Jackson glanced at the golden tree in front of him. The leaves were almost a neon against the gray sky. His eyes flew back to the paper in front of him and his felt tipped pen skimmed across the page, adding the ridges of leaves. Wind tousled the browned leaves at his feet.
After Yale, his mother had a plan B in Princeton. Somehow she had applied for him and the only time he needed to put a pen to paper was when he sat in the garden to sketch.
His phone shimmied across the metal table he’d set it on. The screen showed an incoming text. Ben. He hadn’t seen or heard from Ben since graduation. Ben belonged to the “new money” as well and had parents with an agenda for him and his younger twin sisters.
Jackson leaned against the back of his chair. His eyes lingered over his sketch. The line of the trunk softly curved reminded him of a neck and the explosion of leaves billowing about the neck reminded him of Emerson Ann. He pushed his sketchpad away.
He had to be crazy to see Emerson Ann in an autumn tree.
Jackson scooped up his cell phone and slid it open. The text ignited the screen with light. Jackson read the text and then lifted his head to gaze at the brilliant tree in front of him. Ben had a package for him?
He had no reason to respond to Ben.
Back in high school, Ben had hung out with Emerson Ann and Jackson. Of course, after Emerson Ann had disappeared like she said she would, the boys had quit talking. A first it seemed a good way to not draw attention to each other as a huge search was called.
The first time that Emerson Ann had mentioned her dream, the three of them had been lounging after school in an inner corner of the hedge maze on Jackson’s property. Emerson Ann sprawled across the pathway with her head full of blonde curls glowing against the mossed gray of the stone path. The picture of her that Jackson had been sketching was one of the pictures torn from his book. It had been a favorite of both.
“I want to help people—poor people.” She twisted to look at Jackson and grinned when he frowned at the fact that she’d moved mid-sketch.
“Yeah, I want to help poor people when I grow up, too.” Ben had stripped the leaves off a bush’s branch. He was always chiming in on Emerson Ann’s ideas whether he realized it or not. “But it’ll be my money that helps them.”
In a moment, Emerson Ann flew to her feet and swung her fist at Ben’s arm. It landed. “I don’t care for money. Money can’t hold children.”
Jackson recalled how she had wrapped her arms around herself and then winced. Even now, bile burned his throat.
Then, she had turned to him and asked for his dream. And he had turned his drawing towards her.
Her hands had flown to her lips, and Ben had crowded in to stare at the picture. “Dude, how do you do that?”
“The Art Institute of Chicago.”
That had been his dream and that dream needed to fade into his memory just as Emerson Ann was. What he hadn’t said that day had been in that picture. A whole year without her.
An artist without his muse is nothing.
Did you love Part 3? Don’t miss out on Part 1 and Part 2, and the following Part 4! Happy Reading!
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