The Grumpy Landlord, page 18
I had.
I rolled onto my back. I stared at the ceiling fan.
The silence stretched. But she didn't fill it. She waited. She laid her hand on my chest, right over my heart.
"I was a surgeon," I started. My voice sounded hollow. "My job was to fix things. To put pieces back together."
"I know."
"In the sandbox... there aren't always pieces left to fix."
I closed my eyes. The images were always there. Waiting.
"There was a boy. Nineteen. Same age as Sadie was when I deployed. He stepped on an IED."
I felt Willow’s hand tighten on my chest.
"I tried," I whispered. "God, I tried. I packed the wounds. I clamped the arteries. I did everything the manual said. Everything I knew."
I swallowed hard. The lump in my throat felt like a stone.
"He looked at me. He was awake. He looked right at me and he asked if he was going to die."
"What did you say?"
"I said no. I lied."
A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. It slid down my temple into my hair.
"He died holding my hand. He died while I was telling him he was going to go home."
"Oh, Ethan."
"It wasn't just him," I confessed. The dam broke. "It was the noise. The constant, deafening noise. And then... the silence afterwards. The silence of a body that stops working. It’s the loudest thing in the world."
I turned my head to look at her.
"I came home. And everyone called me a hero. They gave me medals. They clapped."
I laughed, a bitter, jagged sound.
"But I felt like a fraud. Because I didn't save them. I just watched them leave."
"You saved the ones you could," Willow said fiercely. "You saved hundreds."
"I remember the ones I lost."
"That makes you human. Not a fraud."
She moved up the bed. She hovered over me, her hair creating a curtain around our faces.
"You carry them," she said. "You carry their weight. That’s why you're so strong. But you don't have to carry it alone anymore."
She kissed my forehead. Then my eyelids. Then the scar on my jaw.
"I can't fix it," she whispered. "I can't bring them back. But I can sit with you in the dark. I can hold your hand so you're not the only one holding it."
I looked up at her.
She was crying. Silent tears that fell onto my face, mixing with my own.
"Why?" I asked. "Why would you want that? Why would you want the darkness?"
"Because it's yours," she said simply. "And I love all of it. The gold and the gray."
She laid her head on my shoulder. She wrapped her arm and her leg around me, pinning me to the mattress. Pinning me to the earth.
"I'm messy too, remember?" she murmured. "I break things. I lose things. We're a matched set."
I wrapped my arms around her. I held her tight. Tighter than I had ever held anything.
"I was going to push you away," I admitted into her hair. "I was going to make you leave so I wouldn't drag you down."
"You can't push me away," she said. "I'm sticky. Like paint."
"I noticed."
"Ethan?"
"Yeah?"
She lifted her head. Her eyes were fierce in the darkness.
"Promise me something."
"Anything."
"Promise me that when the storm comes... when the nightmares start... you won't lock the door. Promise you'll wake me up."
I looked at the door. It was cracked open.
"I promise."
"And I promise you," she said, pressing her palm against my cheek, "that no matter how rough it gets... no matter how loud the noise is... I will always come back. I will always find you."
I believed her.
For the first time in three years, the artillery fire in my head went quiet.
There was just the rain. And her breath. And the steady beat of two hearts that had found a rhythm in the chaos.
"Sleep," I said. "I've got the watch."
She smiled. She closed her eyes.
And for the first time in a long time, so did I.
War Wounds
Willow
The morning light was cruel.
It sliced through the blinds of Ethan’s bedroom, sharp and demanding, stripping away the soft, hazy magic of the night before. It wasn't the warm, golden glow I usually tried to capture in my landscapes. It was clinical. White. Unforgiving.
I shifted, the high-thread-count sheets tangling around my legs. My body felt heavy, a good kind of heavy, steeped in the aftermath of intimacy and exhaustion.
But the space beside me was cold.
I sat up, panic flaring in my chest like a struck match.
He left.
The thought was automatic, a reflex born of insecurity and the note he’d left on the fridge just yesterday.
Then I saw him.
He hadn't left. He was sitting in the leather armchair in the corner of the room, fully dressed in soft gray sweatpants and a black t-shirt. His elbows rested on his knees, his hands clasped loosely between them.
He was staring at the floor.
He wasn't moving. He wasn't blinking. He was locked in a stillness so absolute it felt like a vibration.
"Ethan?"
My voice was a croak, rough with sleep.
He didn't flinch. He didn't look up. It was as if he hadn't heard me. As if he were a thousand miles away, in a place where the sun was blinding and the sand got into everything.
The ghosts.
I remembered his confession in the dark. The boy. The lie. The silence that followed the noise.
I slid out of bed. I didn't bother with clothes. I grabbed the sheet, wrapping it around me like a toga, and padded across the cool hardwood.
I knelt in front of him.
I didn't touch him. Not yet. I entered his field of vision slowly, respecting the perimeter.
"Ethan," I said softly. "Come back."
His eyes flickered. The thousand-yard stare cracked, just a fraction. He blinked, focusing on my face. It took effort. I could see the muscles in his jaw working, grinding together.
"I'm here," he rasped.
"You weren't. You were somewhere else."
"It's the quiet," he admitted. "Morning is the loudest time. The adrenaline is gone. The night is over. And there's just... this."
He gestured vaguely at the peaceful, sunlit room.
To anyone else, it was a luxury. To him, it was a vacuum waiting to be filled with memories he couldn't outrun.
I reached out and took his hands. They were cold. Ice cold.
"We need to get your hands moving," I said.
He frowned. "I don't have a surgery schedule today. I'm off rotation."
"I know. I'm prescribing a different kind of operation."
I stood up, pulling on his hands.
"Get up, Dr. Rourke. We're going to the studio."
"Willow, I'm not in the mood to paint."
"Good. Because we're not painting. We're building."
I didn't give him a choice. I led him downstairs, out the back door, and across the wet grass to the guest house. The air was crisp, smelling of damp earth and the storm that had passed.
Inside the cottage, the evidence of my breakdown was still there. The slashed canvas. The spilled water.
Ethan stopped in the doorway, looking at the ruin I had made.
"I should clean that up," he said, his protective instinct kicking in.
"Leave it," I ordered. "It's part of the process. Destruction and creation. They're neighbors."
I walked to my supply cabinet. I dug past the tubes of acrylics and watercolors until I found what I was looking for.
A tub of heavy molding paste. And a stack of palette knives.
I set them on the table. I grabbed a fresh, small canvas board.
"Sit."
He sat. He looked at the white tub with deep suspicion.
"What is this? Spackle?"
"Basically. It's texture. It's grit."
I opened the lid. It smelled like chalk and polymer.
"You said your hands shake when you try to draw," I said. "You said you lost the fine motor control for art because of the noise."
He looked at his hands. "I did."
"This doesn't require steadiness. It requires force."
I scooped out a glob of the thick, white paste with a knife. I slapped it onto the canvas.
"Touch it."
"Willow—"
"Touch it, Ethan. Get out of your head and get into your hands."
He hesitated. He looked at me, his blue eyes guarded, weary. But he saw the determination in my face. He saw that I wasn't asking him to be an artist. I was asking him to be present.
He reached out.
He stuck his thumb into the paste.
It was cool. Thick. Resistant.
He pushed it around the canvas. It held the shape of his movement. It didn't flow like paint; it stood up. It fought back.
"It's heavy," he noted.
"It has weight. Like the things we carry."
I handed him a palette knife.
"Don't try to make a picture," I said. "Just move the weight around. Make ridges. Make valleys. smooth it out or rough it up."
He took the knife.
At first, his movements were tentative. Small scrapes. Careful adjustments. The surgeon trying to be precise.
"Harder," I whispered, standing behind him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. I pressed my cheek against his ear. "Break the surface."
He exhaled.
He dug the knife in.
Scrape.
The sound was gritty. Satisfying.
He spread the paste across the canvas in a broad, aggressive stroke. Then another. He built a mountain of white texture in the center. Then he slashed through it, creating a canyon.
I watched his hands. The tremor was gone. The tension in his knuckles transferred into the canvas.
"I used to build things," he said quietly, working the paste. "Before med school. Woodworking. Cabinets."
"I didn't know that."
"I liked the solidity of it. Wood doesn't bleed. It doesn't scream."
He paused, the knife hovering over a particularly jagged ridge he had created.
"I miss the feeling of making something that stays fixed."
"This stays," I said. "It dries hard as rock. You can sand it. You can paint it. Or you can leave it raw."
He worked for twenty minutes in silence. I just held him. I anchored him to the room, to the smell of the paste, to the warmth of my body against his back.
Slowly, the tension in his shoulders began to dissolve. The rigid line of his spine softened.
He wasn't thinking about the desert. He was thinking about the viscosity of the medium. He was thinking about structure.
He set the knife down.
He looked at the canvas. It was a chaotic, textured landscape of peaks and troughs. It looked like a storm frozen in time.
"It's a mess," he said.
"It's honest."
He turned on the stool to face me. I was still wrapped in the sheet, my hair a wild tangle around my face.
He reached out and touched my cheek. His thumb had a smudge of white paste on it. He wiped it gently across my skin, marking me.
"How do you do that?" he asked.
"Do what?"
"Pull me back. I was... I was drifting, Willow. I was sliding into the dark."
"I told you," I said, leaning into his hand. "I'm not afraid of the dark. I just bring a flashlight."
He smiled. It wasn't the polite, tight smile he gave strangers. It was the real one. The one that cracked his face open and let the light out.
"You're stubborn."
"I'm tenacious. There's a difference."
"Not from where I'm sitting."
He pulled me between his knees. The sheet slipped a little. He didn't fix it. His hands rested on my waist, warm and grounding.
"I promised you I wouldn't lock the door," he said. "But it's hard. The lock engages automatically."
"Then we take the door off the hinges."
He laughed. A short, rough sound.
"That sounds destructive."
"We're good at destructive. We're good at rebuilding, too."
I ran my fingers through his hair. It was soft, freshly washed, smelling of the shampoo I had bought him because I hated the generic soap he used.
"We're going to be okay, Ethan. You, me, the ghosts. We'll figure it out."
"You really believe that?"
"I have to. Otherwise, I slashed a perfectly good canvas for nothing."
He sobered. He looked over at the ruined painting in the corner.
"I'll buy you a new one. A hundred new ones."
"I don't need a hundred. I just need one. And maybe some breakfast. Art therapy makes me hungry."
"Eggs?"
"And bacon. Lots of bacon. I need grease to counteract the existential dread."
He stood up, keeping me in the circle of his arms.
"I can do bacon."
He kissed me. It was slow, deep, and tasted of morning breath and coffee and hope. It was a second chance sealed with a promise.
"Go get dressed," he said, slapping my hip lightly. "I'll start the coffee."
"Yes, sir."
He walked out of the guest house. He walked with a lighter step. The weight was still there, I knew—it would always be there—but he wasn't carrying it alone anymore.
I stood in the center of the studio, grinning like a fool.
I looked at the textured white board he had left on the table. It was rough. It was jagged. It was beautiful.
I was going to paint it gold when it dried.
My phone buzzed on the crate.
I ignored it. I didn't want the world to intrude. I wanted to live in this bubble of white paste and bacon for just a little longer.
It buzzed again. And again.
A call.
I sighed. It was probably Riley, wondering if I was alive or if I had drowned in the storm.
I picked it up.
It wasn't Riley.
It was a number I didn't recognize. A local area code.
"Hello?"
"Ms. Hart?" The voice was crisp, professional, and icy. "This is Eleanor Vance. I'm the chair of the Gallery Board."
My stomach dropped. The warm glow of the morning evaporated.
"Hi, Eleanor. Look, if this is about the gallery opening, I can explain—"
"There's nothing to explain, Ms. Hart. We've received a formal complaint."
"I know. Marian told me. The vandalism—"
"This isn't about the vandalism," Eleanor cut in. "Though that is certainly a factor in our decision regarding your character."
She paused. The silence on the line was heavy.
"Marian DeWitt has filed a formal accusation of plagiarism against you."
The world tilted on its axis.
"What?" I whispered.
"She claims that the designs for your proposed solo show—specifically the sketches you submitted for the grant last month—are direct copies of her earlier, unreleased work. She has provided dated sketchbooks as proof."
"That's impossible," I said. My voice rose, shrill and panicked. "That's a lie. Those are my designs. I drew them in my kitchen. I have the originals!"
"Marian's evidence is compelling, Ms. Hart. And given the... volatility of your recent behavior, the Board is inclined to take this very seriously."
"You can't be serious. She's setting me up! She destroyed my work at the gallery!"
"We have no proof of that. We do, however, have proof of intellectual property theft."
"It's not theft! It's my life!"
"The Board has voted," Eleanor said, her voice devoid of sympathy. "Your solo show is cancelled. Permanently. Furthermore, you are banned from exhibiting in any Board-affiliated gallery in the county until this legal matter is resolved."
"Legal matter?"
"Marian is pressing charges for copyright infringement. You'll be hearing from her lawyers."
"Eleanor, please—"
Click.
The line went dead.
I stood there, the phone pressed to my ear, listening to the silence.
Plagiarism.
It was the death knell for an artist. You could be messy. You could be difficult. You could be late. But you could not be a thief.
If this stuck, I was done. Not just in this town, but anywhere Marian's influence reached.
She hadn't just slashed my canvas. She had slashed my throat.
I lowered the phone. My hand was shaking so hard I almost dropped it.
Through the window, I saw Ethan in the kitchen of the main house. He was moving around, cracking eggs into a pan. He looked peaceful. He looked like a man who was finally learning to breathe.
I couldn't tell him.
I couldn't bring this new disaster to his doorstep. Not now. Not when we had just found solid ground.
"Willow!" he called from the back door. "Coffee's ready!"
I looked at him. I looked at the textured white board on the table.
I forced a smile onto my face. It felt like a mask made of lead.
"Coming!" I yelled back.
I walked out of the studio.
But inside, the noise was back. And it was screaming.
Standing Tall
Ethan
The boardroom smelled of lemon polish and old money.
It was a scent I loathed. It reminded me of politicians and generals, of men who moved chess pieces from air-conditioned offices while boys bled out in the sand.
I stood near the door, my back against the paneling. I was wearing the suit again. The charcoal gray wool felt like armor. It restricted my movement, bound my shoulders, but it commanded respect.
And I needed every ounce of respect I could muster.
At the head of the mahogany table sat Eleanor Vance. She looked like a hawk wrapped in tweed. Her eyes were sharp, intelligent, and currently fixed on the woman sitting alone on the left side of the table.
Willow.
She looked small.
She was wearing a blazer that was slightly too big for her, sleeves rolled up to hide the paint stains I knew were on her wrists. Her hair was tamed into a bun, but a single curl had escaped, trembling against her neck. Her hands were clasped on the table, knuckles white.
