Free The Art of My Life by Ann Lee Miller Page A

hand moving to his lips, pausing, returning to his
side—a dance she’d watched her parents do till she could watch the
video on the inside of her eyelids. But never Cal. Of course, she
knew he smoked pot. He’d been arrested with a felonious quantity on
his person. But actually seeing him smoke—
    She sank to the damp boards of the
dock, winded by the impact of her emotions. Oh, God, no. Her
son repeating her father’s life. She clenched her arms across her
waist and tried to pray, but her thoughts seemed to plummet into
the Intercoastal instead.
    Gradually, grief receded, and rage
crashed back in its place. She texted Cal to come in and paced the
dock.
    Cal palmed his phone, stared at it.
The drawbridge opened, slicing a ribbon of purple sky between the
two halves of the town. Cal pocketed the phone. He turned his face
toward the dock.
    Starr halted, hands at her sides. If
Cal didn’t make a move in five minutes, she’d take a dinghy tied
behind one of the larger boats and row out to him.
    Cal looked away. A gull swooped toward
the mouth of the Intercoastal and the freedom of the ocean. He
stood, took a long drag, and flicked the remains of the joint into
the river.
    Starr watched Cal untie the rope from
the deck and drop into the dinghy, wondering if Cal obeyed because
he felt her fury from across the water.
    He rowed with languorous strokes.
Muscles worked across his back, the cords of a man. He wasn’t the
six-year-old who pulled a Calvin and Hobbes prank or the teen who
skipped school. But he was still her son whom she loved with
desperation.
    Cal tossed the oars into the bottom of
the boat and grabbed hold of the ladder. He shot a sullen glance at
her, then stared at the barnacle-encrusted piling in front of
him.
    “ Evie came over this
morning in hysterics because you and Aly slept together. Didn’t I
teach you better than that?”
    Cal raised bloodshot eyes to her. “We
did not have sex.”
    She believed him, and she was
surprised. Maybe she was crazy, but something in his eyes, the
flatness of his voice convinced her. A mother knew when her son was
telling the truth. Relief sanded the edge off her anger.
    “ I get down here and I see
you smoking weed, something no mother should ever have to witness.
I’m watching a rerun of a bad movie—my dad’s life.”
    Cal’s jaw hardened. He stared past her
right ear.
    “ People say pot’s not
addictive. That’s bullshit.”
    Cal’s head jerked up.
    Good. She wanted to shock him. She
probably hadn’t used a coarse word in four decades—since her
girlhood best friend’s mother taught her what they were. “You want
to be Leaf? Well, I have a story to tell you.” She crossed her arms
and stared down at the off-center part in Cal’s hair.
    “ My father came home drunk
and fought with my grandfather. Leaf knew he’d never been able to
do anything good enough to please his father. And when he said as
much, my grandfather said, ‘You’re damn straight you haven’t.’
”
    Cal’s knuckles whitened on the
ladder.
    Starr sighed. “That was the last time
they saw each other—the night of my father’s high school
graduation. I heard the story when I was a teen one night when Dad
was flying particularly high.”
    She tucked a wisp of hair behind her
ear that had fallen from her bun and tickled her neck. Her fingers
brushed the slick outline of her scar. “I researched his three
siblings on the Internet—all college graduates with white-collar
jobs. But my father chose a love affair with marijuana instead of a
real life. Pot numbed him from the pain his father generated, but
it also robbed Henna of a deep emotional connection with him. It
robbed me.” Her voice broke. She stopped, filled her lungs with
damp, fishy air.
    Cal looked up, his eyes searching
hers. Something inside each of them welded in that
second.
    Starr squatted down, shortening the
distance between them to a few feet. “We have an addict’s genes. If
you don’t make a choice, you’ll