Fugitives of Love Read online

  “A marketing ploy, perhaps?”

  “Just the opposite. She’s almost a recluse.”

  “At the very least, is she a sexy recluse?”

  She was. And initially, Brenna hadn’t prepared herself for that possibility. “She’s beautiful,” Brenna said. “She hasn’t signed a contract yet so that’s why I’m going back there tonight.”

  “Shall I save my imaginatively impudent comments for when you return?”

  “Please.”

  Brenna hung up and decided to investigate the town. She walked toward its center, which was nothing more than a crossroads. A gas station sat across the street from a fishing supply store. Next to that stood a small market, probably the one that had that great coffee. She had to get some before she left.

  She circled back toward her motel and crossed the street toward the Seaside Stop. The thought of a drink and an appetizer made her stomach rumble in the affirmative.

  She liked the interior right away. She imagined that the locals embraced the place as a refuge after a day of fishing or work. It felt warm and welcoming, with just the right amount of nautical pictures, fishing gear, and ships’ equipment to make it seem authentic and definitely not a tourist trap.

  She sat at the bar and ordered a rum and coke from the bartender, a tall, pretty woman in Levi’s and a T-shirt. Her smile was kind as she served her the drink.

  “Would you like something to eat? We’ve got mussels, crab, calamari—”

  “Crab cakes?”

  “Yup, with roasted apple mayonnaise.”

  “I’d love some.”

  When the bartender returned with the crab cakes, she said, “From out of town?”

  “New York. I’m talking with a local artist about her work.”

  “We’ve got a lot of artists around here, that’s for sure.”

  “This one’s pretty unique.”

  “That’d be Sinclair Grady.”

  Brenna laughed. “Small town, huh?”

  “That, and she’s the most unique. No one else makes those windows that she does.” Wiping her hands on a towel, she added, “She’s an old friend of mine. I’m Donna.”

  She reached out and Brenna took her hand. “Brenna Wright.”

  “She was okay taking an unannounced visitor?”

  “How’d you know I was unannounced?”

  “I know she has a computer but no e-mail, not even a land line, and she doesn’t advertise.”

  Brenna bit into a crab cake. “This is fabulous.”

  “Thanks.”

  “She wasn’t exactly happy to see me. I think she thought I was a tax collector or door-to-door salesman or something.”

  “She doesn’t get much company. Doesn’t really want it, actually.”

  “I got that right away. But once we started talking, she was so friendly. We had a great time. And I’m going back to see her tonight.”

  “Really?”

  Brenna thought the response was curious so she jokingly said, “Why, should you warn me about something?”

  “She obviously trusts you. And for her, that’s a big statement.”

  Brenna began to ask why, but Donna stepped away to help a customer and the luscious-looking crab cakes demanded her attention.

  Chapter Eight

  Brenna and Sinclair were back out on the beach at the next low tide. This time, Sinclair had given her a shoulder bag to collect her findings in.

  Sinclair showed her more tricks for searching—to pay attention to tenacious knots of seaweed that could grip the sea glass and to look carefully in clumps of oyster shells and driftwood.

  Brenna had never gone to these lengths to sign an artist. She was used to an animated first meeting and then eager negotiations. Still, she didn’t mind the sea-glass lessons, and spending time with Sinclair certainly wasn’t unbearable.

  At one point, she touched Brenna’s shoulder. “Look.”

  A porcupine foraged around a mass of seaweed that covered a lobster carcass, picking at the tender bits.

  They took the opportunity to remove their satchels and sit side by side on a rock. The slight ocean breeze scared away what heat the sun provided when it poked its head out every so often. A few lobster boats rocked back and forth on the water, their captains tending to their traps, pulling each one up and inspecting the contents.

  “So, all your glass comes from this beach?”

  “No. I travel up and down the local coast. I don’t leave Maine, but I’ve heard of great spots along the Hudson River, all over Connecticut and Massachusetts. I’d love to go to Hawaii and Spain. Really, you can find sea glass anywhere, but it helps to know where to look in general.”

  “Like?”

  “Places near old shipping routes from the late 1800s or places where people gathered a long time ago, like turn-of-the-century seaside amusement areas. But artifacts can travel far and wide so you have to be diligent and keep your eyes peeled.”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out a lozenge-size turquoise-blue piece, worn smooth from time.

  “These pieces used to be part of something bigger that was thrown out, washed from the shore, or accidentally fell into the ocean. They got broken apart and were forgotten all these years as they tumbled around, abused by relentless waves of water and sand. Then, one day, they make their way back to shore and we find them. They’ve come out stronger, more valuable, and vastly unique.”

  “They reinvented themselves.”

  “Yes. That’s the significant part.” She held up the sea glass. “Bits once brilliant, now more beautiful than ever.”

  “Is that what attracts you to them?”

  “I suppose. They’re little treasures waiting to be discovered. Some people walk right past them, but I’ve been enamored with them from the first time I came here.”

  “When was that?”

  “About twenty years ago.”

  “Did you move here with family?”

  Sinclair didn’t answer right away. She looked out toward the water, as if searching for something, maybe from long ago. “No.”

  “You were young.”

  She nodded. “Fifteen.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes. I,” she paused and then shrugged, “I ran away.”

  “Wow.” Brenna didn’t know what else to say. She couldn’t even conceive of being on her own as an adolescent. Her own family had always been a safe haven, allowing her to be young and not care about too much beyond exploring the world through school and playing with friends.

  “I had a bad childhood. I was adopted so they weren’t my real parents anyway. They raised me, but I never fit in and was never happy.”

  “What made you run away?”

  Sinclair picked at the rock between her legs. “My family wasn’t exactly the Brady Bunch. They liked to hit.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Brenna couldn’t imagine what horrors she had experienced.

  “My stepfather was a dairy farmer in Waterville, New York. My stepbrother was their only child. They tried for three years to have another but couldn’t, so my stepmother finally talked her husband into adopting me when I was a baby. He didn’t want a girl. He wanted a boy to help my stepbrother and him on the farm.” She hesitated as if mulling over what else she should say. Looking up, she said, “I usually don’t talk about this.”

  “You don’t have to if it’s difficult.”

  “It was a long time ago and I’m far away from it all.” Sinclair shrugged. “I think my stepmother didn’t want another boy that would turn out to be abusive like my stepbrother, who was beginning to use his fists on her like her husband was. So they got me.”

  Sinclair looked back down and resumed the rock-picking. “When I was ten, I came home from school and a sheriff’s car and a brown van were at our place. My stepfather was sitting on the porch and told me not to go inside. I asked why and he said my stepmother was dead. Then he told me to clean the water trough. Instead, I stood there and started crying. He backhanded me and
I landed on my butt.”

  “Oh, my God, Sinclair.”

  “That’s what I was raised to know. So when I was old enough, I just ran away. I eventually ended up here, and an elderly woman named Peggy took me in. She had three grandkids of her own, dropped off by her wayward daughter years before. She had no husband but she had a lot of love to give. She found me outside the local market,” Sinclair pointed vaguely toward town, “and asked me where my folks were. I told her I’d run away and she took me inside, had me pick out whatever I wanted to eat, and took me home.”

  “How long did you live with Peggy?”

  “Six years. When I was seventeen, I took two jobs and finally saved enough to buy a house when I turned twenty-one. Peggy told me she owned this rental house on the beach. It was in bad shape because it had a leaky roof, no heating, and old electrical wiring, but she offered it to me and carried my loan so I didn’t have to qualify. When I started my artwork, I juggled that and my two jobs until I could pay off most of the house. And then she died a few years ago. I was devastated. She really tried to care for me all the way to the end,” she said, “because she had willed the house to me.”

  “That was a very loving and sweet thing to do.”

  “Her grandkids didn’t mind either. They had all moved away by then, and I don’t see them much anymore.”

  “So what keeps you here?”

  Sinclair stopped studying her rock and lifted her head. Her expression was hard to read, as if she didn’t understand the purpose of the question.

  “I mean, do you have lots of friends here, or a love interest?”

  She looked back out over the water. The lobster boats were heading south, motoring slowly about a hundred yards off the shore. “The ocean keeps me here.”

  Brenna wasn’t sure if she did have someone special, but if she did, it evidently wasn’t any of her business so she didn’t pry any further.

  “Well, I can tell you one thing,” Brenna said as she stretched and felt her lower back ache a little from all the bending over. “I haven’t slowed down like this in a while. My cell phone isn’t ringing and I don’t have any appointments to rush off to. This is great.”

  “Type-A personalities usually don’t do well around these parts.”

  “You think I’m a type A?”

  Sinclair’s concentrated stare came with a side of smirk. “Not only present but fueled with lots of caffeine. Plus, you have all the tell-tale symptoms. You just named a few.”

  Brenna resisted the urge to check her cell phone, like she did often during the day, and smiled. “Okay, you’ve got me there. But this type-A lady is going to take your artwork to the Big Apple.”

  “For now, just enjoy the downtime.”

  “That’s certainly easy to do here.” Brenna took in the entire coast. “I’m beginning to comprehend why your work has such an emotional effect on me. You’re out here, taking pieces of real things, of timeworn treasures, and translating them into art. You feel the history in the sea glass.”

  “You understand a lot, then.”

  “Art is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

  “That’s Tolstoy.”

  “That’s you, too.”

  “I’d like to think that if I was born into any time period, I’d be plunked down right in the middle of Post-Impressionism. What an exciting time in art history.”

  “Oh, I agree. Can you imagine sharing a cup of tea with Gauguin or Toulouse-Lautrec and listening to them talk about bending and exaggerating their painting subjects to convey that its emotional effect was central to their work?”

  “I’d give my right arm to spend time with any of them.”

  Brenna smiled. “Imagine being there when they were all fired up about rejecting the limitations of their predecessors. They were true rebels.”

  “If I could go back and pick one to have dinner with it’d be…” Sinclair stopped to ponder a moment, and just as she turned to Brenna to answer, they said simultaneously, “Van Gogh!”

  “What a master,” Brenna said. “I was at the Van Gogh Museum—”

  “In Amsterdam?”

  “Yes. His work overwhelmed me.” She held her hand to her chest as if holding in the heart that wanted to ardently spill out from the memory. “I stood in front of Wheatfield with Crows for at least thirty minutes, studying the turbulence in his brushstrokes.”

  “I’d love to see his work up close,” Sinclair said. “It’s all so intense. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that he was symbolically expressing loneliness in the barren fields or death in the foreboding look of the crows, but it’s hard not to feel those things. I mean, his vivid and jarring execution shows us such extreme passion.”

  Brenna agreed. “I look at those paintings and always think about the fact that when he couldn’t take life anymore he walked out to the same fields where he painted and shot himself there.”

  They were silent for a moment. Then Brenna asked, “Can art exist without passion?”

  “I don’t think so. At least I hope not. I mean, think about that time in history. It must have been electrifying to break out of the traditionally objective way of painting what they saw and instead be the first ones to express themselves primarily through their inner experiences. How momentous to have the courage and freedom to distort reality and let their pure emotions out onto canvas.”

  “Exactly.”

  A ship’s horn blared in the distance and they stopped talking for a while. The nippy sea air picked up, chilling Brenna’s cheeks. Her thoughts seemed to be as clear as they’d ever been. She was enjoying her spontaneous vacation. Carl could easily handle the exhibition setup and would call her if he had any problems. She had nothing else pressing at the moment, and that realization allowed her to inhale the salty, invigorating air deeply.

  “Brenna, I haven’t…” Sinclair said after a while, but faltered. “No one really knows about my childhood. I’m surprised with myself for telling you. My past is pretty much a closed door.”

  Brenna listened and nodded gently.

  “I keep to myself quite a bit and don’t make friends easily. Part of me was furious with myself for talking to you about it at all.”

  When Sinclair looked at her with vulnerable, inquiring eyes, Brenna said, “I understand. I respect your feelings, so please don’t regret talking to me.”

  “I mean, we just met,” Sinclair said. “I’m afraid you’ll think differently of me.”

  “I don’t at all.”

  Sinclair studied her as if searching for sincerity. An unanticipated urge to hug her washed over Brenna, but instead she pushed her knee into Sinclair’s. “Really.”

  Though her smile looked a little strained, Sinclair seemed relieved and said, “Would you like to continue this discussion over some dinner?”

  “I’d love to.”

  *

  Sinclair made a light dinner of salad with pasta al pesto, opened a bottle of wine, and arranged a picnic blanket on the floor, close to her diminutive fireplace. They sat side by side, facing the flames. Two oak logs crackled inside the brick-lined opening, offering a welcome invitation to warm up from the dampness quickly settling over Pemaquid Point.

  Their segue from talking about Post-Impressionism out on the rocks to the current topic of the Rococo period would have seemed a fairly natural transition, but the dialogue in between had followed an odd path that included instructions for making authentic Maine lobster rolls and a short dialogue on the advantages of having 24-hour pharmacies, 24-hour computer stores, and even 24-hour facials in Manhattan.

  “Rococo was a waste of oil paint and marble.” Sinclair sipped her wine and looked mischievously at Brenna.

  “But coming out of the Baroque period, where everything felt heavy and sometimes harsh, don’t you think the world deserved a little fantasy and lightheartedness?”

  “I’m suspect of any art that the Roman Catholic Church encouraged, especially an art form used to impress people by expressing vic
torious power and control.”

  Brenna laughed, knowing that Sinclair’s sideways grin meant she was mostly debating for the fun of the argument. She did have some very good points, but the stance was meant to be playful. “So, Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa is a piece of crap?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. She’s beautiful.”

  “But she’s actually a prime example of true Baroque art.”

  “I stand corrected. But she’s the prime example of a gorgeous woman, no matter what century. I’m referring to the feathery mess that made up most paintings and ornamentation.”

  “Rococo was beautiful in its lavishness, don’t you think?”

  “Not to the tune of fluffy ruffles and ethereal refinement. I don’t find morality in it anywhere. It existed for the aristocracy, not common folk.”

  “You’re just being stuffy. Like a noble Rococo lady.”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “You’re wearing me out.” Brenna leaned back on her hands, moving her feet closer to the fire. “Were you the captain of the debate team in high school?”

  “I never went to high school.”

  “Really?”

  She shook her head. “I was afraid to. I was new here and without my stepparents. Peggy didn’t make me.”

  “So how did you learn so much about the arts?”

  “The public library. While her grandkids were in school, I’d hide in the library and read. It was my very own safe world.”

  Brenna couldn’t imagine what Sinclair must have gone through. Her childhood was virtually the opposite of hers. While she had safety and normalcy, Sinclair must have had uncertainty and irregularity. “It must have been hard.”

  “It was at first. But anything was better than being in my stepparents’ house.”

  “Were they verbally abusive as well as physically?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about that.”

  “I’m sorry.” Brenna winced inside. “I had no right to ask.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  Sinclair shrugged, but Brenna could tell by the sadness pulling on her face that the horror she must have experienced could never truly be trivialized. “I’ve never been accused of being tactful.”