Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(23)

But is something else goin’ on?”

She didn’t know how to answer that question. Spending the week worrying about Badger and wondering what was going on there, and helping Shannon at the B&B, and spending time with Lilli and Cory and their kids, she hadn’t had to think much about what she’d left in New York. She was glad to be able to forget that for a while.

“I don’t know.”

“Let me ask you something easier, then. When did you intend to go home?”

That wasn’t an easier question. “I don’t know.”

He laughed. It was a very fatherly laugh, full of tender care. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” He laughed again, and this time she joined him. “I keep saying that, but it’s true. It’s like…it’s like I want more than what’s at home. But I don’t know what.”

“Adrienne, you live in New York. You went to college—and you did it in New York City. You’ve been all over the world. Fuck, sweetheart, you went to Asia all by yourself. I see you want a big life. It makes me proud to see it in a way I don’t think I could make you understand. A way that makes my heart hurt a little.

You should go and find the biggest life you can. But it’s not here. If you want more, you won’t find it here.

Here, you’ll only find less. A small life. Small people.”

“I know it looks big. But Show, I was lonely in the city. I was so lonely at Columbia I made myself sick.

New York made me feel claustrophobic. Being on my own in Asia was okay, but I’ve done that. I don’t want that again. And at home, I’m just regressing to the little girl who sleeps in the same bed she’s had since she was six. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I love my father and my brothers so much. I have a great family, and I will never take that for granted. Now I have another great family. I know I’m lucky. But I can’t find a way to feel right at home. It’s like I’m changing somehow, but my life isn’t. It’s like…”

She stopped and searched for a way to describe how she’d been feeling since before she’d graduated Columbia, a feeling she’d been oppressed by since she’d come back from Asia. “It’s like my old life is wearing a blister on my mind. Or on my soul.” She laughed sheepishly. “That sounds really lame, I know.”

“No, little one. It’s not lame at all. I know that feeling. What doesn’t fit?”

With a shrug, she turned and looked out the window next to the bed. It was dark. Shannon would be home soon. “Me. I don’t fit.” She paused again and tried to think how to explain. “From the time I was little, I wanted to be an artist. When I was in high school, I landed on photography, and I told everybody that I wanted to be like Alfred Stieglitz. You know him?”

Show shook his head.

“I’ll show you his work sometime. He did these amazing images. They’re all mood and rebellion, and they’re just breathtaking. He was married to Georgia O’Keeffe—you have a print of hers in your bedroom.”

“That rainbow vagina thing Shannon likes so much?”

Adrienne laughed. “Well, it’s called ‘Grey Line with Black, Blue, and Yellow,’ but yes. Lots of people see sexual imagery in her work.”

“Yeah, that’s a multicolored *. No question.” He grinned. “’Scuse my language.”

With a wry nod, she went on. It felt good to try to tell Show what was going on. She was putting into words things she hadn’t been able to sort out well enough to think through. “Anyway, I had a plan. I was going to Columbia, I was going to get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, I was going to get my foot in at a gallery or museum in the city, and I was going to live in a crappy walk-up studio garret, where all my neighbors would be starving artists like me, and then one day I’d get discovered and get my own gallery show, and be famous. Basically, I’d need a time machine to back to the Sixties and hang out with Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.”

Show didn’t register any recognition of those names, either. So she went on. “My mom and dad were totally supportive of my grand plan. Totally. And then my mom died, and my dad sort of fixed on it. On making sure I had the life my mom wanted for me.”

“But you don’t want that life anymore.”

Relief made her sigh. He got it. “No, I don’t. I have the degree, but it’s not what I want. I don’t know what I want. But how do I tell my father, who’s trying to fulfill his wife’s dying wish for me, that I don’t want that wish? And that I have no idea what I want more?”

“You tell him, little one. Simple as that. Like you’re telling me.”

“No. I tried that. He can’t hear me. I get why. He can only hear my mother. But I can’t be there and figure myself out at the same time. I can see him being disappointed—not in me, exactly, but for me. Does that make sense?”

Show nodded. “It does.”

“And it makes me hurt. I don’t want to make him even a little sad. He’s had enough of that.”

“He can’t be happy you’re here. I know he doesn’t like it much when you come.”

“No. He worries.”

“He’s right to, Adrienne. He’s right to worry. It’s why I want you to go.”