Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
The army—something had happened to him overseas. He must have been doing well. “He suffered from PTSD,” I guessed.
Archer nodded, and Bree continued to act as his voice, his elegant hands moving fluidly through the air. “Nathan stepped in when I was a little boy. He had flashbacks, and he was paranoid. It got bad sometimes, but he was always kind, always good. He would go away for hours, or in a few cases, days, and I knew he was trying to deal with his demons, but he always came back. He always did. And I knew sometimes it would have been easier for him if he didn’t.”
Archer explained to me what had happened to him when he was seven years old, and the roles his father and his uncle had played. As he spoke, Travis moved closer to him and rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder momentarily, offering strength. Even relaying the story was obviously difficult for him, his jaw tight and his eyes filled with sadness. I heard the emotion in Bree’s voice as well as she spoke the story he was telling, the one she obviously already knew, but one that still affected her.
And I understood why. A lump had formed in my throat as he explained the horror he’d experienced as a little boy, the terrible confusion, and the resulting trauma. And yet his uncle—my father?—had been there, caring for him as best as he could, even if that meant they’d both been isolated.
It was all so much. Too much to take in all at once. And I was somehow tied up in all of it. Faith reached out and took my hand and gave it a squeeze, offering her silent support.
“I know it’s a lot,” Haven said, she too obviously seeing that I was reeling. But I took in a big breath and blew it out slowly. Yes, it was a lot. But Archer had dealt with far more than I ever would. I was not going to fall apart in front of a man who had lived with the kind of burden he had and especially after he’d just summoned the strength and grace to tell me his story because it might factor in to mine.
“It is. Thank you,” I said to Archer to which he nodded and gave me a smile.
“Do you know how the other paintings ended up in secondhand stores?” Faith asked.
Archer raised his hands, and this time Travis spoke for him. “I cleaned out the attic when I built on. There were boxes I assumed were full of old clothes of Nathan’s and nothing more. I’d put the boxes there after he’d died. I didn’t go through them before I gave them away. There must have been paintings underneath the clothes.”
Faith nodded and glanced at me. “Could there have been more than the three small ones?”
“Maybe one more, but I doubt it. The boxes were light which is why I thought there were only clothes in them, and there were only three boxes.” Which meant they were all accounted for. The full collection.
“But that does bring me to one more thing,” Bree said, reaching in the drawer of a table next to the chair she was sitting in.
I gasped when I saw what she was holding. A stack of journal-sized pages.
“Oh my God,” Faith murmured. “There were pages in the backs of the paintings you have too.”
Bree handed them across to me and I took them with shaking hands.
“We took all the signed paintings down and found those hidden in the back, just like you described with the three you located.” She looked from Travis to Archer. “We think Nathan hid them for some reason related to his paranoia. Maybe to his mind, he was protecting your mother in some way, or preserving her in the way he could. We can obviously never know for sure, but that’s our best guess.”
Oh, God. My vision blurred, and my hands trembled as I looked down, reading the one on top, my breath coming short as my eyes danced over my mother’s shaky writing, smudges blurring the ink where her tears must have fallen.
Oh God oh God oh God. Lys is gone. Connor and Marcus are gone. Oh it’s too horrible to describe. I can’t stop sobbing. Nate is going to the hospital to see his nephew who is all alone now and needs someone. Nate is on such shaky ground. How will he handle being the sole caretaker for a seven-year-old in the midst of so much grief? Oh God, how will he cope when his foothold is already so tenuous? And how can I possibly add to that by not giving him the space he needs? I love him to the depths of my soul and loving him means giving him a chance to heal, and to be the source of healing for that little boy who needs him so desperately. I have Mud Gulch. I have my family and my friends. Archer only has him.