No Story to Tell by K. J. Steele Page A

and rips it from her, spilling her tea all over her lap. I went at him with twenty years of bottled up rage. And he was so bloody stupid, he thought I was after my pictures, so he swung them up over his head like we were in a game of keep away. Lost his balance and fell down the stairs. To this day, he still maintains that I pushed him. He landed badly. Busted his neck and ended up in a wheelchair.”
    “Oh! Elliot, that’s so horrible.”
    “Actually, I think it all turned out exactly the way he wanted. Ended up with my mom giving him full-time care and a justifiable reason to get rid of me. After that, I was sort of lost. Ended up doing too many drugs, drinking, wasting my days away just hating him. Then one day I looked in the mirror and realized that I hated myself just as much as I hated him. That I was becoming him. And that was the end of it, right there. I’d always had an interest in art, so I went to work, saved up some money and applied to school. I was totally shocked when I got in.
    “But it was the best thing in the world for me. I felt plugged into life. Like I’d just woken up and realized who I was for the first time. And I just sort of went at it maniacally. I studied and painted and traveled like any day it could all come to an end. Then one day I clued in that I was trying to be everything that my father could never be. That paint and knowledge had just become my new drugs. And I realized that I had to make peace with the fact that he’d been a shitty father. Make peace with the fact that my own father hated me. I never actually talked to him about it. There wouldn’t have been any point. But, in my own head, I knew I had to let it go.”
    “How’d you do that?” she asked.
    “Well, that was the funny thing. Once I figured out that was what I had to do, it was as if it was already done. I just moved on. Bought a little place with some money my grandfather left me and started fixing it up. Sold it and made a profit, and so I did it again. And again. And again.
    “I know people around here think I’ve made my money with my painting, but I didn’t. Well, not most of it, anyhow. The houses are my real art. Trying to create a sense of home and stability I never had. Problem is, once they’re done I can’t seem to stay in them anymore. It’s like I don’t fit. Crazy, hey?” He laughed lightly, glancing down at her to gauge her reaction to what she’d just been told. They sat in silence for a moment as his words swirled around them like water without a place to settle.
    “So, anyhow, that’s the truth of it. I’m sorry I lied to you before.” He looked at her almost shyly.
    She smiled at him softly, and as she viewed him in this new light she decided the revelation of this imperfection only made him all the more perfect.
    “Don’t be. I think most people probably have things in their past that they’d rather leave there.”
    “Yeah. I suppose. Is that how it is for you?”
    She drew back. An alarm thudded deep in her veins. Had his whole confession just been an intentional attempt to lead her up to this moment? A way to disarm her defenses so he could safely ask her such an intimate question? She tried to shrug the suggestion off as ludicrous, but she couldn’t. It didn’t feel ludicrous. And ludicrous or not, that is what he’d achieved, walking in comfortably and asking her a question she would not even have dared ask herself.
    She realized suddenly that the air had become cool with the arrival of late afternoon and she shivered. She needed to get back home. She’d ask Elliot to drop her off at the end of the driveway under some pretense of wanting to pick some wildflowers for the table. And when Bobby asked about who’d driven her home, she’d tell him, then concoct some story about how she’d found Elliot Spencer a little bit strange.

~ Chapter 6 ~
     
    “Bobby, you’d better hurry. It’s almost eight o’clock; the boys will be here anytime now.”
    “All right,