“Not sure. You just seem to know things.”
She sighed. Scratched her nose with the back of her hand, probably to avoid getting paint on her face. “Sometimes when a kid’s got nobody really running things in his life, he’ll decide to take over and take charge of everything. Otherwise the world just seems to be spinning out of control. That seem to hit a note in you?”
I didn’t want to say how much it did, so I just said, “You know, I could go away and leave you alone if you’d rather just paint in peace.”
She sighed, and began to pack up her paints into a tote bag by her feet.
“No, that’s okay. That’s enough for one day anyway. I’ve been out here for hours. Enough is enough.”
I helped her pack up, and I carried her folding chair. She slung the straps of the tote bag over one shoulder and carried the wet canvas carefully. And we walked back to the cabin together.
“What will you do with it when you’re done painting it?” I asked.
“No idea,” she said.
“I didn’t see any paintings hanging up in the cabin.”
“I don’t hang them up.”
“Do you sell them?”
“Not really. My daughters have a few. There are some out in the shed.”
I looked up to see that we were almost back at the cabin. And I knew suddenly that I wanted to say something to her. And that it was important. And that I didn’t have very much time. With Mrs. Dinsmore, you never wanted to assume you could tell her tomorrow.
“I think you should stay,” I said.
She stopped walking. Shot me an odd look without really turning her head.
“Stay where?”
“You know. Not . . . go.”
“Oh. That kind of stay.”
“Yeah. That kind of stay.”
We walked again. Up to the cabin.
She stepped up onto the porch and turned to face me. I just stood, looking down at the dirt, one hand on each of the dogs’ heads.
“And why do you think that?”
“Because you help me.”
“Can’t really stay just for somebody else,” she said.
“No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean stay just for me.”
“Well, what did you mean, then?”
“I meant . . . you have things about you . . . I just think . . . I don’t know how to say what I think. I guess I think people can learn things from you. You know. So I hate to think about going back to . . . without you.”
“You might be the minority opinion on that,” she said. “But I’ll take your thoughts under consideration.”
The old me would have retreated. Not questioned her. But I was having to learn to step up. Being around Zoe Dinsmore was forcing me to be a slightly new Lucas. To be more somehow, like the sun in her painting.
“What exactly does that mean?” I asked, still petting the dogs’ heads.
“It means I’ll give your opinion the weight it deserves.”
“In other words, you think it deserves nothing.”
“No. I didn’t say that. What I think I should do is more important to me than what you think I should do. But that doesn’t mean your opinion has no value to me at all. Now, I’m going in. You should go running with the dogs. You’ve been missing a lot of mornings, and I think it would do all three of you good.”
And with that she was gone.
The dogs and I ran. Probably six miles or more.
It did all three of us good.
I was jogging down Main Street by myself, doing what I more or less thought of as a cooldown, when I heard a female voice call my name.
I stopped. Turned all the way around.
At first I saw no one.
Then a second later Libby Weller stepped out of the doorway of the ice cream place, and waved at me.
I waved back, all ready to run on. But she motioned me over.
I went, because I couldn’t figure a way to ignore a direct order like that one. But I really didn’t want to talk about Roy.
“Hi,” I said.
She was wearing short-shorts. Her legs were long and tan, and it was all I could do not to stare at them. Her hair was pulled back into a light brown ponytail. She was every bit as tall as I was, maybe even half an inch taller. And I was pretty tall. She was a year older than me, which always made it feel weird to talk to her.
“Hi,” she said back.
A little shyly, I thought. What she had to be shy about . . . well, I had no idea.
“I was just going in for an ice cream soda. Want to join me?”
“Oh. I can’t. I’m in training.”
I would’ve killed for an ice cream soda, and training had nothing to do with it. If anything, another pound or two would have done me good. The problem was, I had no money in my pocket. None. And you didn’t ask a girl to buy you an ice cream soda. That would be totally humiliating.
“At least come sit with me while I drink mine.”
“Okay,” I said.
But I really just wanted to run home.
“So how’s Darren doing?” I asked after a minute of watching her nearly turning her cheeks inside out trying to get a plug of ice cream up and out of her straw.
She took her mouth off the straw. Frowned. I wondered if I shouldn’t have asked.
“Not so good,” she said. “He’s depressed, I think. Nobody’ll say it but me, but it’s so obvious. And he’s getting really frustrated. He’s supposed to get a prosthetic. You know. A false foot he can strap on. But now the stump is infected, and it’s much too painful. He’d rather die than put any weight on it. So it’s going to be another couple of months at least. And he hates the crutches, because when he uses them, it pulls on these muscles in his chest where he took some shrapnel. So he mostly just stays in bed.”
“Oh,” I said, wishing I had never brought it up. “That’s too bad.”
“I just hope when Roy comes home, he comes home
