Page 6

McCARTNEY

The house is loud. It always is at this hour. Distant banging from the kitchen, a baby laughing, and boots stomping somewhere upstairs carry like the soundtrack to this old ranch house, but the den stays relatively quiet because most people forget it’s here.

Which is why I like it.

In this room, the atmosphere feels like a held breath, a space between brushstrokes, where thoughts arrange themselves like pencils in a tidy row. At least, it’s about as quiet as it ever gets in this place.

I’m sunk into the old leather armchair near the window; the one that groans when you shift too fast and still smells like our grandfather’s aftershave if the sun hits it right.

A sketchpad rests on my knee, and a pencil loose in my hand.

The page is half-filled with lines catching motion, posture, and light.

The essence of a moment, as well as the mechanics.

Grace is on the floor with Eli, Matty, and Junie, surrounded by a sea of toys, broken crayons, and two pairs of small, mismatched socks.

Eli’s holding a doll, occasionally brushing its hair, but mostly focused on our new houseguest. Matty’s drawing on paper I supplied him, happy whenever one of the kids wants to do something artistic.

Grace has her sleeves rolled up, revealing smooth, creamy skin, with a brush in one hand, coaxing tangled curls into neat French braids, while three-year-old Junie is surprisingly still and quiet for a child who usually talks a mile a minute.

“Does peanut butter go in soup?” Junie asks solemnly out of the blue.

“No,” Grace says, voice patient and warm like sunlight on worn wood. “Not unless you’re making something very experimental.” She ponders for a moment. “Actually, I think there are some Vietnamese soup recipes that are made with peanut butter… spicy ones.”

Junie wrinkles her nose. “I don’t like spicy.”

“That’s okay,” Grace soothes, finishing the second braid. “You might when you’re a big girl.”

“I am a big girl,” Junie says defiantly.

“A bigger girl.” Grace surveys her work and smiles, pleased at her efforts. She pats Junie’s arm. “All done.”

Junie’s first instinct is to rub her sticky palms over her hair, and she squeals with excitement. “Pretty hair,” she gushes, without even looking in the mirror.

I sketch the shape of Grace’s shoulder as she leans closer.

She turns to Matty, who, at five years old, is all elbows and curiosity. His head tilts like a question mark. He’s been leaning in as she talks, like she’s a book he’s straining to finish.

“What’s your job again?”

“I write,” she says calmly, approaching him with the brush. “And sometimes I clean up messy sentences instead of messy rooms.”

He considers this. “So you’re like a housekeeper for words? ”

She winks. “Exactly.”

I shift in my chair, catching the way the light cuts across her cheekbone. There’s a softness in it, a treatment I’d like to replicate with paint.

Grace laughs in a way that’s real and unguarded, and I let my pencil move, following light and angles and instinct. I’m following her.

Grace is good with the kids. They orbit her like she’s magnetic with her no-nonsense approach and calm clarity that makes the space around her feel safe.

Even Eli, who guards her hair like it contains nesting endangered species, lets Grace comb and braid it without a single protest. No tears. No flinching. It’s... emotional art.

“Did you grow up around kids?” I ask, keeping my eyes down.

Grace glances at me, still combing. “My mom is a foster mother. Our house was always full.”

Makes sense. There’s a practiced calm to the way she approaches their constant questions and demands. She finishes with a twist of the band around her wrist. “Do you draw for work?”

“No.”

“For pleasure?”

I shrug. “I draw to see clearer.”

She lets my comment float in the air between us, like a feather that hasn’t decided whether to soar in an updraft or fall ungracefully to the dirt.

Then she glances down at Matty’s picture, which is an impossible mix of unicorn and toaster, and praises it like it’s hanging in a gallery.

Then, she starts her own sideways sketch.

“How long have you lived here?” she asks.

“Seventeen years.”

She nods, letting the pencil scratch shapes onto the paper in front of Matty. “Did you ever want to leave?”

That’s not the question I expected her to ask next.

In the past, people wanted to know the circumstances that brought us to live with our grandparents and what that was like.

Trauma probing. Instead of digging around about the car wreck that stole all our living parents, Grace focuses on how I feel about still being here after all these years.

“I’ve thought about it.”

“What would you be doing if you weren’t here?”

“I don’t know.”

That’s always been my problem. I can’t imagine a life without my brothers and cousins and their kids, where I’m stepping out on my own.

What would that even look like? My nana used to tell me that the world is my oyster, but I’ve never even seen the sea or tasted shellfish.

The world outside these fences feels big and strange. I pause my sketching.

She’s trying to draw me with questions.

“You taking notes in your head?” I ask, finally looking up.

Her eyes meet mine. Open. Warm. Clever.

“Always.”

I shake my head, smiling despite myself. “I think you’re dangerous with or without a notebook.”

She stands, brushes off her jeans, and crosses the room. I sit up too fast, catching the shift in her intention a beat too late.

She’s at my shoulder before I can slide the sketchpad shut, resting next to me on one knee. My hand moves to cover what I’ve drawn, but she catches my wrist, gently peeling back my fingers to uncover more than a sketch.

“That’s me,” she whispers.

“Yeah.” My cheeks feel warm. The portrait reflects my attraction to her, as much as her beauty.

She looks down at the page, and it feels like she’s seeing more than just the art.

Her gaze drops to my forearm and the faded script.

“What’s the tattoo about?”

I follow her eyes. “Lyrics,” I say. “Old ones.”

She nods but doesn’t ask what they represent to me. Maybe she’ll assume they’re simply lyrics from a band my mother loved, and not the most important nugget of wisdom she passed to me before she died. She glances back at the drawing. “You made me look kind.”

“I draw what I see.”

She lingers, her hand still near mine. The kids are noisier now. Junie’s crying over a lost toy, and Matty’s laughing too loud, but we’re both distracted and still. I can’t take my eyes off her.

She taps her finger gently beside the corner of the page. “Do you think you see the truth?”

I’ve never doubted that I do. The truth rests in the moments when people let their masks slip. “I try,” I say, and before I can think about it, I reach up and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. It’s a small gesture. Barely a touch. But it lands like thunder in the quiet between us.

Her lips part like she might say something, but she doesn’t.

Grace looks at me, and for a beat, I get lost in her eyes. They’re hazel, flecked with gold, like the sun hit dried leaves and made something new. They seem deeper now than they did when she walked in. They’d be complicated to paint, and I like complicated.

My heart beats erratically as she scans my face, searching for something.

When she finally turns away to rejoin the chaos, I let out a long breath that must have been trapped in my chest by anticipation. I don’t feel like drawing anymore, so I stare at the page, finding my sketch so much less impressive than the real thing.

Representing the wholeness of people in a flat sketch is always a challenge, and Grace doesn’t suit black and white. She needs color—something vibrant and textured to bring her to life.

I grab my phone, which is resting on the arm of the chair, and type her name into a search engine. Grace Murphy.

There’s a pause, then a flood of professional headshots, magazine banners, red carpet snapshots at industry events where she’s clutching engraved glass trophies with glittering eyes and scarlet lips, and dresses that hug her form like they’re there only to worship her.

Her smile in those shots is polished and practiced, but there’s something bright behind it, too, something undimmed. And a forced undertone like she doesn’t know what she’s doing there.

I scroll past bios and accolades until I find a link to one of her old articles.

The headline reads: Which vibrator should you invest in this season?

I click.

It starts with a joke. Smart. Dry. Something about ROI and orgasms. I snort into my sleeve, startling Matty, who’s still quietly coloring his unicorn.

The piece isn’t smutty. It’s sharp and witty.

Grace wasn’t writing to shock anyone. She was writing because she could hold attention.

At least, it seems that way. She’s playful with structure and brilliant with rhythm, like the words themselves are aware of how clever they sound but still wear the joke lightly.

I read another: The Unspoken Politics of Office Cake Culture .

It’s surprisingly touching. She manages to make humor out of isolation and insecurity without making anyone the punchline.

It’s personal without being confessional, and woven through it all is that voice, that rhythm, that warmth and confidence she carries even when she’s writing about things that should be cold.

Another article pulls me in: How office romances can catapult your career. And there it is again. The grit. The weight beneath the wit.

I shift forward in the chair, and it groans like it wants to eject me for giving it indigestion, elbows on knees now, phone gripped a little tighter.

Grace is funny, for sure, but she’s also angry in the right places.

Thoughtful. She sees life the way I try to draw people: whole, complicated, flawed, and broken, but beautiful. Worth the ink.

Her photo is beside the byline. That same face I sketched. I glance at my pad again.

I captured her shape.

But not her voice.

Not yet.