Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(76)

They were quiet then for a space. Declan looked out the window at the dark, more pensive than his portrait. Both Real Declan and Portrait Declan held their hands the same way, fingers unevenly laced, something about them suggesting power at rest, but Portrait Declan depicted the Declan of just a few minutes before, his head turned quickly to hide that secret smile, that private self. Portrait Declan’s eyes were half-lidded, looking away, his expression one of intimate, mannered amusement. Real Declan’s were wide open, mirthless.

“My mother took days to fall asleep after my father died,” Declan said. It took Jordan a moment to realize that he was referring to the dreamt Aurora, not his biological mother, Mór ó Corra. It was the first time she remembered him doing so. “He was dead right away, of course. Brains bashed in. They had to take some of the gravel driveway with him to clean up the scene, if you can imagine, that’s your job, the shovel, make sure you get all the pieces, don’t want the kids tripping over gray matter. They didn’t take my mother, though, because she didn’t look dead yet. She looked fine. Fine as you could expect under the circumstances. No, it took her days. She ran down, like a battery. The further she got away from him, the longer it had been since he was alive, the less she became, until she was just … asleep.”

It was not his ordinary storytelling voice. There was no theater. He was looking at nothing.

“Ronan and Matthew wanted her awake again, of course—Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t you? Truly, why wouldn’t you, I see that now. I see it from their point of view. But Ronan and I fought. I said it wouldn’t matter, she was nothing without Dad. Always an accessory to him, a reaction to him. Why wake her? You couldn’t wake the dead along with her, so she’d always be a frame for a destroyed painting. We were orphans the moment Dad died because she was just organ death. What was she except for what Dad made her to be? What could she do except what he had made her to do? She had to love us. She was always just an external hard drive for his feelings. She—”

“Just stop,” Jordan said. “You have to know now. Saying she wasn’t real doesn’t make it any easier. Just different. Anger doesn’t mess up mascara as much.”

His eyes were bright but he blinked and they were ordinary again.

“Ronan’s trying to wake up the world. I’m trying to think of how to talk him out of it, but what he’s talking about is a world where she never fell asleep. A world where Matthew’s just a kid. A world where it doesn’t matter what Hennessy does, if something happens to her. A level playing field. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but it’s not like I can’t see the appeal, because now I’m biased, I’m too biased to be clear.” Declan shook his head a little. “I said I would never become my father, anything like him. And now look at me. At us.”

Ah, there it was.

It took no effort to remember the way he’d looked at her the first moment he realized she was a dream.

“I’m a dream,” Jordan said. “I’m not your dream.”

Declan put his chin in his hand and looked back out the window; that, too, would be a good portrait. Perhaps it was just because she liked looking at him that she thought each pose would make a good one. A series. What a future that idea promised, nights upon nights like this, him sitting there, her standing here.

“By the time we’re married,” Declan said eventually, “I want you to have applied for a different studio in this place because this man’s paintings are very ugly.”

Her pulse gently skipped two beats before continuing on as before. “I don’t have a social security number of my own, Pozzi.”

“I’ll buy you one,” Declan said. “You can wear it in place of a ring.”

The two of them looked at each other past the canvas on her easel.

Finally, he said, voice soft, “I should see the painting now.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s time, Jordan.”

Putting his jacket to the side, he stood. He waited. He would not come around to look without an invite.

It’s time, Jordan.

Jordan had never been truly honest with anyone who didn’t wear Hennessy’s face. Showing him this painting, this original, felt like being more honest than she had ever been in her life.

She stepped back to give him room.

Declan took it in. His eyes flicked to and from the likeness, from the jacket on Portrait Declan’s leg to the real jacket he’d left behind on the chair. She watched his gaze follow the live edge she had taken such care to paint, that subtle electricity of complementary colors at the edge of his form.

“It’s very good,” Declan muttered. “Jordan, it’s very good.”

“I thought it might be.”

“I don’t know if it’s a sweetmetal. But you’re very good.”

“I thought I might be.”

“The next one will be even better.”

“I think it might be.”

“And in ten years your scandalous masterpiece will get you thrown out of France, too,” he said. “And later you can triumphantly sell it to the Met. Children will have to write papers about you. People like me will tell stories about you to their dates at museums to make them think they’re interesting.”

She kissed him. He kissed her. And this kiss, too, got all wrapped up in the art-making of the portrait sitting on the easel beside them, getting all mixed in with all the other sights and sounds and feelings that had become part of the process.