Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

Whoever the woman in the office with the red face and hateful eyes was, Rhys was already determined to dislike her before he got close to the office door and heard her insult against Early. Hearing her refer to Early as “whatever it is” had him fuming as he marched into the middle of whatever argument was going on.

“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded, making a beeline straight to Early and taking their hand.

He didn’t like the anxious look on Early’s face at all. They were distressed by whatever was going on. Rhys didn’t have to know all the details to know that he would move heaven and earth to wipe the strain off of his lover’s face.

And yes, referring to Early as his lover came so naturally and felt so good that he wasn’t going to bother to question his instinct or second-guess his feelings for them.

He wasn’t expecting the woman’s reply, though.

“Are you one of the organizers of this horrific, so-called ‘fundraiser’ as well?” the woman asked, making air quotes around the word “fundraiser”.

It hit Rhys out of nowhere. He’d been dead-set against the fundraiser from the start. It was wrong, frustrating, and had the potential to be every bit as horrific as the mystery woman was raging that it would be. Hearing someone else echo exactly the thoughts he’d had about it from the start left him feeling…he didn’t even know.

“Rhys, this is Nancy Flint, Martin and Mariel’s sister,” his dad explained in the voice that strangers thought was cool and polite, but that family knew meant he was holding onto his temper by a thread. “Nancy?—”

“That’s Ms. Flint to you,” the woman snapped.

“Ms. Flint,” Rhys’s dad corrected himself with a nod, “this is my son, Rhys Hawthorne. He’s one of the principal organizers of the fundraiser.”

Rhys turned a quick frown on his dad at the same time as Nancy zeroed in on him with a dark scowl. Since when was he one of the principal organizers?

“I want this travesty stopped at once,” Nancy said, as if she was just getting started with her argument. “The only reason my brother is doing this is to make money. He’s a self-serving, heartless prick.”

Rhys intended to cut off her acid complaint, but hearing her opinion of her brother stopped him short. He just stood there for a moment with his mouth open.

“I can assure you,” his dad picked up the slack, “this fundraiser is in the very best of taste, and every cent of the proceeds will go to the Campaign Against Drink Driving.”

“I don’t care what cause you think you’re supporting,” Nancy fired back, not even a little appeased. “You’re profiting off my sister’s death, and I won’t stand for it.”

Every part of Rhys wanted to fight back in the face of the sort of aggression Nancy was hurling at him. He’d known about her and her objections to the event in theory, but seeing it in person and feeling the intensity of her emotion had him ready for a battle.

Except he recognized the glassiness of her eyes, the slight quiver of her bottom lip, and the agitated way she stood.

“Ms. Flint, have you spoken to a grief counselor at all about your sister?” he asked, even though he knew it was potentially throwing a lit match on paraffin.

“No, I have not spoken to a bloody grief counselor,” she snapped back. “I’m not some sort of loony that needs to be carted off to Bedlam.”

It said something about the entire Hawthorne family that everyone in the room seemed to take a collective breath of understanding and relax.

If Nancy had left it there, they might have been able to put out all the fires sooner, but she charged on with, “What sort of bleeding-heart, left-wing playground is this? Obscene art on the walls, trying to force me to talk about my feelings, and this person who obviously doesn’t know what God intended for them trying to touch me.”

They’d been so close to coming to an understanding.

“I will not have you insulting Early like that,” Rhys said, raising his voice when he probably shouldn’t have. He squeezed Early’s hand tightly in his as well. “They are a valued member not only of the staff of the Hawthorne Community Arts Center, but a beloved friend of my family as well.”

Nancy opened her mouth like she was going to argue the point, but Rhys cut her off with, “How dare you come in here demanding respect and understanding from us when you can’t even be bothered to show it yourself? Is that how your sister would want you to behave?”

Again, with an inward cringe, Rhys was certain that was the wrong thing to say. But he had Raina on his mind and had all morning, since he’d gone down to his studio early, hoping the amazing and wonderful weekend he’d just had would help him break through the block he was having where Raina’s landscape was concerned.

Those hopes had failed him, though. He’d only stared at the imperfect landscape for half an hour before shuffling and muttering his way around his classroom, setting up for the day’s lessons and preparing for the new model who had taken Early’s place. Raina had stayed with him the entire time, and she was right back with him now…shaking her head at him from the great beyond.

Except instead of flying into a fit, Nancy went rigid with emotion for a few seconds before bursting into sobs.

Early sucked in their breath, squeezing Rhys’s hand, hugging his arm, and glancing up plaintively at him. That quick, simple show of compassion reverberated through Rhys, spurring him on.

He let go of Early’s hand and stepped close to Nancy. Knowing full well it might backfire on him, he enclosed the sobbing woman in a hug.

To his and everyone else’s surprise, Nancy leaned heavily into him, closing her arms around his waist and burying her head against his chest. He was at least a foot taller than her, and she nearly disappeared in his hug.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she moaned, her hands fisting in his shirt. “She was there and then she was gone. I never even got to see her again. And now my bastard of a brother wants to rush in and use her death to bring attention to himself.”

Rhys breathed in, glancing at his dad. The expression his dad wore seemed to confirm that he’d come to the same conclusion, that they’d unwittingly been thrown into another family’s internal drama.

“Why don’t we take you for a tour of the house,” Rhys’s mum said, stepping forward slightly. “If you see all the work we’ve done preparing for the event on Friday, maybe it will change your mind about the whole thing.”

She looked pleadingly at Rhys, passing on the responsibility for the alarming woman’s wellbeing to him.

“I’d be happy to come with you,” Early said, surprising Rhys with the kindness of their offer when the woman had said such ignorant things about them to their face.

Rhys got another surprise when Nancy rocked back, sniffled, wiped her face, and said, “Alright.”

Things moved relatively quickly from there. Early took Nancy into the breakroom so she could wash her face, and Rhys’s parents and Rebecca circled around him.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Rebecca whispered.

“This is a terrible idea,” Rhys murmured back. “But I know what she’s feeling, and…and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we can’t have her force us to call the fundraiser off this close to the day. We’ve invested too much into the whole thing.”

He hoped his family would think he was just talking about the silent auction and the money they would raise for CADD, but as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was now emotionally invested in the questionable tribute to Raina as well.

“If anyone can calm her down, it’s you, son,” his dad said, clapping a hand on Rhys’s shoulder.

Ten minutes later, as he and Early walked Nancy around the first floor, showing her the various classrooms and explaining the sort of art classes they taught there, he wasn’t as sure.

“You turned a perfectly good aristocratic estate into a bohemian arts center?” Nancy asked incredulously after they’d visited Robbie’s ceramics studio.

“Technically, it was turned into a convalescent hospital at the end of World War One first,” Early said in their soft, soothing voice. “Then it was made into a boys’ school after the Second World War. The school folded in the nineties, at which time the house reverted back to the family, who transformed it into the wonderful community arts center you see now.”

Nancy blinked at them.

Rhys smiled and slipped a hand to the small of their back in a gesture of approval and affection. He had no idea that Early knew the entire family history or that they could deliver it as if they were one of the Hawthornes.

Early should have been one of the Hawthornes. As far as Rhys’s heart was concerned, they already were. His mind might have been cautioning him not to get ahead of himself and write his own fairy tale, but even that part of him agreed Early had managed to leave the nest and land exactly where he belonged.

It also helped that one of the primary school classes that bussed kids to the arts center for extra classes walked by at just that moment.

“Hello, Mr. Painting Hawthorne,” one of the kids greeted him and was echoed by several of the others. “Hello, Mr. Painting Hawthorne. Hello, Pretty Early.”

Early’s face lit up, as if they’d never been called Pretty Early before. “Hello, Sandra. Hello, Jaime,” they waved and greeted all of the kids in turn. They knew every one of their names, which impressed Rhys even more.

It actually looked as if they’d impressed Nancy, too. Instead of scowling and glaring, she looked stunned.

She was stunned into silence as they continued on to the dining hall, which was already half decorated in preparation for the fundraiser.

“As you can see,” Rhys explained, gesturing around the room, “the whole thing will be tasteful and poignant. Several companies have donated items and experiences for the auction. Representatives from CADD will be on hand to receive all proceeds at the end of the night.” He paused, his throat squeezing up at the one part of the night’s plans he still had trouble with. “And there will be tributes to both your sister and mine as part of the programming.”

Nancy’s face pinched again. “Why did it happen?” she whispered hoarsely, then held a hand to her mouth.

The pain of it all should not have still hit Rhys so hard. Unlike Nancy, he had been to therapy about everything. He’d talked about his grief, both with the counselor and with other people in his family. But seeing such fresh, raw grief on the face of the woman whose sister he had been vilifying for weeks was like a punch to the gut.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking.

Nancy turned to him, her eyes going wide. That, too, made it feel like the barely healed scab over the wound ripping Raina from his life had left him with had been torn off.

“I don’t know,” he repeated with a helpless shrug. “Not a day has gone by since then when I haven’t missed my sister so much it makes me feel like I’m being stabbed. And believe me, I was against this event myself when they first brought the idea to me.”

Nancy’s eyes widened in surprise.

“He was,” Early confirmed, in full compassion mode all over again. Rhys wasn’t sure their comment was necessary, but on the other hand, they radiated comfort and sympathy.

“Then why do it?” Nancy asked, looking at Rhys again. “Why put everyone through the heartache of reliving their loss?”

Rhys shrugged again. “Because Raina would have wanted her death to mean something,” he said. “She would have wanted people to remember her, and your sister, and to have fun while they did it. She would have wanted the people who reach out to help those in crisis to benefit in whatever way they can from what happened to her.”

“But that doesn’t stop the pain,” Nancy said, making a fist and holding it to her heart. “It doesn’t bring her back.”

“It doesn’t,” Rhys agreed, stepping toward her and pulling her into a hug again. “But at least it brings the rest of us together.”

Nancy let out a heavy breath and sagged against him, though she managed not to burst into sobs again. Rhys wasn’t certain if he’d gotten through to her, but at least she didn’t put up a fuss or make nasty comments as they looked around the room, talking about everything that would take place on Friday.

She remained relatively quiet when they left the dining hall and continued with the tour of the house and classrooms as well. They circled around to Rhys’s painting studio last.

“This is where I teach my classes,” he explained, drawing Nancy all the way to his nook at the far side of the classroom as Early followed. “And this is the landscape I’ve been working on as a tribute to my sister. I actually started it shortly after the accident, but I?—”

His breath was taken unexpectedly as he stared at the huge canvas. He forced himself to breathe and rubbed a hand over his face.

“It’s not finished,” he said. “I can’t get it right, for some reason.”

“I think it looks beautiful,” Early said, touching Rhys’s back gently.

“No,” Nancy said, tilting her chin up and gazing at the painting like a judge. “You’re right. Something is wrong with it.”

Rhys whipped to face her, his brow going up. “What do you think is wrong?” he asked.

So far, everyone had said it was fine. He definitely wanted to hear what the one person who agreed with his assessment that it was all wrong had to say.

“It’s flat,” Nancy said. “It’s missing something.”

“Are you an artist?” Early asked. Coming from anyone else, it could have been a snide comment, but Early was clearly curious.

Nancy shook her head. “No, not even slightly. But I can tell you, there’s no emotion in that painting.”

Rhys looked at his work again. Nancy’s comment made him extraordinarily uneasy. It wasn’t at all the reaction he would have expected to have to his work. But she was right. The thing that had been missing all this time wasn’t a highlight or a refinement of detail. It wasn’t the suggestion of movement in the trees or the hint of dew on the grass. The painting was missing the truth.

“I need to move on,” Nancy said, shaking her head and stepping away from the canvas as Rhys continued to stare at it. “I’ve stayed longer than I intended to at any rate. I won’t put a stop to this fundraiser my brother has tricked you into,” she said, dragging Rhys’s attention away from the painting and to her. “I might even attend. But I won’t be happy.”

“You don’t have to be happy if that isn’t what you feel,” Early said, smiling at her. It took a person of extraordinary character to continue to smile at someone who still looked at them with suspicion. “I can show you out, if you’d like,” Early went on, sending a brief glance to Rhys.

Rhys was impressed that Early could sense his need to stay where he was, looking at the painting that had troubled him for so long with new eyes.

“I suppose so,” Nancy sighed, then strode toward the door, almost leaving Early behind.

“I’ll be right back,” Early told Rhys, then followed Nancy out of the room.

Rhys listened to the sound of their footsteps disappearing in the hallway, the hum of voices in the hallway and beyond, and the faint sound of talking from the classroom next to his. He glanced out the window at the view he and Raina had enjoyed so much, then back at the painting.

Raina would have known something was missing from the start. She would have seen that he was fighting against the scene he was trying to conjure instead of working with the story on his canvas to find it. She would have known the truth.

“Are you okay?”

Early’s voice right behind him what felt like only a few seconds later jolted Rhys. He gasped slightly, then turned to face them.

“That was quick,” he said.

Early shrugged one shoulder, then leaned forward, sliding into Rhys’s arms. That made Rhys smile and his troubled heart feel momentarily light.

“Nancy was in a hurry to leave,” Early reported. “Your mum tried to talk to her, but she wasn’t in the mood. I hinted to Janice not to poke too hard and upset the careful balance you created.”

Rhys’s smile grew. “Thank you.”

He dipped down to kiss Early’s warm, soft lips. Something still felt tight and stuck deep within him, though.

Early seemed to know it.

“She brought up a lot of unhealed stuff, didn’t she,” they said.

Rhys sighed and nodded. “Yeah.”

He let go of Early, keeping one arm around their waist, and turned to study Raina’s landscape again.

“She’s right, though,” he admitted, rubbing one hand over his face. “It’s flat. That’s the problem. I’ve rendered the image, but I haven’t put the emotion in it yet.”

“Then that’s what you should do,” Early said, turning to lean into him, wrapping their arms around his waist.

Rhys loved how clingy Early suddenly was. He loved Early’s strength and courage, but if he was honest, he loved their vulnerability and need to have him as a protector, too.

“What would you say to me making you supper tonight?” they asked, peeking up at Rhys with an almost wicked look. “I really am a fantastic cook and we didn’t get a chance to really enjoy the fruits of my labor that night.”

Rhys laughed softly and pivoted to pull Early fully into his arms again. “I think that sounds like a wonderful idea,” he said, dipping down to kiss Early gently.

He smiled at the way Early blushed and suddenly couldn’t catch their breath. Maybe this time they’d do it right and talk about things before dinner led to dessert.

And maybe once he got one part of his soul sorted and settled, he’d be able to get the landscape to do what it needed to do. Maybe he’d finally be able to get everything right.