A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain #1)(71)

Maybe I just answered my own question. “I know you once dated my mother. But that must have been thirty-five years ago.”

“That’s true,” he says slowly. “But my disagreement with your father only dates back about half as far as that.”

I feel a cold prickle on the back of my neck, and a dozen ugly ideas float through my head. “Why is that?”

“Your mother’s art,” he says. “You know I helped place it in galleries?”

I lean forward in my chair. “Really?”

He nods. “She had several dealers. I used to own a gallery in Denver. Your mother and I had an ongoing business relationship. Nothing fishy about it, though. The fact that we dated once for a couple of weeks wasn’t ever a problem.”

“Oh. I see.” It takes me a minute to wrap my head around that. “So what happened? Did some kind of transaction go wrong?”

“Not exactly.” He tips his head to the side, as if considering what to say. “You must have been in middle school. I wanted her to go to New Mexico to collaborate with another studio artist. I’d introduced the two of them. It would have meant six weeks away from your dad and you boys. But the collaboration would have widened her platform a lot. It could have taken her career from successful local artist to international success.”

Oh. “And she didn’t go.” Of course she didn’t. I would have noticed.

He shakes his head. “She said—and this haunts me—there’ll be plenty of time after the kids are grown. Life is long.”

“Well, shit.”

Block gives me a sad smile. “My thoughts exactly. Your dad resented the hell out of me for pushing her on it. I asked her again when you kids were in high school, too. But then…”

“She got her diagnosis.”

He nods, and his eyes are so sad. “The fucked-up thing is that the price for her art went through the roof when she stopped producing new work. I bought a few pieces for myself at the end, even at those prices. Just to keep the cash flowing to her…” He clears his throat. “Your father probably resents me for a million different reasons by now. I still own several pieces of her best work.”

“Can I see it?” I ask quickly. I’d already planned to ask unless he threw me out before I got the chance.

“Of course.” He stands, and I follow him out of the room. I expect him to head into the dining room, where I already know he’s got those bookends.

But he doesn’t. He climbs an elaborate staircase with a carved-wood banister, and I follow him up to the second floor.

The bronze statue is right there on the landing, and I recognize it immediately, because the clay study she’d made for this work used to sit high up on that shelf in our living room.

But this version is larger, with a beautiful blue-green patina. The figure is seated on the edge of the table where Block has placed her. Her limbs are elongated and rumpled by the suggestion of clothing. Long legs hang down, but they’re tensed together. She clasps her thin arms in front of her chest, as if so overcome by a sudden yearning that she has to contain her heart with both hands.

Her youthful face is tipped toward the sky, and her voluminous hair is lifted as if by the wind, flowing energetically in the breeze.

It’s twenty-four or so inches of pure, flowing emotion, captured in metal.

My hands move unbidden to the metal, just so I can touch something that my mother once held. The mottled metal surface is cool against my fingers.

And just for a second, I feel her presence. Like a spark of warmth on my face. And everything goes still inside me as the bronze warms to my hands.

“She had so much heart,” Block whispers, “and it shows in every piece she ever made.”

He’s right. My mother was special that way. She never hid her emotions. She wasn’t ever afraid to show how much she cared.

Unlike me. It’s been so long since I allowed myself to love anyone that I almost can’t remember how it works. “When she died, we all lost that. I mean—we lost her, but we also lost the ability to show up for each other.”

My words aren’t very polished, but they’re still true. The remaining Madigans are four grown men who’ve spent years trying not to feel a thing.

And poor Ava. She got the worst of my dysfunction.

But right now, in the presence of my mother’s work, I let myself feel every damn thing. It hurts. I’m vaguely aware of the tears in my eyes, and I don’t let go of the sculpture until one of them threatens to break free, and I have to brush it away.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Block says softly.

“Thank you.” I step back and take a deep breath. Not to banish the feeling, but to process it. “Thank you for letting me see this. I have very little of her artwork. And my father has none.”

Block stares.

“He didn’t want any memories of her in the house.”

“Jesus.” He looks back at the sculpture. “It had occurred to me that this should be displayed somewhere in town. I could work on that.”

“That’s a nice idea, but I’m just glad to know that it’s safe. I thought about trying to hunt down some of her other work and buying it back.”

I hadn’t done it, though. Maybe I’m more like my father than I thought. And isn’t that an uncomfortable realization.