Kind
“I’d rather have my thirty grand.”
“Did you go to the police?”
Cam sighed. “I don’t have a good record with the police, man. A couple drunk and disorderlies. One DUI. They weren’t going to take me seriously.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Trust me. In that town? I did know that. Like I said, I’m a fuck-up.”
Pain flitted across Nick’s face. “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because—” His lips flattened into a hard line. “You served. You went away to war. A horrible war. You got hurt.”
Surprise lifted Cam’s eyebrows. “How did you know I got hurt? Oh. My scars.”
“And the dates.”
His tattoos? Did Nick think they were—
“Your tours didn’t line up exactly. You came back early.”
He had. “They sometimes don’t, but yeah, I got hurt. I’m fine now.” Mostly.
That thought plucked a smile out of nowhere and fixed it to one side of his mouth. Melanie reckoned he was mostly harmless. Mostly sane. Mostly trustworthy.
But not great with money. Mostly gullible.
Nick got up from the couch, grabbed their coffees and Cam’s phone, and brought them back over. He handed Cam the phone. “C’mon. Let’s see if the name you want is taken.”
Recognizing that the moment had passed, Cam took the phone and stared at the screen until it went to sleep. He breathed in and woke the screen again. Typed: Zimmermann Projects.
Less than a second later, he had his answer: No results found.
Stomach cramping, he looked up to meet his little brother’s lopsided smile. Felt a reciprocal curve pluck at one corner of his mouth. “I guess I have a name.”
Nick grinned. “I guess you do.”
“Brush, meet canvas. I know it’s been a while, but you two used to be the best of friends.” Victor prodded the tip of his brush closer to the washed canvas in front of him until the bristles touched. “Now talk, damn it.”
The brush remained still in his hand.
He’d start at the top, with hair. No, that was a terrible idea. He needed a face first. Victor glanced at the sketch pad propped on the easel next to him. An ear? He could outline the face from the right ear down, around the jaw and up to ...
This was why he didn’t paint people. Trees didn’t have ears or noses. They didn’t need to be distinct.
Dropping the brush back onto the palette, Victor slumped onto the stool behind him. He put his head in his hands and groaned.
Maybe he should go back to landscapes. Tez had been wrong. Portraiture didn’t come naturally to him. Not anymore. He had enjoyed sketching Cam and the other studies he’d done over the past few weeks—of Cam at work on the path, his friend Jorge, the young Beck, Estefan, and the new, fifth member of Cam’s ragtag landscaping team, Estefan’s wife, Renata. But he hadn’t had any success transferring his ideas to a canvas. He still wasn’t painting, which was not aiding his efforts to keep the darkness at bay. But he was determined not to succumb to the feeling that all, if not already lost, soon would be.
Victor pulled the sketch pad from the easel and flipped through studies he’d done of kids at the center. Cassidy painting. Nayana cutting paper for a collage. Lionel hunched over a computer. Victor smiled at the steep curve of the young man’s back. Did he have elastic for a spine?
He had sketches of his son and grandson. His number two daughter (Sage’s girlfriend) and a drawing of his number one daughter, though he hadn’t seen her in weeks. He’d used a photo as a reference. He had a whole series of Tez, who had patiently made faces for him for an hour or so on his last visit to Stroudsburg.
And he had pages and pages of Cam.
Perhaps he needed to start with a subject he was less afraid of.