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"And what did he say, something like 'Where else would I live?'

"Something like that. What about you? Why do you stay here if you hate it so?"

I thought he would give me that look again, but he didn't. "I stay for my mother," he replied.

"Why does she stay?"

"She stays because she thinks..."

"What?" I asked almost breathlessly when he held the rest of his reply inside him.

I do not know what it was that made him decide to tell me. Maybe he felt something that bound us spiritually. Maybe he was suffering so with all his unspoken secrets gnawing away within his heart that he just had to open the doors. Daddy called it mental bleeding and said people in pain had to relieve themselves. He just had to make sure he was there when they did and get them to trust him enough.

"She thinks... thinks someone wonderful is coming for her." Linden revealed in a whisper. "Someone who will take her away from all this, erase years and years of pain. She dreams."

I could barely breathe. The breeze lifted my hair and caressed my face. The salt spray felt good on my skin, and the ocean's combing of the beach resembled a lullaby that was there to keep us both calm, meditative, safe,

"That's her new madness," he continued.

"Why do you say that?" I asked. "Why call it madness? Everyone dreams of good things for him-or herself."

He was silent, and then he turned to inc. "I lied to you last night. She was out there on the dock. You didn't imagine it, and I go out after her to make sure she doesn't..."

"Doesn't what?"

"Do anything more than stand out there waving that lantern." "Why does she do that?"

"Something in her past, some promise someone made to her, maybe... I'm not sure. She won't say."

"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head.

He turned back to me. "She thinks he's coming. She's a little lighthouse guiding him back to her heart. Crazy, right?" He was back to being belligerent. 'Good copy for an article or for a study or just for coffeetime gossip?"

"No." I said. "It's not crazy at all."

His eyes widened with surprise. "Why do you say that?"

"It's just a hope, a dream. You don't have to worry that she's going out there to hurt herself." I said. "She's going out there to keep herself alive. That's what hopes and dreams do for us. They help us go on."

He stared mare intently at me, and then, as if realizing he was permitting me to enter places inside him that no one was supposed to enter, he looked away quickly.

"That's nice." he said. but I don't have any hopes and dreams."

"Sure you do." I said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be an artist."

He gazed at me again, some glint in his eves brightening like a lamp that had been kept shut up in the attic and was finally taken out and turned on. The fury and the darkness seemed to slide off his face as if he had been wearing a mask of ice that had begun to melt. Beneath it was a young man who could love and dream and work and live. I had a glimpse of him, but only a glimpse.

"Then I had better get back to work." he said, smiling, and jumped to his feet. "You okay with it?"

"I'm fine." I said. "Good. Thank you."

He returned to his easel, and once again we were two halves of the same precious artistic moment, capturing some truth, doing what he had told Thatcher he did. casting a line for inspiration and finding it, only this 'time, with me or even... because of me.

.

We broke at noon. He didn't want me to see his work in progress but promised I could after the next session. I changed out of the clothes. and he headed back to the beach house, telling me to come by at twothirty to meet his mother as we had planned.

Asher and Bunny were up and haying coffee when I entered the house. They were both surprised to see me.