All That's Left to Say by Emery Lord

Author:Emery Lord
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

At the party’s end, I clear cups and trays with Zoe. A few of her college freshmen friends are still here, tucked into their catch-up conversations in the living room. Zoe is pleasantly buzzed and we’re back, once more, to her portfolio.

“Here,” she says, handing me her phone. “The last six in my favorites. How do they look together? Be honest.”

I’ve been honest about her portfolio choices, but Zoe tends to fixate. I can’t exactly throw stones, considering that my whole life is a glass house. “Perfect.”

“Ugh. Really?” She sprays a platter. “Scroll up and tell me if there are any others you’d consider.”

“Wait, I’ve never seen this one!” I say. The background is a landscape, warm light cast on summer trees. Painted across the canvas, however, are four crimson words: YOU BROKE MY HEART. “Holy shit.”

“Oh, that.” Zoe glances over and snorts. “Should not be in favorites. Garbage.”

“Not to me.” This piece is beautiful and strange, full of anger. Did nature break her heart? Did the world? “There’s so clearly a story here.”

She laughs darkly. “It’s how I met my last-year boyfriend.”

“The jerk?” I ask. A peal of laughter comes from the other room.

“Mm-hmm,” Zoe says, with perhaps a little satisfaction at the tasty gossip. “My professor said I should work on a landscape for my portfolio, so I trekked up to the nature preserve to paint en plein air, right?”

“Of course you did,” I say.

“I’m intense. It is known.” She brushes her hair back. “So, a cute guy was passing by on the trails and stopped to chat. We talked again the next day, and … well, I got really great at tree brushwork after a week of that.”

I can imagine Zoe in the woods—a pretty oddity with her easel, brows furrowed over the tiniest detail. “Wow.”

“It’s like a movie, right?” she muses. “A boy who came to follow the path through the woods; a girl who stands in one place to paint them. We were admiring the same place, but in different ways. We talked about things like that.”

“Romantic,” I admit.

“So, you can see why I fell for it.” Zoe smiles, and then, mocking her own voice: “ ‘Oh, of course I’ll meet you for dinner. Yes, please do tell me about your painful past. I understand you.’ Ninny behavior.”

“And then …”

“A cheater.” She drops her hand like a gavel. With a sigh, she says, “So many, many weasels in this world, Hannah.”

Something inside of me—maybe my conscience—flinches. Here I am, lying by omission, over and over. “What if you became a prolific painter of weasels? Like Hunt Slonem and rabbits—hundreds of canvases, all colors and sizes.”

Zoe shrieks out a laugh. “Stop! Oh my gosh. And I name each piece after a different, rotten boy. I’ll fill a gallery! I’ll do commissions.”

“But this,” I say, waving the painting on her phone, “is good. It’s not just realism. It’s real.”

“Zo!” someone calls from the next room. “We need paper towels!”

“For God’s sake,” Zoe mutters, ducking to open a cabinet.

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