January, she said. Lily is going to lose her mind. He said she's going to say she knew. Clare said she's going to say she knew from the beginning. She's going to be right.
Marcus said and he was absolutely correct about that. She told Lily on a Sunday in December during a visit that happened to fall on the weekend. Lily's art class was mounting its first gallery show of the year a full display in Westbrook's main hallway. Professionally matted prints of each students best work from the semester. The kind of thing that a certain category of 8-year-old takes extremely seriously.
Lily's piece was a charcoal drawing of hands. Two sets, one large, one small, overlapping but not holding, just close, just near enough to feel. The art teacher had written on the card beside it. Lily Reed, age 8. Together.
Clare stood in front of it for a long time. Marcus stood next to her. He didn't say anything. She called it together, Clare said. Yeah, he said, and she drew two sets of hands.
Yeah, not three. No, he said. Not three. She understood what Lily had drawn. Not a family in any conventional pictorial sense.
No figures, no faces, no story told in the literal way children sometimes tell stories. Just two sets of hands close enough to mean something. Not merge, not grip, not dependent, just near. The art teacher, Miss Okafor, found them in front of it and said, "Lily has a real eye. She draws relationships rather than people I've never seen an 8-year-old do that instinctively.
She's been doing it since she could hold a pencil, Marcus said. Miss Okafor looked at the drawing and then at the two of them and smiled with the unambiguous warmth of someone who sees exactly what's in front of her. She clearly has good material, she said, and moved on to the next cluster of parents. Clare told Lily after the show. When the three of them were in the car heading to the lunch, Lily had been promised as reward for not telling anyone which drawing was hers until the official unveiling.
"I have something to tell you," Clare said from the front passenger seat. Lily looked up from the book she had somehow already opened. "Are you moving here?" Clare blinked. Marcus looked straight ahead at the road.
"How did you Clare started? You've been here six weekends in a row," Lily said. And dad asked me last week what I would think if Clare lived closer. He said it hypothetically, but he's bad at hypothetically. She closed her book.
So, are you? Yes, Clare said. In January for work. And because of us, Lily said. And because of you, Clare said.