Page 45 of Beautiful Exile

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

Arden’s gaze followed mine, and she stared for a long moment. “I think I like it.”

I glanced back at her. “You don’t always like your work?”

She shook her head, some dark brown strands falling free of her bun, more than a few splatters of paint decorating them. “No. But this one…it makes me nervous.”

“And that’s good?” I wanted to know more, wanted to knoweverything. How her beautiful mind worked in all the ways, but especially when she created. And wasn’t that fucking unfair? Here I was, keeping all my secrets locked away while demanding hers.

“Nervous, uncomfortable. It means I’m feeling. Art should always make you feel.” Arden stared at the piece. “Sometimes, when I’m lucky, the pieces align, and I find real truth.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. “And what is this one’s truth?”

“Sometimes, you need to bleed to bloom.” Her voice wasn’t a whisper, but it held a quiet strength, coated in a rasp that resembled the brambles in the painting.

Those words painted themselves over the ones from earlier, coating them so thickly it drowned out the ones from before. And they made me reckless.

“My dad killed my mom.” My truth. My blood on the canvas.

With that sort of shocking statement, I expected a jolt, maybea gasp. But not from Arden. She simply watched me and took in my truth. And then she waited. She didn’t give me any of the countless platitudes I’d heard before.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“She’s with the angels now.”

“She’ll always watch over you.”

It was nothing as simple as that for Arden. She let the silence do the talking. And in that quiet was acceptance. One that invited me to keep going. To share a little more of my bloody truth.

“He didn’t put a bullet in her brain or a knife in her heart. But he killed her just the same.”

Arden gave me words then, and with them, more acceptance and understanding. “There are countless ways to kill someone.”

My fingers tightened, curling around my kneecaps and digging into the denim there. “There are. And my father is an expert at not leaving any evidence behind.”

Arden simply met my gaze and waited, pools of understanding in her irises.

“He has a pathological need for power and control. To know that he can exert his will over everyone around him.” Images of his face flashed in my mind, that stone-cold calculation. “He built the perfect trap for her, promising her forever and a beautiful life. Then he locked her in a tower while he cheated on her daily, belittled her, and made her feel like she was worth nothing. That she was nothing more than expensive window dressing.”

My mom’s tower had been that Upper West Side penthouse. The one that overlooked the park and held the promise of forever. But forever had become a prison.

My hands gripped my knees so tightly my fingers started to go numb. “He choked the life out of her little by little, snuffed out her light. She tried to fight it. There were times when she fought. Took my sister Ellie and me out of school and surprised us with a trip to Coney Island. Let us stay up late, eating all the junk our dad never let us have while bingeingGoonies,E.T., andHook. Read us stories and made all the voices.”

My words caught, tying in a knot at that last memory. I could still see her, clear as day, readingWhere the Wild Things Areand making me laugh until my sides ached. “She tried to leave,” I croaked. “He found out the moment she talked to a lawyer. Dropped a file of so-called evidence in her lap, showing what an unfit mother she was.”

There was a fire in Arden’s eyes now, the violet flaring to life. “He was threatening to take you away from her.”

“Ellie doesn’t remember much. Doesn’t remember how she simply faded. She was breathing but no longer living. She didn’t play as much or create the voices when she read. She slid into a bottle and never came out.”

I didn’t see Arden move. Didn’t know she had until slender fingers wrapped around mine. But those fingers weren’t delicate; they were far stronger than they appeared—like the woman herself.

She slid them under my death grip, forcing me to hold on to her instead. In that moment, I could feel everything about her. The strength of steel. The gentle kindness. The flecks of paint on her skin, marking her with the price she paid to create art that reached people. That reachedme.

I stared down at our joined fingers. Another type of art. “She drove off a bridge upstate when Ellie was six and I was seventeen. Her blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. Dad played it off to everyone as a horrible accident and painted himself the grieving widower. But there were no skid marks at the scene.”

Arden’s fingers tightened around mine, holding on to me as tightly as I held on to her. “Loss and theft.”

My gaze lifted from our hands to her face, questions in my eyes.

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