The Note by Natalie Wrye (the read aloud family .TXT) 📕

Luckily, the radiator’s warmth warmed my body, putting me at ease, and I reached for the easel, missing this. Missing the feeling of coming alive every time a paint brush was in my hands, every time I stroked its edge to a canvas, losing myself in its soft surface.

Not a day went by where I didn’t paint, and that desire had far surpassed subtle, settling like a sledgehammer in my stomach.

I set up a mid-sized canvas on an easel, taking my time. Oil paints were next. A small jar of water. Slipping on my messy apron, a souvenir from serving at The Alchemist, I swiped my paintbrush’s bristles in deep blues and dark grays, attacking the shape of the eyes first.

I let my fingers do the talking, communicating with the canvas in only the way that it can, and my conscious mind took a back seat, inspiration leading the way.

Bits of my mind, that ones that still clung to the belief in fairytales took flight, as I stroked at the course canvas in front of me.

Slashing and swirling. Swiping and circling.

I beat the coarse fabric in front of me with my brush, giving into the fantasy.

Four years of Russian Literature, a marred childhood and a lifetime of storytelling turned into a portrait, only this time the portrait wasn’t of me.

The strokes across the canvas became excited slices across the canvas as a prince began to take shape on the rough paper, and as the great American artist Georgia O’Keefe once said “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way– things I had no words for.”

After finishing the painting I entitled “Prince in the Tower,” I had no words left to give, nothing left to say.

I’d left it all on the canvas. And the next day, I’d turned over the painting to the Dweller gallery, thinking nothing might come of it.

Until now.

Mr. Tweeney’s eager words excite me, and I have to sit down, my legs shaking as I grab a stool. I listen closely.

“We loved your painting, Miss Somerset. Absolutely adored ‘The Prince in the Tower’ and we’d love to sell it.”

The tequila in my system threatens to make a reappearance, elation making it hard to sit still.

“I would love to sell it at the gallery, Mr. Tweeney.” The words shake even as I say them. “Thank you so much! You won’t regret it.”

I hear his grin. “I know we won’t.”

It might be the worst timing in the world, but I don’t care. I’m proud of myself beyond words and I can’t wait to share the news with somebody—anybody.

Even if it has to be Rick.

I turn in my stool to face the tabletops, but the tall, blond man is no longer there.

No. I look and he’s near the door, locking it.

My brows knit together on my face but before I can say a single word, Rick tightens his grip on a dark object I hadn’t seen until now, his arm trembling, both eyes on me as he raises the item, leveling it at my chest.

My heart leaps into my throat as I freeze, my eyes stuck on the object in his hand. I can’t help but point at it.

“What are you doing, Rick?”

The manager growls. “What does it look like?”

I’ve seen a lot of horror in my lifetime, been part of more than my share.

Trying to drown your worries with tequila by yourself might not have been all fun. But trying to do it when there was a gun in front of your face? Nearly impossible.

My messed up childhood is campaigning for a re-run, and the mental walls, the ones that have shielded me from all the bad my Bronx upbringing had once brought into my life, make a reappearance.

I take a calming breath. “I have to be honest: It looks like, to me, that we’re not auditioning for that ‘When Harry Met Sally’ remake after all.”

Chapter 28

NOAH

I’m going to kill him.

I’m going to fucking kill him.

I should have recognized him from Al’s Pawnshop’s security tape, but I didn’t. I mean, I had only seen the man for exactly six seconds.

Luckily, with Drew and Nancy along for the bumpy and rainy ride, squeezed in Jase’s blue BMW, they’d proved to be of use...after all the yelling.

Leaving the scream-fest in Sophia’s hallway, Lachlan’s hungry pleas give me hope that I might find Sophia’s next move.

Navigating the noisy group of friends and family to Benny’s pizza, I hold onto some hope that I might find my hard-assed brunette there, but the only thing we find inside the shop is bad pizza.

Nothing like the Giani’s she had introduced me to.

In less than a minute I discover that not only is my Little Bear a good judge of pizza, she’s an excellent one of character when, at the pizza shop, we all make a discovery, one that leaves the rest of us reeling, the clock ticking with each hour that Sophia stays missing and the wedding draws nearer.

The dark-haired server sidles up next to the picture on the pizza shop wall, eyeing a plethora of past Employees of the Month photos hung along the worn and cracked brick. Sophia’s wide-grinned neighbor points to a frame.

“Well, I’ll be good and fucked…”

“From what I heard, you usually are.” Nancy chimes in behind him, tumbling her eyes.

“It’s our good friend, Rick, Nancy.” He juts a thumb. “An Employee of the Month. And to think, you hired a man who once hocked bad pizza to run the best bar between Wall Street and Midtown Manhattan.”

“Correction: I did not hire Rick. I returned his old job to him. And if he was good enough to manage for my father, who was I to notice right away that he would turn out to be such a creep?”

“I don’t know...” Drew comments blithely. “Maybe a bar owner with eyeballs? The guy’s bad news, Nance. And you know it. You have to let him go.”

“Who’s bad news?” Lachlan shuffles closer in