“I do.”
“But there’s only one painting here. Where are the others?”
I can’t tell if Angie is genuinely curious or if she is stalling. Maybe the scientist in her wants to see my art as evidence, additional resources, for her study. But the person in her is using them to distract from the real reason she is here. “All the paintings from my visions are stored away.”
She turns to me. Her blue eyes are worried. “You said all. And this one? It’s not about a vision?”
“It’s about Finn,” I say. “It’s about how I feel when I’m with him.” I pause for a breath. “I know you know about us. He told me.”
Angie comes over to the bed and sits down. “What did he tell you, exactly?”
“That you didn’t approve of us.”
Angie’s eyes drop into her lap. “I see.”
“I know he works for you and that a relationship with me might be inappropriate—”
“Marlena, no. That’s not the issue. Well, it is an issue, but not the one that has me disagreeing with Finn.”
“Then what is it?”
She sighs heavily. “Tell me something first. And be honest.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
Angie is watching me with a strange look on her face. “Do you love him?”
I glance at the painting and smile the tiniest bit. I can’t help it. When I think of Finn my happiness overflows.
“Oh, Marlena,” she exclaims. “You do love him.”
I nod. My smile fades because Angie takes my hand and her eyes are sad. No, they are panicked. She doesn’t even hesitate when she touches me. I swallow. “What?” The word gets caught in my throat. “You think it’s a bad thing that I’m in love with Finn?”
Angie’s fingers squeeze harder. She doesn’t shake her head yes or no. She just keeps saying, “Marlena.” Then, “I told Finn that he has to tell you. That if he didn’t that I would tell you.”
I search her eyes while she is searching mine. “What?”
“You really don’t know? Not anything?”
What don’t I know? I race through everything I do know, every thought and feeling related to Finn. About his photographic memory and his estrangement from his mother and his desire to be a veterinarian when he was small. Then my brain sharpens to a single point. On it is a half-formed vision from before my healing break, its colors pale and faded, Finn walking away from me at some later date, walking toward a place I will never reach. “Say it now, Angie. I can’t take this.”
Angie breathes deeply. Then she starts. “Finn is sick.”
I shake my head. I feel my hair brushing along my bare shoulders. “No, that can’t be.” The words seem like they are from someone else. An image, bright and clear, appears to me. The tattoo on Finn’s arm. The way it’s always seemed like there was something else to it, something he wasn’t telling me. That he wasn’t quite ready to share. “It’s his heart,” I state.
“Yes.” Angie leans forward. “I would never lie to you about this.” There is a shuffle of feet outside my bedroom door but I tune them out, straining toward whatever Angie says next. “I’m so sorry, Marlena. Finn is dying.”
THIRTY-THREE
Angie and I haven’t said a word since we got in her car. We passed my mother in the hall on the way out of my room. I know she heard every word of what Angie told me. It was her feet I heard outside the door.
The seawall appears with the ocean beyond it, usually a comfort, but I stare at it as though I’m suddenly blind. I know it is there but I can’t take it in. I am ever the anchorite, but the heart in my chest is an anchor dragging my soul to the ground, one forged of crystal and glass that will shatter when it hits bottom. I don’t even know if it’s still beating. My senses have stopped working, everything numb. Perhaps I’m the one who is dying.
“Angie.” A great hard lump has lodged in my throat. I can barely swallow around it.
She is shaking her head. She turns down the road that leads to Finn’s neighborhood. “The rest is for Finn to tell you.” When she pulls up in front of his house and turns off the car, she says, “I’ll wait here. I’m not going anywhere. Take as long as you need. All day if you want.”
I get out of the car and walk up to the house, but it’s like I am underwater, that anchor pinning me to the ocean floor. My legs carry me forward up the porch stairs and my hand is reaching for the door to knock. When Finn answers and sees that it is me, his eyes light up. “Marlena,” he says with a smile. Then his eyes land on Angie, standing there by her car, and every bit of happiness fades, just like those colors in my vision paled as though draining away Finn’s life. I should have known. “What did you—” he calls out, but Angie gets in the driver’s side without a word. Slams the door.
“Finn,” I whisper. “How could you keep this from me?”
He stares down at me. I stare up at him. For a moment, a beautiful fleeting instant, I forget why I’m here. This is love, this is love is racing through my brain.
Finn’s hand twitches. His fingers cross the distance to mine, wrapping around them. My heart pounds all of a sudden, like someone has pulled up that anchor and is readying to cross the sea. Finn bends forward. At first I think he’s going to kiss me but instead he presses his forehead to mine. I close my eyes, soaking up the proximity of his face, his strong body, the smell of his skin, a dizzying feeling traveling over my limbs to the tips of my fingers and toes. I wonder if we are both angels with wings that will carry us away. I wish for this, despite all my wishing against just this for so long.
“Marlena.” He grasps my other hand, presses my palm into his chest, firmly against his heart. The pulse and pound of it reaches into me. “What did Angie say?”
“Just tell me it isn’t true.” I stare up at him and wait.
He says nothing.
“No, Finn, no.” My eyes cloud, everything turning the color of rust. I crumple forward, still pressing my palm into the center of his body. I yank my hand away and point to the heart tattoo peeking out from under Finn’s sleeve. A tinge of anger spreads through my voice, like a drop of stormy color. “I want the real story, because the one you told me is a lie.”
Finn’s eyes seek the porch floor. “Not entirely.” He raises his head, slumps against the wall of the porch. “I was born with a heart defect,” he says, and stops, as though this is the whole story.
I shake my head. Remember Finn’s body, his every inch of perfect skin, unmarred by scars. “But you’ve never had any surgeries.”
“The doctors didn’t discover it until I was older. There was nothing they could do, short of a heart transplant, which I will likely never live to see. The waiting list is too long.” He sighs. “It’s why I moved so far from home. Why my mother and I aren’t speaking. I was tired of hospitals and doctors, because believe me, every avenue has been explored. There is no fixing me. She wanted to keep trying to fix me and I needed her to stop.”
My breaths come in short, quick bursts, like I am running. “Every avenue but, say, a miracle saint girl.”
Finn fixes his stare on me. “Marlena.”
Tears pool in my eyes. “Is that why . . . ?”
“No, no.” He reaches out, maybe to put his arms around me, but I step backward. “Me and you,” he says. “My caring about you, my loving you, has nothing to do with you being a healer.”