The Painting by Ryan Casey Page A

leaned his head into his hands as she stood above him, scratching her arms. “Just tired. Just… just tired. I could really do with some rest.” He smiled at her.
    She raised her eyebrows in delayed acknowledgement. “Rest. Right, rest. That’s fine. I…” she placed the notepad onto the table. “How’s the book going?”
    Donny smiled. Not only did he have all his progress, but he had his memories. He had it all. He could finally work on providing for them. He could finally be okay again. “It’s good,” he said. “The house—it helped. It really helped.”
    Sara smiled. He could see the tears welling up in her eyes. She nodded and walked back towards the door. “That’s good,” she said, choking back the tears. “That’s good. I’ll—” He saw her eyes divert towards the notepad. “I’ll be back in soon. You… you get some rest.”
    “Sara,” Donny said.
    She stopped by the door and rubbed her arms as if his company was the last thing she wanted to share right now. She turned round and smiled. He could see her eyes were red and distant. He hadn’t seen them that way for years.
    “How did you know? To come for me? How did you know?”
    Sara laughed and wiped her eyes. “You don’t remember?”
    Donny frowned. “What d’you mean ‘don’t I remember?’”
    Sara shook her head, then pulled her phone out of her pocket and hit the middle button, holding the handset in the air.
    “Sara, I… please. You need to come. You need to come get me. Please. It’s not safe. I lov—”
    Then crackling and white noise.
    Donny stared at Sara, his mouth dangling open. “I… I didn’t send that. I did—”
    “I got that message this morning,” she said. “You called me at eight AM this morning and you left me that message. You don’t remember that?”
    Donny’s head rattled with ideas. “This… it can’t have been this morning. I—I wasn’t there this…”
    “You rang me and you left that message this morning, Donny,” Sara said, raising her voice. She sniffed away at her welling tears. “We promised. You promised, remember? After what happened last time… We promised if anything like this happened again that we’d go straight back to the doctor.”
    “Sara, I didn’t leave that message,” Donny said, digging his fingernails into his palms. Why was this happening? “I—I didn’t send it. I didn’t.”
    Sara watched him with pity and nodded. “Right. Right. You… you settle back in.” She smiled. “I need to get my brother a drink or something. He’s done so much for us today. I’ll be… yeah.” She turned and walked out of the room.
    The door closed and he was on his own again.
    The answerphone message. What did it mean? Was it them trying to speak through him? He saw his notepad staring out at him. Did the message even matter? Sure, he’d been gone a couple of days, and granted, he wasn’t in the best state. But he was here. He was here, he was safe, and he was about to make this work. They were about to live those dreams.
    He could finally hide that ring beneath the cushion when they got their new home.
    Donny walked over to his desk, perching into his roller-chair. How he’d missed his bloody roller-chair. He reached his arms behind his head and spun around a couple of times in it before leaning forward and aligning his notepad. He was tired, but he needed to get the story down on paper. If he could just outline it, get it down, then he could get some sleep.
    He opened the front of the pad and he saw it.
    He flicked to the second page and he saw it again.
    How could this be happening? This couldn’t be right. He’d… he’d started the novel before the painting. He’d started the novel before any of this had happened, and yet…
    He tore through every page but they were all the same: the same red handwriting, the same two words. It must’ve been the wrong notepad she’d picked up. Something can’t have been right.
    He turned back to the front cover and he saw