The Stillwater Girls(19)

“That could be anyone,” he says. “You got a pic?”

“A what?”

“A picture,” he says. “A photograph.”

My brows furrow. “No.”

“You ever had your picture taken?” he asks. “With a camera?”

He holds his hands up in front of his face, fingers curled, though I’m not sure what he’s miming.

“No,” I say.

“Well, shit.” He drags his palm along his bristled face, and the sound it makes sends a prickled crawl up my skin. “Who does she look like more? You or your sister?”

I glance toward Sage, who’s never looked much like Mama to begin with. They don’t share a single feature. Mama always said Sage favored Daddy with her fine features and lily-white complexion, but no one knows where the dark hair came from.

“Me,” I say, though Mama doesn’t look much like me either.

One day we stood side by side in front of the mirror, cleaning up for the night, and I compared our features. Mama’d given us a biology lesson earlier that day, told us about genetics and Punnett squares, so naturally I was curious, but it didn’t take more than a few minutes for me to realize she and I didn’t share a single trait. Mama’s nose was distinct, slightly large for her face, and her lashes were shorter than mine. My eyes were hooded, hers more defined. My face was round, hers long. Her brows were darker and fuller than mine, and she had a dimple in the center of her left cheek when she smiled. Her hair was a dark blonde—creek-water blonde, Mama called it—and mine matched the August sunshine, soft and golden.

When I asked Mama why we looked so different, she laughed, ruffled my hair, and told me that genetics were a funny thing and that sometimes we might look more like our grandparents or aunts or cousins than our mama or daddy, and then she proceeded to tell me how much I reminded her of her own mother, right down to the starbursts of white in my blue irises.

“Her mouth is shaped like a heart,” I say, my chest tightening when I think about how much I miss her smile. “Her upper lip . . .” I trace the shape in the air with my fingertip. “It’s like this.”

“A cupid’s bow,” he says.

I’m not sure what he means by a cupid’s bow, but I don’t care to tell him that.

I take a moment to gather myself, pulling in a ragged breath as he waits for me to continue, but there’s nothing more to say. Mama’s face is burned in my memory for always, but no amount of describing her to a stranger could ever convey how beautiful she is.

She always reminded me of a storybook queen—the noble kind—with love in her heart that translated through the softness in her tone when she spoke to us and the sparkle of contentedness in her eyes when she’d wrap us in her arms and read to us before bed each night.

Squeezing my eyes, I try to force away the damp burn so he doesn’t see me cry.

“Does she have a mark right here?” The stranger points to a spot on the right side of his nose. “A bump. The color of her skin. Hard to see unless you were in the right light.”

My heart stops beating for a single, endless second.

“No,” I lie. “She doesn’t.”





CHAPTER 14

NICOLETTE

Brant zips his suitcase closed before taking a seat beside me on our bed. Cupping my cheek, he runs the pad of his thumb along my bottom lip before stealing a kiss.

If it were last year, I’d be in Florida by now, soaking in the sunshine, my toes buried in sugar-white sand as the sea spray and humidity flatten and frizz my hair and Cate tells me some salacious story about her dating life.

I’ve always lived for my time with her. Winters in upstate New York are cloudy and bleak. Winters with Cate are carefree, hilarious, and Technicolor. Her home is right on the water, and nothing compares to waking up to the sound of the Atlantic crashing on the shore or the caws of seagulls as they hover over the coastline.

For years, I’d hinted to Brant about wanting to live somewhere warm and green and lush, but he wouldn’t have it. He said, “Until we’re white-haired and retired, we have no business subjecting ourselves to a Floridian lifestyle. We’ll get fat and lazy and spoiled by the sunshine.” Plus, he likes being close to New York, saying he can be on a plane in a matter of hours and fly anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice should he be needed.

So I settled for winters with Cate.

Artists are strange, fickle souls. His creativity exhausts him some moments; other times it lights a fire so bright inside of him, I can almost see the flares in his eyes. He comes alive then, all of him, all at once. It’s beautiful and contagious and part of the reason I fell in love with him in the first place.

But lately, he’s been feeling stifled and blocked—or so he says. He’s been doubting himself and pressuring himself, feeling like an unworthy impostor one minute and a washed-up has-been the next—Bellhaus Museum exhibit or not.

My husband takes my hands in his. “You sure you’ll be okay here?”

“I offered to join you.”

We already had this conversation, after I told him I was staying in New York for the winter. I offered to accompany him on this trip, intentionally waiting until his connecting flight from Dallas to the Mariscal Sucre International Airport was full.

I agreed with him that it didn’t make sense for me to join him on this trip, but what I didn’t agree with was the relief in his eyes when he realized we were on the same page.