At the Brink

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Book: At the Brink by Anna del Mar Read Free Book Online
Authors: Anna del Mar
painting one of his famous works— Churning Seas. He locked himself in his studio and painted nonstop through the delivery. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but he was known for being, well, a little...temperamental?”
    “I read something about that.”
    Temperamental was putting it mildly. Leonard Boswell had been one of the most important painters of his generation. For all his talent, he’d indulged in a bottomless craving for alcohol and gambling, which is why—according to Riker’s report—at the time of his sudden death, when Lily was twelve, Leonard Boswell left his daughter and widow financially ruined.
    Lily skipped all of that. “After the birth, my father wandered out of his studio. His beard had grown unruly. His eyes were dazed, but when he reached out to meet me, his baby daughter, he offered me his pinkie. Instead, I latched onto the paintbrush he still held in his hand. Ever since then, my mother says I’ve been hanging on to the brush.”
    In my mind’s eye, I could see the wide-eyed, button-nosed, pink-faced baby that Lily must have been, wrestling the paintbrush from her bewildered father. The visual made me smile.
    “Great story,” I said. “Did Leonard teach you to paint?”
    “I spent hours doodling beside him,” she said. “He taught me the basics, but he was a master of chiaroscuro . He understood the relationship between light and darkness in ways I never will.”
    “So,” I said. “When’s your next showing?”
    She put her fork down and pushed the plate away. “Um, never?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t do showings.”
    “Why not?”
    “They require personal appearances.”
    “And?”
    “All those people make me sick.”
    “But you went to the benefit the other night.”
    “Only because Martin made me go,” she said. “I threw up before, during and after.”
    “Jesus,” I said. “So if you don’t do showings, how do you sell your paintings?”
    “I don’t,” she said. “The paintings I’ve sold have been word of mouth, friends and such.”
    “That’s a slow way to fame.”
    “I don’t want fame,” she said. “I just want to paint.”
    I believed her. “What are you working on now?”
    “Sketches mostly, nothing major. The community center where I teach asked me to donate a painting for their auction, but paint is expensive and I don’t have the time right now anyway.”
    Her old phone rang, not the one I’d given her, but her battered, ancient one. She looked at the number and sighed.
    “Who is it?” I said, refilling her glass.
    “It’s Martin. He’s been calling every hour. He wants me to come home.”
    “Will you?”
    “I don’t have a choice.” She sipped on her wine. “Bree’s partner returns today.”
    “Who’s Bree?” I pretended I didn’t know the woman’s address, social security number, credit report history, educational background and current place of business.
    “Bree is my best friend since elementary school.”
    “You met in elementary school?”
    “She was the trouble maker,” Lily said, perking up. “I was the shy one. When my dad died, I grew even quieter. My teachers worried. And then one day, during recess, this chubby, bespectacled terror comes over to me and says, with this really funny nasal voice that she still has, ‘I heard your daddy died.’”
    “She said it just like that?”
    “That’s Bree for you.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I just kind of shrugged,” Lily said. “Then Bree pulls out this horrible homemade puppet from her backpack, striped with uneven black and yellow felt lines, with crooked buttons for eyes and huge fuzzy antennae.”
    “Were you scared of it?”
    “Scared? Are you kidding me? I loved it!” Her smile lit her face. “I thought it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. When I asked what the puppet’s name was, she giggled and said, ‘It’s a Lily Bee!’ Get it? Lily B.?”
    Her laughter tickled me all the way to my groin. I could get used to

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