We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(30)

“He’d totally want to pay for your flights, if he’d thought of it,” says Meer now. “He just doesn’t think that way. My mom handles all the stuff for the household. His agent and gallery arrange all his work travel.”

Really, what I want to know is, does Kingsley want to know me?

And if he doesn’t, why did he invite me? Were his emails just the idle whim of an entitled egoist? Or were they the sincere overtures of a great but unconventional man?

What will it feel like to be in his presence, to be seen as his daughter? Or to talk to him about ordinary stuff—like what to put on the toast we’re making, or what classes I should take next year?

“He offered me a painting,” I say, after a beat.

“Oh, I’m sure you can have the painting,” says Meer.

“Doesn’t he have to, I don’t know, see me and say I can have it? Or wouldn’t there be paperwork, since it could be valuable?”

“I don’t think so,” says Meer. “No one would question that it’s yours.”

“Why not?”

“?’Cause it’s a painting of you,” he says. “He told me to give it to you if he got delayed or whatever. Want to see it right now?”





30


Turns out the painting is in Meer’s room. We climb the stairs in Chalk Tower to the fourth floor, where my brother and Tatum both have their bedrooms.

“Does it have a name?” I ask Meer as we go up. “Your room?”

“Like the Iron Room? No. It’s just called Meer’s room. But we do call our floor Top of Chalk.”

Meer’s bedroom walls are wooden, like the rest of the castle. His bed is just a mattress on the floor. On the shelves are several mason jars filled with his collections: purple rocks, shells, sea glass. The carpet is littered with dirty clothes and cups of water. Stacks of folded laundry are piled against the wall instead of put away in the closet. The walls are dense with art, the pictures layered on top of each other. There are a couple weavings, deeply textured and folksy; a series of tattoo-art photographs; some pictures of chickens cut out from a catalog.

A painting of me leans against one wall.

“Sorry I’m chaotic,” says Meer. He points at the picture. “I think Kingsley got a photo of you off Instagram? But then obviously he did his thing that he does.”

My legs feel weak and I sit down heavily on Meer’s mattress. The painting is indeed based on a photo of me I posted a couple months ago. But it’s also nothing like that photo, at all.



* * *



—

My hair swirls around me in the wind, lifted away from my head as if I’m in a

cyclone.

My face is solemn. I kneel

dead center on a

poorly constructed wooden raft.

And like Odysseus in the painting downstairs,

I am in the middle of a ferocious sea.

My fingers dig between the boards of the raft,

tense with effort, the muscles of my arms straining.

I look like a scared little girl, without parents.

And like a warrior, bereft of weapons.



* * *



—

“What’s it called?” I ask.

“Lost.”

I put my hand to mouth, my throat choked.

My father has painted me lost. Because he lost me, before I was even born.

When he made the painting, he hadn’t reached out yet.

And now he wants me to have this piece of his heart.

He’s giving me the gift of him seeing me. Understanding me.

“I brought it up here,” says Meer, “because it’s like a proper picture of the sister I used to draw when I was a kid. Like he pulled you out of my imagination. But I’m even happier for you to have it.”

“It’s scary how much it looks like me,” I say.

“It really does.” He sits down next to me, stretching his legs out along the floor, his bare feet sandy.

“But is that how you imagined I would look?” I ask. “I’m out on a raft in the middle of the sea.”

“Well, I imagined you happy, actually. But yeah, on boats sometimes. Or on planes or trains. Or in cars.”

“In transit? How come?”

“I’d imagine you coming to visit.” Meer looks at me eagerly. “Do you like it? Do you like the painting? I want you to like the painting.”

“I love it,” I tell him. “But it makes me sad.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s right.”

“What do you mean?”

“About where I am. How it feels in my head.”

Meer nods. “He’s almost always right about that,” he says. “If he’s painting.”



* * *



—

Next time we access electronics, I email Kingsley. I don’t tell him I saw the portrait, because Meer said he wants to give it to me himself, but I try to put into words how desperately I want to see him.

    Come back soon, if you can.

There’s so much I want to know and understand about you—I want us to know and understand each other. I’m here in your beautiful home, waiting.

If you won’t be back today, could we talk on the phone? I have mine with me until 2 p.m.