Page 91 of The Saint

I’ll protect you from thunder while you calm my waves

Ground me, believe in me

Together, we’ll be brave

I’m where I belong, with you by my side

I’ll be yours forever

If you’ll be my bride

Below the poem, written neatly, as if he worked hard to get every letter perfect, was a note.

I love you, carina.

Please say you’ll be mine.

xo

“What’d you find?” Lev’s voice startled me. I wiped away a fallen tear with one hand as my other swiped the paper from the stack.

“Nothing,” I told him, and my voice cracked.

“You okay?”

I cleared my throat, then glared up at him. “I’m fine.”

Standing, I glanced around the room. There was nothing here, nothing that could tell us where he might be. The pictures of the strangers on the wall weren’t talking, the pages under the one I’d swiped from the table were blank, and out the window, the bridge over the East River couldn’t tell us anything. Still, I stood in front of it, imagining Rolly out there on the fire escape, staring off into the distance as he tried to find inspiration for his painting.

For the painting of me.

I needed to find him. I need to know what was going on. Was this poem for me? Was it real? Was Lev right, and the woman in the park was merely someone Rolly was helping, and he was truly in love with me?

“Did you see this?” Lev stood near the kitchen counter, looking at one of the other half-finished canvases. I went to his side, then narrowed my eyes at the faces painted there.

There were three of them. An old woman, a little boy, and another woman closer to my age. And that woman…

“Is she—”

“The woman from the park? That’s what I was thinking. Same hair at least.”

I shook my head, turning to gaze around the room. The older woman looked familiar, and it didn’t take long to figure out why. All around us, on pages hanging from the walls and sketchbook pads on the bed and desk, there were drawings of this same old woman. Smiling. Sleeping. Lost in thought as she gazed out a window with a book in her lap. One with her head thrown back, her laughter so real it made me want to laugh too. I turned the page of one sketchpad and found another drawing of the woman, that young boy sitting in her lap in a big recliner, his long legs hanging to the floor while she held his hands in hers.

“‘Mrs. T and Tyler’,” I read, running my finger beneath the small caption he’d left at the bottom of the page.

“Kid’s too old to be his, don’t you think?” Lev asked from my side.

Flipping through a few more pages, I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Gotta be at least seven or eight.”

If there was one thing I didn’t know, it was anything to do with children. Rolly and I had been too young to think about that when we were together as teens, and the past five years left little room or reason for me to learn about them. Beyond my niece, Chaya, there weren’t any children in my life. Nothing to compare to the child on these pages.

I closed the book and stepped away from the window, taking in the room one more time. There had to be something here, something that would tell us who these people were. But other than the paintings and drawings, the art supplies, and a plastic bag from a stationery store on the corner of the bed, there was nothing.

Lev pushed the bag aside, then raised his face to me. “David.”

Underneath the bag was a stack of blue envelopes.