Golden (25 page)

“Bet she's not there for the art,” Trevor says.

I watch Ashley talk as the woman sips. “Bet you're right.”

The only other people in the gallery are a middle-aged man—maybe the woman's husband—who is posted up right next to the food, helping himself, and a petite, dark-haired woman in skinny jeans and a lacy tank top, who looks more like she belongs at a tattoo shop than an art gallery. A fat raindrop lands on the back of my hand, and then another hits my cheek. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Trevor flinch, then wipe a drop from his forehead before we both turn back to the gallery window.

What I witness next happens in quick succession and in slow motion at the same time. I see Ashley say something to the one in the tank top, who then walks over and shakes the hand of the woman holding the wine glass. Ashley talks between them, gesturing at the ocean painting, and the wine woman brings her free hand to her chest in an emphatic gesture. The brunette nods graciously and tries to inch away, but then Ashley stops her and ushers her over to the glass counter. She looks confused at first, but Ashley picks up a slip of paper and hands it to her. As soon as she reads what it says, the confusion on her face tumbles into something else. Something like fear and recognition, and at that instant, that is exactly what I feel.

She's visibly shaken. The paper slips from her fingers and flutters to the floor. I suck in a deep breath. My phone buzzes in my pocket. Trevor looks from me to the girl falling apart in the gallery. A raindrop lands in my eye, blurring my vision momentarily. I'm suspended in the moment, paralyzed.

Trevor's voice cuts through it and his hand grabs the phone from mine. “It's Kat. I'll talk to her. You go. Now. That has to be her.”

I look from him back to the gallery, and Ashley and the couple are still there, and Ashley looks like she's apologizing or something, and the girl—Julianna—is gone. I burst through the door, a rush of wind and rain and desperation and hope.

Ashley looks at me, startled. “Oh—um, she just left. I'm so sorry, I—”

“Where did she go?”

“I don't know, I—”

I don't wait for her to finish. I push past the three of them and duck through the doorway I saw Ashley come out of earlier. It's a small hallway with a door on each side and one in front of me that didn't close all the way. Rain and mist sneak through the crack, and I know she went out that door.

Raindrops prick my face with cold when I step outside again. I look around, desperate. She can't have disappeared into thin air. To the left there's nothing but emptiness. The dark backs of buildings, and a few trash cans next to their back doors. I look to the right, and just in time, I see her small figure, which looks fragile in the rain, about to turn the corner at the end of the street.

“JULIANNA!”

She freezes, and in the light from the corner building I see her turn, just slightly. Then she grabs the door handle in front of her, yanks it open, and disappears behind it.

I run. Through the rain, past one, two, three buildings and their doors, until I get to the one she went in, and when I burst through that one, it's with little hope that she'll actually be inside. Cigarette smoke and the smell of alcohol rush at me on warm air, and I realize I'm in the saloon that was closed earlier. It's packed now, with every table taken and barely any standing room at the bar. My heart beats a desperate rhythm in my chest.
Be here, be here, be here.
I repeat it like a prayer as I take my first tentative steps through the crowd of people. And then it's answered.

She's there. Sitting at the far end of the bar, forehead resting in one hand so that I can't see her face, but I know it's her. My feet step beneath me, my hand reaches under my shirt for the journal, and I forget to breathe. I forget everything else except for Julianna Farnetti, who lifts her head just as I get to her and looks at me with complete and utter anguish in her green eyes.

I don't have the right words for this moment. But then I do. I have hers. Without saying anything, I walk over to where she's sitting, set her journal on the bar, and slide it over to her.

“So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.”

—1923

I sit on the small couch in a tiny studio apartment directly above the gallery with the rain pouring down in what seems like a roar compared to the heavy, silent stillness between us inside. I feel like a trespasser, like being here in the tiny space that is obviously hers is an invasion. I try to make myself small, unintimidating, nonthreatening. I don't want her to think I'm here to out her secret or reveal her if she doesn't want to be. The quiet between us feels tenuous, and despite the harshness of her dyed dark hair and the heavy eyeliner that's smudged from the rain, she looks fragile. Like this—me being here—could be enough to break her.

I'm careful with this moment because I want to be careful with her. She moves very deliberately in the small kitchen area—filling a teakettle, setting it on the burner. Avoiding my gaze. I try to reassure her by avoiding hers, too. My eyes trail over the details of her life here—not as Julianna Farnetti, but as Hope, artist who would prefer to remain anonymous. There are canvases in various stages of completion leaned in stacks against the wall facing the couch. An easel. A table near the window, and on it, a single white flower in a cobalt glass vase. On the nightstand next to the bed is a white candle burned down low, and a sketchbook. All objects that add up to a simple life.

From what I can see, it's also a lonely life. There are no pictures in frames, no postcards on the refrigerator. No evidence that her existence here and now is anything but solitary. I think of Orion in his café, alone, hiding behind walls of work and art, and it strikes me—the sad, poetic kind of symmetry of each of them without the other. The thought of it is enough to give me the resolve not to leave here without trying to set it right. Because I feel like I'm seeing one of the most tragic things in the world—when two people step away from the paths they're traveling, and those paths go on to cross later, without them. They crossed again the day I found her journal, leaving me as the point of intersection, and I made a choice to try and bring them back together.

The whistle of the teakettle draws my eyes back to the kitchen where Julianna sets two mugs on the counter and pours steaming water into them. She drops a tea bag into each one, and pauses a moment before picking them up.
Then she squares her small shoulders, carries both mugs to the sofa where I'm sitting, and sits opposite me, one leg folded beneath her.

I should say something, I know, but I have no voice. We pick up our cups, quiet, like we're both trying to find the words to begin. Watching each other. She's not anything like how I pictured, but she's stunning just the same. Her high cheekbones are more apparent, the green of her eyes deeper than any of the pictures I've seen. Her hair is damp from the rain and hangs wavy and dark over her slight shoulders, which makes the streak of blond in the front leap out. In the open V of her tank top I can see a delicate, necklacelike tattoo over her collarbone. She reaches up to tuck the blond behind her ear with a ringed hand, and I catch a glimpse of a tiny bird inked onto her wrist. It reminds me of Orion with all of his tattoos, and I wonder if maybe they both found some sense of solace in having them done—another parallel they don't even know about.

I take a sip from my cup and glance at her journal sitting on the coffee table between us. When we'd come into her apartment, she'd set it there and retreated to the kitchen like it was something that could hurt her, which I suppose it is. There's so much contained in its pages. A whole life she disappeared from. The girl she used to be. A love she left behind. She looks at it now too, and though there are so many things I want to ask her, this moment feels fragile, and so I choose my words carefully.

I clear my throat. “It was in a box I was going through for Mr. Kinney. His senior journal project from ten years ago.
From your class. I'm his TA. I was getting them ready to send out.” I take a deep breath and look down into my tea, dreading what I have to say next. “When I got to your name, I was . . . I didn't know where to send it, and . . .”

In all the times I'd thought of finding her, I'd never anticipated how excruciatingly hard it would be to confess that I'd read her journal—words that were supposed to be hers alone, not meant for anyone else to see. It felt like a terrible trespass at the time, but now it feels far, far worse. Like something that can't ever be taken back, or forgiven even.

The silence stretches tight between us, and I can feel her waiting for me to break it. “Um, I took it. And then . . .” The three words are heavy in my chest, and I have to force them out. “I read it.”

She takes a breath now, the kind you take in to keep from crying out when something hurts. The sound of it sends guilt coursing through every inch of me.

“I'm so sorry,” I say, looking down. “I never thought there was any possibility that you could still be . . . that you were even alive. I mean, there's a billboard at the edge of town with your picture on it, and a memorial at Summit Lake, and there's a scholarship at school that I was supposed to write a speech for, and . . .” I shake my head. “I know I shouldn't have read it.”

I look back up at her, pleading with my eyes, and try to make her understand with my words. “I was seven when you disappeared, and I remember it like my grandma remembers when JFK got shot, or the way my parents remember that space shuttle exploding. Just like that, I remember how
you disappeared, and how everyone went out into the storm looking for you. The whole town remembers.”

I pause, hoping my words aren't making her feel guilty. I'm trying to keep myself from feeling guilty. “And so when I found your journal, with your words in it, I read it.” I pause and chance a look at Julianna. “I wanted to know who you really were.”

She laughs in a forced way that doesn't have a trace of happiness to it. “
I
didn't know who I was then. When I was writing all of that.” She looks at the journal like she remembers exactly what's in it. It's the first time I've heard her voice, and it's so full of sadness I feel a lump in my own throat.

I swallow hard over it. “It seemed like you were just finding out,” I say, timidly. She nods, but I can tell she's far away right then. Back there, maybe. Maybe thinking about Orion, wondering how it could've been different. I want so badly to tell her everything, all in one breath, but I hold it back. It seems important that I let her lead.

Finally, after what seems like forever, she speaks again. This time, she tries to keep her voice calm, but her eyes are full of fear. “How did you find me?”

This is the big moment. This is exactly the question I want to answer, because it's why I'm here. Orion is why I'm here. The two of them being brought back together is why I'm here.

“Your painting,” I say. “
Acquainted with the Night
. It's hanging on the wall of a café back home.” Her eyebrows rise in surprise. I nod. “I know. It seems crazy. That one of your paintings somehow ended up back there.” If she thinks it is, she doesn't say so. And I realize, as I'm about to go on, that
that's not nearly the craziest thing I'm going to tell her.

“I recognized the spiral of the signature from the pages of your journal. You started putting it on them after . . .” We both glance at the composition book on the coffee table and she nods like she knows what I mean without me having to say it. She raises her cup to her lips, and I take a chance. I say it anyway. “After the day you wrote about Orion's tattoo.”

She freezes at the sound of his name, and I can't tiptoe around it anymore. I clear my throat. Again.

“It's his café that your painting is hanging in. His café called Kismet, which is so perfect because it means fated. And he doesn't even know. He has no idea it's yours, but I saw it, and I knew.” The words spill out fast, landing haphazardly. Julianna's not looking at me anymore. I keep going.

“He doesn't go by Orion anymore, and he barely talks to anyone. He's been there ever since you—since you disappeared. But he's kind of a ghost, too. He came back to help look for you, and he's been there ever since, and after I read your journal and figured out he was who he was, I asked him about you.” Now she looks at me, and when she does, I see something in her eyes besides sadness and regret. She's gone white, and the teacup, still at her lips, begins to tremble.

I reach out and take it gently from her. Her hands fall to her lap, but she keeps her eyes on mine. “He doesn't know,” I say quickly. “He doesn't know you're here, or that I came to find you, or any of it. I didn't want to get his hopes up until I knew for sure because—” I stop, realizing that I was wrong seconds ago, thinking it was the big moment. It's now. It's what I'm about to say.