It was good medicine.  We all loved that boy, and he was spoiled with attention by every single member of the band.  None of us had failed to see the uncanny resemblance to Dean, and we all felt a bit responsible and saw to it that he had everything he needed.

She and Adair were living together by then, and Jack just adored him.  It was a huge relief, to say the least.

We finished recording our second album in half the time the first one had taken us and that was with me working nearly every night in my magic show.  We’d all grown up, and the result was a much more finely tuned machine.

I couldn’t quite believe when we got our first number one hit out of the record’s first single, and when a second and a third followed, I was completely floored.

None of us could believe it.  It was everything we’d talked about.  Kenny, Cory, and I had been daydreaming about this since we were all fourteen, and it had actually worked out for us.

It was a bittersweet time for me.  Every time we celebrated another hit, all I could think about was who was missing from the revelry.

CHAPTER SIX

FIVE YEARS AFTER THE ACCIDENT

DANIKA

It was in the summer that I met the mysterious artist.

I’d gotten a memo that the boss had himself a girlfriend and that he was insisting on giving her a gallery showing.  This was told to me rather snidely by the New York gallery manager.  I knew she’d had her eye on James for herself, but she’d made an advance on him ages ago, and it couldn’t have been clearer that he just wasn’t interested.  Still, I thought, as she told me over the phone about the new development, she must have been holding onto some idea that he’d change his mind.  She didn’t say it aloud, but she was clearly more upset about the new girlfriend than she was about the fact that James was going to be sponsoring this mystery woman as some kind of an artist.

I was shocked myself about the girlfriend.  I’d known James for years and had never thought I’d see the day he committed to any kind of romantic relationship.  From what I’d observed, he was never serious about any of the legions of women he was seen with.  Shocked was quickly followed by pleased, as I cared about James as a person, and I figured that if he was doing all of this, he must care for the woman.

Even so, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea, at least not the one that was originally presented to me.  A large, lavishly promoted showing, exclusively featuring this woman’s paintings.  I knew only the facts as they were presented to me.  She worked with acrylics and watercolors, and had an indefinite amount of paintings, and she was without training of any kind.

It was obvious that he was in love with his new girlfriend, but that wouldn’t make our jobs any easier.

And then I saw her paintings.

I was leaning casually against my tall work desk, flipping through my day’s workload.

I was meticulous; so I organized my workload and made to-do lists daily and anything that came directly from the boss, which was rare, went straight to the top.

I opened the portfolio, which contained only photos of the paintings, with absolutely no expectations.  One look, and I had to sit down.

Three hours later, I was obsessed.

The color, the depth, the dreamy imagination that each picture contained made my heart beat faster.  This was the part of my job that I thrived on.  It didn’t happen often, not like this, but when it did, I just lived to put a show like this together.

I felt such a sense of wonder at the untutored skill behind it all.  It always astounded me, the crap that came out in the art world, by artists that had impressive credentials, and years of study, and yet the results showed little in the way of skill or depth.

This was the opposite.  This woman put her soul on the canvas with a skill and talent that I could scarce believe was untrained.

One phone call with James, after looking at her portfolio, and falling in love with it, and he’d put me in charge of the showing.  We were kindred spirits when it came to this sort of thing, and I think my enthusiasm alone could have gotten me the job.

It all made sense to me upon meeting her.  She was so composed, so reserved.  I’d have thought she was cold, if I didn’t have a similar approach to strangers.

Her passion, her animation came out on canvas, it was clear.  It was all the expression she needed, as far as I was concerned.

I was promoted.  It wasn’t a little promotion.  One day I was quite satisfied to be the manager of one very successful gallery, and the next I was running seven, placed all over the globe.

It was daunting, but exhilarating.  I had to move back to Vegas, though I traveled a lot, so that was some consolation.

It was surreal to be working in the same building as Tristan, but after a few weeks with no sightings, I was fairly confident that we could avoid each other cleanly.

Andrew was pleased with my promotion, but not with the fact that I had to relocate for it.  Still, he accepted my decision without fighting me.

He wasn’t a fighter.

He came to see me every other weekend in Vegas, often surprising me with various show tickets.

Once, those tickets happened to be for Tristan’s show.

At first, I tried to make excuses and to talk him into getting a refund.  He seemed so baffled by that that I changed gears, bit the bullet, and just went.

If I were even a little bit honest with myself, I’d have admitted that I was dying to see the show.  Morbid curiosity, I told myself.