Rooms - James L. Rubart [130]
The signature was so small he had to get within inches of the canvas to see it. Before reading the name, he closed his eyes and laughed. All this buildup for a name he probably wouldn’t even recognize. Then he lifted his lids in slow motion. The name wasn’t difficult to read. But Micah only saw it for a few seconds before he slumped backward to the carpet, head in his hands. Archie had said his heart’s desire.
Astonishment filled him. It couldn’t be.
The final piece had fallen into place. The puzzle was complete.
He ran out onto his deck and shouted till his voice grew hoarse. “Yes! Yes!”
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Moments later he remembered everything. Every scene from the last six years of his life melded into place. His old girlfriend Joan, the ankle injury, and every other detail.
For six years he’d starved while he painted ocean scenes all up and down the Oregon Coast—from Bandon to Florence to Newport. Getting better, selling a few paintings, galleries taking an interest, his reputation as an artist growing. And how one year ago he’d received a note down in Newport from his great-uncle Archie telling him he’d inherited a home on the Oregon Coast.
As he bathed in the memories, the scenes and memories of his Seattle life faded. There had been another life, hadn’t there?
Yes, Seattle. He had lived there, worked there. Made money there? Yes, a lot. RimSoft. He’d been famous. He was sure all of those things were true. A few moments later he wasn’t. There were bits and pieces, scattered memories, puzzle pieces that even if they were all put together wouldn’t show him enough of the picture to remember it clearly. It didn’t matter.
He walked back inside and glanced down at the coffee table just inside the door. A worn magazine looked up at him: Coast Life. He picked it up, smiled, then gently laid it back down. He’d read about himself a little later.
Micah walked around the side of the house toward the top of the bluff. A small circle of ocean-smoothed stones formed a fire pit. He grabbed the kindling sitting next to it, and five minutes later crimson-and-gold flames shot toward the sky. It was an altar to the final disintegration of his old life and a celebration of the one just begun. He didn’t go inside till the last embers faded.
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That night sleep evaded him. He tried. Pushed Sarah from his mind thirty times an hour.
But it was futile.
Archie had said some things were irreversible. Others not. So which was Sarah? To give her up, stop loving her was like trying to stop the waves from crashing onto the shore.
His feelings of love for her pummeled him without a break. Relentless. But he didn’t want them to stop.
Tomorrow he would find her. He had to try one more time.
CHAPTER 46
Sarah asked herself for the twentieth time why she was going but didn’t turn the car around. By the time she reached Micah’s driveway, she had resigned herself to the task but was determined to make the visit as short as possible. Say what she had to and then leave forever.
She parked at the end of his drive and sat for ten minutes, her fingers the only part of her moving as she drummed them on her steering wheel. Most of her wanted to drive off and never look back. But a small place inside kept her from heading home. Besides, she had promised Rick.
She walked toward Micah’s house and saw him through a window. He sat in front of a painting of the ocean hanging over the fireplace. Gorgeous. A picture as captivating as she’d ever seen. As she studied it, Micah turned. Their eyes locked; neither moved. Then he disappeared from view, and the front door opened a few seconds later.
“Sarah.”
“Hi.”
Surprise flickered over his face but he didn’t speak. She wondered how to start and groped for words that wouldn’t give him false hope. “I’m here for one reason.”
Micah didn’t respond.
“I promised Rick I’d come.”
“Because he told you who he is.” Micah opened the door wider.
“Yes.