The Reluctant Nude (16 page)

“Max—”

“
Get out of my house!
”

Fallon felt her eyes go wide and her mouth drop open. Her body shook as she grabbed her bag off the floor and strode to the door with affected calm. She dashed down the steps to the driveway, gasping for air. Behind her, the screen door swung back open and struck the side of the house with a reverberating bang.

“Get out of my head!”
Max screamed, maniacal.

Fallon turned her head the smallest fraction, enough to see him standing on his front steps, his chest rising and falling so violently she could make it out from ten yards away. She hurried onward, clutching her bag like an infant, fleeing what felt like a house engulfed in flames.

She nearly reached the main road before she realized he’d said he loved her.

After Fallon was out of sight, Max crouched down on the doorstep and held his head in shaking hands. He hadn’t felt he was going mad like this in years. Not since his grandmother died. Not since he’d last lost the sole person left in the world who meant anything to him.

He hauled his quaking body back inside and grabbed a four-pound sledgehammer and went to his backyard, to his assembly of broken figures. He hissed at the loitering cat until it fled across the lawn.

He raised the hammer and brought it down, whacking the perfect white arm off the nearest statue. Then the shoulder. The crown of the head. A hunk from the second arm smashed through one of his rear windows but he barely noticed.

Systematically, Max destroyed each and every one of the meticulously hewn souls that haunted his garden. He destroyed all the evidence of this curse—this so-called
gift
—that had left his life empty, driven away any and all decent people and drawn the toxic ones toward him like moths. He worked until the bandages wrapping his hands frayed and his skin grew raw. He worked until no single marble finger or toe or lock of hair was recognizable, until white dust drifted over his yard like fog and all that remained were hunks of meaningless, anonymous rock. Finally he tossed the hammer aside, feeling his body for the first time in hours, feeling suspended somewhere between dead and brilliantly alive.

He strode inside, then stopped in his tracks before Fallon’s statue. His eyes darted over her half-hewn features, a promise made to that reprehensible man. The man whose sick games had brought her here then ripped her away just as suddenly. He ran a blistered palm down her stone back, across the ridge of her shoulder blade, over the shadows cast by the dying sun. Nearly three months he’d been chipping away, stripping off the layers to try to uncover the essence of this woman. The hardest he’d ever worked, and surely the finest piece of his career, had he succeeded.

Exhausted, he barely had the energy to stagger to the kitchen, uncork the wine bottle and fill a glass. His hand shook as he carried it to the table. The cat mewed at the back door, he let it in. He took his seat and when Oscar grazed his shins he hoisted the cat into his arms and held it hostage, the thing he should have done with Fallon instead of driving her away.

It wouldn’t have done any good, though, keeping her here. If his temper hadn’t scared her off, his refusal to finish that hateful sculpture would have done the job just as surely.

Emotions pulsed through Max’s body like drugs. Ugly emotions he hadn’t felt in years, betrayal and hurt and grief, anger over feeling used and manipulated. Fallon didn’t deserve them. Forrester wasn’t worth them. If these feelings had any point at all, it was to tell Max exactly how different he’d felt these past weeks in Fallon’s company. Calm and happy. Passionate toward a complete person, not just their shadows or textures or scars. Living for something aside from his art and precious solitude, living for pleasurable shared moments and for hope over what the future might bring.

He sighed and set the cat down, eyes caught once again by the stone shape of the woman he’d driven from this house. He stared at the sky, crisscrossed by a thousand mullions. At this moment his home looked an awful lot like a cage. Without Fallon it looked like ribs with no heart beating inside them. He rubbed that spot on his own chest, trying to ease the ache.

He’d let her down. Scared her off and ruined the plan she’d sacrificed so much for, just as she’d said. Max looked to the statue, wondering if he could make a sacrifice himself, ignore his ethics and finish it…

He’d sooner destroy it.

A cool breeze seeped through the broken rear window and Max knew then he wouldn’t sleep that night. That small bed would feel too huge without her in it, this entire space cavernous and cold. She’d ruined him, just as he’d ruined her plans to save her aunt’s home. Funny how that balance felt so deeply unsettling.

He gazed into the distance, past the backyard to the sea and the cliffs. Somewhere beyond all this Fallon was en route to Halifax, to New York. Even if he went after her, he had nothing to offer that could make this right.

He stared at the cliffs, ocean crashing.

He stared at the cliffs, so like an invitation to plummet, here…so protective, the way Fallon had described those surrounding her aunt’s home.

Max stared at the cliffs until daylight abandoned Cape Breton, and then he knew what to do.

Chapter Twelve

Fallon disembarked at LaGuardia glassy-eyed and dry-mouthed. Her head throbbed, reminding her of such things as sleep and food and water. Rachel found her at the baggage claim. There was hugging and kind words, then obedient agreements to not talk about things for a while.

In the car, watching Queens stream by the window, Fallon turned to her friend to speak for the first time in twenty minutes. “Thanks.”

“None needed,” Rachel said, smiling weakly. “Just let me know what I can do.”

“Call Donald Forrester for me and tell him I’m fucked, please.”

“You know I would, if you wanted me to.”

“I know. And I’ll be a big girl and do it myself.”
Soon,
Fallon thought. In a day, maybe two, when she wasn’t grieving so deeply that her body felt as though it were ripping open at the seams.

“Maybe he’ll change his mind,” Rachel said and it didn’t matter which man she was referring to.

Fallon gave her a withering look.

“We can dream, can’t we?”

“You, the worst Jew I’ve ever met and me, a congenital atheist?” Fallon asked. “Like we’ve got any miracles due to us.”

Rachel nodded glumly. “I’m so sorry, Fal. I know how much she meant to you. And that house.” Rachel and Josh had gone with her to Gloria’s twice for Christmas and once for the Fourth of July. She did know. “And all the time you sacrificed, trying to make this work.”

Fallon cried silently as Rachel wove them through the traffic. What business did autumn have, looking so sunny and cheerful this morning? She grabbed her bag from the floor and dug for a tissue. Remembering her phone, she switched it off flight mode. A minute later it vibrated into life. One missed call, the screen informed her.

Rachel glanced over. “The devil himself?”

She shook her head, squinting at the area code. “Nova Scotia.”

“Oh.”

Fallon held down the check message button with shaking fingers and that voice she’d heard shrieking at her only the previous afternoon sounded as though it were speaking from a month ago, calm and cool.

“
It’s Max. Don’t tell Forrester we’ve fallen out. I will fix this.
” The click of the receiver being replaced. Fallon flipped her phone closed.

“Max?” Rachel asked, glancing nervously between Fallon and the road.

“Yeah.”

“Was it bad, when you two…parted ways?”

Fallon nodded. “It was ugly.”

“Was the message ugly?”

“No,” Fallon said. “But it’s the last fucking thing I need right now.”

Fallon was plied with pizza and a stiff vodka and tonic and sent to bed early. When she awoke the next morning, the sky was still blue, the world still turning. Her bedclothes from the last couple of years felt as unfamiliar as a motel’s.

Rachel had departed for work early as usual and left a pot of coffee warming in the machine. Fallon caffeinated herself and ate a half-frozen bagel and spun her phone around on the counter for five minutes before dialing.

“Donald Forrester.”

“It’s Fallon.”

His voice transformed. “Hello, Fallon! How is it on Cape Breton today?”

She paused. “It’s fine… Did Emery get in touch with you?”

“He did. I’m just thrilled! Don’t tell me the details. I do love a surprise.”

“What…what exactly did he tell you?” Fallon asked, brow knitted.

“Said he needed until the third week of December and some extra expenses. Can’t tell a living genius like that no, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed, frightened to say too much or not enough and give away her ignorance. “I better go now. I just wanted to make sure he talked to you about it.” She ended the call before he could reply. She held on to the counter and tried to figure out what she was supposed to be doing.

She couldn’t call Max directly. She could call the bar in Pettiplaise or the market, try to get someone to leave him a message if he stopped by. She could send him a note, asking him to call and explain to her what in the hell was going on. Or she could wait. In the end, she did all three.

The following month bore no resemblance to reality. Fallon couldn’t go back to her advocacy job as the chances of Forrester finding out she was back in town were too high. She picked up twenty hours a week of fieldwork, a little taste of normality, a little income. But always in the back of her mind was the question of what on earth Max was up to. And why he was refusing to acknowledge her pleas for an explanation.

He never replied to the messages she’d left or the note she’d sent. No phone call, no letter. She was so antsy she toyed daily with emptying her savings account to fund a flight back to Halifax to demand some answers. She was poking around online for airline deals when Rachel came home late one Tuesday evening, face pale.

“Hey, Rache. How was school today? You look wiped.”

“I have some bad news.” Rachel set her purse on the coffee table and sank into the couch cushions.

Fallon swiveled her chair around, fear launching her heart into her throat. “What?”

“Josh was in Connecticut this afternoon, coaching the varsity boys’ basketball game.”

“Oh, God, is he all right?”

“Yes, yes, he’s fine.” Rachel swallowed. “But he drove separate, and on his way back he swung by Gloria’s place, just as a detour? To see how it was holding up.”

“Oh. And?”

“Forrester lied to you,” Rachel said, wincing. “He’s already developing there.”

Fallon’s jaw dropped. “What?”

She nodded. “Josh said there’s scaffolding up. Whatever Forrester’s got planned, he’s not waiting for you anymore. I think he knows, Fallon. I think he knows there’s no statue coming.”

At eight the next morning Fallon pulled into the driveway of her first real home, kicking up gravel and swinging open the car door before she’d even got the key out of the ignition. The big white house was as it should be, looking as it had when she’d lived there as a teenager, plus a bit more peeling paint. The scaffolding she’d expected to find surrounding it was erected a hundred yards away, at the far perimeter of the huge backyard, butted up against the looming granite cliff at the edge of the property.

What was Donald doing? Dynamiting away the frigging landscape?

She flipped her phone open and found his number in the call history. He picked up after several rings.

“Fallon,” he said warmly.

“Fuck you.”

“Well, aren’t we a little wound up. Whatever’s the matter? And how is my statue coming along?” He sounded calm and casual. Infuriating.

“It’s probably coming along just fine. So tell me this—exactly what are you doing to Gloria Engels’ property?”

“My property,” he corrected. “And nothing, at the moment. I agreed to Mr. Emery’s extension, and I’m a man of my word. That gives you until…this coming Monday. So I am doing absolutely nothing. By then I hope to have my masterpiece and you will have my assurances that your precious childhood home will not be touched.” The last few words left his mouth dripping with acid and saccharin.

“Oh, yeah? Then why the hell are there cranes and scaffolds all over the yard?”

“Pardon me?”

“Don’t play coy, Donald. I’m
right here
. In Connecticut. Now. What are you doing to her property?”

“My
property
.
And what are you talking about?”

Fallon sensed she was getting nowhere with Forrester and slapped the phone closed. She stalked across the lawn, green and tidy when it had been her teenaged sanctuary, overgrown and strewn with construction debris now. She approached a beefy man in a hard hat studying a clipboard. He looked up, pink face blank.

“You can’t be out here without a hard hat, lady. This is a falling-rock area.”

“What are you doing here? What’s Donald Forrester doing to the cliff?” Her voice shook and she felt tears stinging her eyes.

“Some kind of memorial,” he said, clearly not impressed by her tone but intimidated by the crying.

“A what?”

“A huge friggin’ statue. Who’re you?”

She ignored the question, heart pounding. “Who’s in charge here?”

“He’s busy.”

Fallon was fighting to keep from hyperventilating. “Is he here? Bring him over. I have to talk to him, now. Tell him Fallon Frost needs to talk to him,
right now
.” Her voice broke. A thousand thoughts jockeyed for her attention.

“I can’t interrupt him. His orders—hey!”

Fallon dodged the wide man and easily outran him. The cliff was hidden by three stories of scaffolding draped with forest-green tarpaulin. The closer she got, the more chunks of granite littered the ground. Men were pushing wheelbarrows and running long extension cords across the lawn. A loud, scraping screech like a band saw deafened everyone to the foreman’s orders to stop her. She brushed past a dozen burly men, all too surprised to hold her back as she ducked beneath the tarp and climbed through a jungle gym of metal tubing. All over the ground was dust—gray, granite dust. It drifted in clouds from above and prevented Fallon from lifting her face. When she made it to the base of the cliff, she was stopped dead in her tracks by a pair of feet. A huge pair of stone feet.

Fallon hooded her eyes with a hand and looked up to find ankles. Calves, knees, a waist shrouded in carved folds of draped fabric, up, up, up. Behind the gigantic figure, wings. At the very top, forty feet up atop the scaffold stood a very familiar body, blocking the head of the statue. He was laden with safety gear and busy with some kind of industrial finishing machine. There were other men too, also at work with sanders and hoses.

“Max!” she screamed. She shut her eyes against the dust and cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted until she was hoarse, useless amid the shrieking machinery and his industrial ear protectors.

Fallon felt a rough yank at her arm and was wrenched away. Indignant hands pulled her struggling back into the sunny yard, her eyes stinging, ears ringing, deaf to the two red-faced men berating her.

“…liability,” she finally made out after a minute of muted vitriol.

“I need to talk to him,” she demanded.

“And just who the fuck
are
you?” the angry man on the left said. “Are you trying to get us shut down? You trying to get conked by a hunk of rock and put us out of business, you crazy bitch?”

“No! I need to talk to him. To Max Emery.” She rubbed her ears furiously, trying to coax her hearing back. “Please. I used to live here. He’s my friend. I need to talk to him—”

“Well, you have to wait until he takes a break,” the angry man on the right said. “And he don’t take many breaks. Go sit in your car and wait ’til the polisher shuts off and stay the fuck away from the site.” He stabbed a sausagy finger back toward the road.

Fallon narrowed her eyes one last time before stomping to her hatchback. She heard the men exchange a final nasty name in her honor.

Sitting on her hood, she waited, unsure what percentage of her tears could be blamed on the dust. Minutes dragged on. She dug her glasses out of her bag and flicked her ruined contacts onto the grass. After an hour she pulled her phone out. Eight missed calls, all Forrester. She shut herself in the car so she could listen to the three voicemails he’d left. He clearly knew nothing about this—he was as frantic for an explanation as she was. Just as she finished the final message, silence. The machines shut off. She practically fell out of the car, sprinting toward the construction.

One of the chief angry men put a hand up from ten yards away. “You stay back! We’ll send him over.”

Fallon waited some more. She watched the tarp and the scaffolding shake, praying it was Max descending. A minute later he emerged from behind the partitions, following the men’s gestures and striding toward her. He had a welding-style mask flipped up on his head, and he yanked off a pair of safety gloves as he walked, tossing them on the grass.

“Fallon.” He looked perplexed. He looked filthy and sweaty and exhausted. He looked sexy as hell.

“Hello.” She found herself at a sudden loss. “What’s…what’s going
on
?”

He grinned, so familiar. “Forrester’s statue.”

“I don’t understand. Does he know about this?”

“He knows enough,” Max said, taking her arm and walking them toward the house.

“What does he know?” Fallon stammered.

“He knows I asked to hire a crew. He knows enough so that if he receives a call from a contractor asking how to bill him for construction costs, he’ll go along. He doesn’t know quite how big that bill will be, though. He knows enough to say, ‘Emery is in charge. He has the details.’ This is what I told him to say. We artists can be so demanding, you know. Your friend Donald Forrester is impatient and busy and that is very handy for me.” He grinned. “I’m the foreman, you see.”

“I still don’t really get it.”

Max sat her down on a bench-style tree swing.

“When I called him I said, ‘I have the inspiration for the greatest piece of my life!’ I said, I need more time. I need you to pay for some machinery costs, and labor, and in a few weeks you will be the patron behind the centerpiece of my career.”

“Okay…”

“I said, if any contractors call you, you tell them I have the details. You give me free rein and I will make you my finest masterpiece. I think he thinks this sculpture will be the next
David
.” Max smirked with satisfaction.

“He doesn’t know you’re dynamiting the hell out of my foster mother’s cliff, does he?”

He shook his head.

“How can he
not
know?”

“Donald Forrester, he’s rich. He is so rich and so busy, and so uninvested emotionally in his work, one call from a construction company blends into the next, I think. And I have gotten lucky. Luckier than I even hoped.”

“Well, he knows now,” Fallon said. “I called him. I thought it was him, destroying Gloria’s property. Sorry—not destroying. But I thought he was. I still don’t get it,” she admitted. “Are you just trying to piss him off?”

“Oh, no no no. That is just a happy byproduct. This is for you.”

“What is?”

He brushed a hand over her hair, licked a thumb and smoothed it over some smudge on her face. “A statue, behind all that.”