Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
So what is true, Gage? Who are you without all the trappings of being the perfect son? What would you do if you could do anything at all?
I’m not as perfect as I seem.
Thinking about the sacrifices Gage made for his father made me think of Romeo. And maybe that’s why Gage’s situation needled at me so much. Honestly, hearing him talk about it rubbed at me like sandpaper. Perhaps in some way, I took it personally. Because my uncle had made a sacrifice too. Romeo had been forced to give in to the pressure of family commitment despite his own dreams.
My gaze moved away from Gage to the scenery moving past the car. My heart gave an unusual squeeze as I caught glimpses of the rocky shore of the lake through the trees. Something about the view of the lake felt…familiar somehow. No, that wasn’t the right word, and I couldn’t exactly figure out what was. Maybe because there was no singular word. Ever since I’d first caught the glimmer of this lake, I’d felt a ball of emotion rise up in my chest. I’d felt joy, and longing, and peace and even…a strange grief for something I couldn’t name. I glanced down at the watercolor in my lap. Maybe it was that I was looking at the true-life vision of what my father had looked on with his own eyes as he’d painted it. Just as I could tell there was love in the painting of my mother, I could sense that there was love for this place. Maybe the part of him that had loved Pelion Lake had somehow passed on to me.
“What are you thinking about over there?” Gage asked, breaking me from my reverie.
“My father,” I said. “He loved this place,” I said with certainty, lightly tapping on the glass of the painting.
Gage nodded, glancing down at the framed pieces in my lap. “I agree,” he said, obviously understanding that I was making the statement based on the emotion present in the art.
Butterflies fluttered in my stomach at the thought that my father, right this very moment, might be only a few miles from me.
“There’s Ruby’s Slippers,” Gage said. “Should we stop in while we’re out and about? Maybe have three frames to open up when we get back to Faith’s?”
“Sure, couldn’t hurt,” I said. “If you’re game.”
He grinned, and my heart flipped in that same way it tended to do in response to the flash of this man’s white smile focused in my direction. “I told you I was in,” he said.
We pulled into the lot of a small strip mall that featured a popular grocery chain at one end. Ruby’s Slippers was situated in the middle and Gage parked in a spot near the front door.
The air-conditioned thrift store felt deliciously cool as we stepped inside from out of the summer heat. The space was bright with the light of the unobstructed windows along the front wall and the refrains of a nineties song about a cruel summer played loudly on the sound system as shoppers flipped through racks of clothing.
“Welcome to Ruby’s Slippers,” a young girl said from behind a counter as she placed an item in a bag for the customer standing in front of the register.
I smiled at her and then looked around as I took in the various pieces of framed art hung on all the walls, just like Haven had described. Gage and I started walking along the one to our left, both of us looking up as we moved. There were original paintings, some merely decent, others better—according to my tastes, anyway—but there were also reprints and posters. It didn’t take us long to make our way around the entirety of the store, not having come upon even one piece that made us pause. “I have to wonder how many of my father’s pieces are hanging in the homes of Pelion and Calliope residents who came upon one in a store like this and just thought it was pretty,” I said.
“Yeah, I wondered the same thing,” Gage said. “But you know, the fact that at least a couple of his pieces are in secondhand stores, might be a clue in and of itself.”
I bit my lip. “How so?”
He put his elbow on the top of a rack next to him and crossed one foot over the other as he obviously thought about the implications. “Well, either he gave his own paintings away, or his family did. Under what circumstances, though? It’s something to keep in mind, however, as we go forward.”
I nodded, chewing at my lip again as I looked away. Go forward. If there was a forward direction to move in. And before I went back home in a few weeks.
A piece of blue fabric caught my eye and I blinked, moving toward it and pulling it from the rack. I pulled in a breath. “Oh my gosh,” I said. “My mother had a dress almost just like this one.” I stared at it, overcome with the feeling that I’d just been transported to the past. My gaze ran over the shimmery fabric, the blue appearing to turn different shades as I moved it back and forth and it caught the light. It had tiny spaghetti straps, was gathered at the waist, and featured a high slit up the right thigh. It was simple, yet stunning.