Too Late to Love Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Harbor at Four

June finds Regan's copy of her missing canvas and accuses her in front of the class; Margot offers a wager with Whitcombe on the line.

I was in the Ware Hall stairwell by seven the next morning.

I had not slept, and I did not need to.

The fourth-floor studio had been mine for two years, on a key I kept on a ribbon around my neck.

The door was unlocked.

My easel stood in the middle of the room, bare.

My Harbor at Four, six weeks of gray water and one red buoy, was gone.

There was a rectangle of clean floor where it had leaned against the wall.

I stood there with my hand on the cold easel, and my stomach turned over once, slowly.

Only two people on earth had ever held a copy of my key.

I had given one to a boy last spring, in the rain, and told him it was for emergencies.

The painting class started at nine.

I walked into Studio 2 at ten to, and twenty people were already setting up.

Regan Aldridge stood at the front, in a white linen shirt without a single stain on it.

On the easel beside her was my painting.

It was the same gray harbor and the same buoy.

The boy on the pier had the same hunched shoulders and the same four o'clock light on the water behind him.

The signature in the corner was a neat black C. A.

I felt every head in the room turn toward me.

"Good morning, June," Regan said, brightly, and put a hand to her heart.

"You look dreadful."

"I'm so sorry about last night."

"Zachary can be such a brat."

"That's mine," I said.

"Sorry?"

"That's my painting."

"I started it in August, and it's been on my easel in Ware 4B."

"You took it last night, and you finished it, or someone did."

A boy at the back of the class whistled low.

Regan's eyes filled with tears, perfectly, all at once.

It was the most impressive thing I had ever seen her do with her hands.

"I've painted harbors since I was twelve," she said, and her voice shook.

"Everyone here has seen me."

"June, I know you're hurting."

"I know what happened last night was awful."

"But you can't just take what you want from me because Zachary broke your heart."

Someone murmured, "Oh, no."

Someone else said, "Poor thing."

I did not know which of us they meant.

"Then paint me the fog line," I said.

"What?"

"Here, in front of everyone."

"Take that brush and show me the three strokes where the water goes gray to white, behind the buoy."

"Two minutes."

"You painted it, so it'll take two minutes."

Regan looked at the brush in the jar.

She did not reach for it.

"I don't perform for stalkers," she said.

"You humiliated yourself and now you're attacking my sister."

Zachary was standing in the doorway.

He was still in last night's shirt, creased, and one cuff was open.

His eyes were red, and I felt a stupid, treacherous pull in my chest at the sight of it.

Then he smiled at me.

"Go home, June," he said.

"Sleep it off."

"I don't want to see this go viral too."

Behind him, in the hall, a man in a gray cap leaned against the wall with his arms folded.

He was looking at the floor, and he was shaking his head very slowly.

Zane had followed me.

I turned my eyes back to Zachary before anyone could see where I was looking.

"I'm not asking you," I said.

"I'm asking the person who runs this school."

"You can ask me," said a cold, quiet voice.

The class went silent, like a plate had been dropped.

Margot Aldridge walked in between her son and her daughter.

She was in a navy suit, silver hair cut sharp at the jaw, and she did not hurry.

She looked at the painting.

She looked at me for a long time.

"The Fellowship panel meets Friday," she said.

"Six finalists."

"One of them withdrew in public last night and I accepted her withdrawal."

"I'm taking it back," I said.

"I thought you might."

Her mouth moved a very little.

"My daughter says that's her harbor, and you say it's yours."

"I don't like arguments."

"On Friday, in front of the panel, you will each paint it again from nothing, on the same size canvas, in the same two hours."

"If Regan can't, she withdraws from the Fellowship."

"And if you can't," Margot said, "you leave Whitcombe today, and you repay four years of scholarship."

The number came into my head with her smile.

It was a hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars, and my mother cleaned wounds for a living.

Regan turned her face away so no one would see her mouth.

I looked at the empty hall behind Zachary, and the gray cap was gone.

"Done," I said.

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