Page 6 of Bows & Eros
"I tried to call you!" I found myself blurting out, wrenching my hands free of the wool coat and glaring at him. "I called five times! Why couldn't you just answer the damn phone?"
He balked at me. "Are you serious? I couldn't hear it over my work. Is my son hurt?"
"No." I frowned at him. "Did you know today was Family Fun Day at the school?"
"Miss Avri!" he shouted, clearly losing patience with me. "Whywere you trying to call me? Why did youwalkhere in the snow?"
"Because your son has unleashed chaos on the school assembly and then disappeared!" I shot back, my cheeks reddening as the blood returned to my face. I knew I'd gone shrill. "I can't find him anywhere, I can't get anyone to listen to me, and the whole town is acting drugged, and tragically,youseem to be the only person who can help me now!"
"You lost my child?" he repeated, his own cheeks beginning to gather color.
"If you had come to Family Fun Day, he wouldn't have had a window to wander off! Every year, he is theonlychild who is totally alone. What iswrongwith you!"
He was speechless, shaking his head in apparent indignation. "You've lost my son and you're blaming me for it! Unbelievable!"
"You have to come with me back to the school," I continued, ignoring his unearned outrage. "You have to help me find Aaron andstop him."
"Stop him from what?"
"Do you have a car? I don't think I can walk all the way back."
He stared at me, his mouth working like he'd started to say several things, but hadn't deemed any of them worthy of actualization.
I stared right back, though I was admittedly too desperate for his help to glare at him in the way I wanted to. That glare was simmering just below the surface, eager to make its debut after I had finally been able to speak my mind to Ethan Weaver. I'd wanted to rant at this man for almost two years now, and he hadn't heard the half of it.
Yet.
Once we found Aaron, I intended to unload the rest of it. Well, once we found Aaronandfound some sanity in a town that was currently going off the rails ... mostly in pairs, though I had spotted at least one throuple on the way out of the school.
I hadn't been able to lay eyes on Hazel. I could only pray that she hadn't done anything irreparably stupid in the melee. The fact that we'd been talking about all of those straying married fathers this morning made me wince.
I had earned a hysterical tirade or three already, as far as I was concerned. Part of me was convinced there were hidden cameras all over town, feeding directly into my mother's living room, just so she'd have the opportunity to observe the train wreck as it unfolded. Nothing would give her as much pleasure as a documented, irrefutable reason to purse her lips at me, sigh, and emit telepathically rather than say aloud that fabled, utterly maternal message:I told you so!
He shook his head, turning on his heel to walk away from me, scratching at the sandy mop of his marble-dusted hair as though I'd truly befuddled him. When he reappeared moments later, he was still not dressed for an outing, but he was carrying an assortment of things in his hands that he tossed directly into my lap: a wool hat, a pair of gloves, and his car keys.
"You can't go out again like that," he muttered, gesturing to my general person. "Car's in the garage if you don't mind getting the heat going while I put on some clothes."
"Of course, I ..." I trailed off, watching as he hoisted the artist's apron over his head and shook it out, leaving nothing but averythin undershirt clinging to his body. I swallowed, my frozen hands sinking into the warm woolen knit of the hat he'd given me.
Chiseling sculptures must be sweaty work. What possible reason could this man have for wearing the ugly, slouchy clothes he favored and hiding all of ...thisfrom the world? Even his well-worn work jeans, despite their tatters and streaks of paint, fit him in a way that went well past flattering.
I'd have to tell Hazel.
He threw the apron with impressive precision onto a coat tree near the garage door, where it swung onto a peg like it knew where it belonged.
Before I could formulate the rest of a response to him, Ethan had vanished back into the exterior of the house, apparently unaware of the sliver of a striptease he'd just performed.
I fumbled for the keys in the nest of wool in my lap and pushed myself to stand, feeling markedly more rickety on my knees and ankles than I had riding on the burst of necessity that had brought me here. The items I'd been given fit into the sagging pocket of the borrowed coat I was wearing, where they'd stay until I figured out what the hell I was supposed to do next.
I wandered past the apron hanging on the coat tree peg, glancing with a cringe into a mirror mounted on the wall nearby and stepped into the garage where the big, white sculpture sat on several yards of blue tarp. I couldn't help but stop and stare at it for a moment, this half-formed thing bursting out of a block of pink and white marble.
It was a human figure, evidently reaching out past the confines of its birthplace, though it did not yet have a face or much of a torso.
I flexed my hands, feeling for the briefest moment a keen awareness of my own lack of artistic prowess, then made my way to the squat little sedan near the garage door to crank it up and blast the heat.
Today was not the day to speculate on hobbies I might one day pick up. Today was a day of action.
I pulled the beanie down over my ears, my chin-length hair embracing my face. It was an ugly hat, a red and white snowflake pattern that reminded me of the boxer shorts you see in menswear aisles during Christmas, but it was very warm, and I realized upon sliding into the (extremely mismatched) brown and turquoise gloves how needed both items had been.
