Chapter 5:The Art Exhibition

Callie's POV

"She told me she wanted to paint something that would make Daddy proud."

Dr. Anderson set the invitation card on the desk between us and slid it toward me this time his face was different. Softer around the edges.

"She worked on it for three days," he said. "Would not let anyone see it until it was finished. Then she walked up to the submissions table herself and put it down and said this one is for my daddy."

I looked at the card.

The pediatric ward annual art exhibition. This Saturday. Families welcome.

"She has been through a great deal this week," he said. "It would mean everything to her to have someone there."

I picked up the card.

"We will be there," I said.

---

Lily did not know I was coming until Saturday morning. I had kept it as a surprise because surprises with Lily were always worth keeping. She was eating toast when I told her and she put it down immediately and looked at me with her whole face.

"The exhibition? Today?"

"Today."

She was off her chair and halfway to her bedroom before I finished the sentence. I heard her talking to Mr. Rabbit through the wall. Explaining the situation. Telling him what to expect.

She came back five minutes later in her yellow dress with her hair done badly and her rabbit under her arm.

"I am ready," she announced.

"You have toast on your face."

She wiped it with her sleeve. "Now I am ready."

---

The community room had been transformed completely. Children's paintings covered every wall from end to end. Bright and uneven and completely alive. Each one with a small name card underneath written in careful letters. Balloons in the corners. The smell of juice and something sweet near the entrance table.

Lily walked in and stopped.

She turned slowly and looked at every wall with an expression I had never seen on her before. Something between wonder and ownership. Like she had arrived somewhere she already belonged.

"Mummy." Just a whisper. "We made all of these."

"You did."

She found her own painting near the window. Three figures in crayon and watercolor. Small one in the middle. Two tall ones on each side holding hands. Yellow sun. Green grass. She stood in front of it with her hands behind her back and studied it the way artists study their own work when they are deciding if it is finished.

"What do you think?" I asked.

She tilted her head. "I think Daddy will like it."

I said nothing.

I just put my hand on her shoulder and stood beside her and looked at three figures holding hands under a yellow sun painted by a child with three weeks left.

---

I felt the door open before I heard it.

The room shifted slightly the way rooms do when someone enters who changes the temperature of things. I turned around and my stomach dropped clean through the floor.

Derek walked in with Vanessa beside him and Noah already pulling ahead of them both with his eyes scanning the room like he owned it. Derek was in a dark jacket. Vanessa had diamonds in her ears. They looked like people who had arrived somewhere they had been invited.

Nobody had invited them.

Lily saw him a full second before he saw her.

"Daddy."

She said it quietly. Not the running screaming version of before. Just his name. Soft and certain. Like she had been saving it.

Derek looked over. Something moved across his face briefly. Then Vanessa touched his arm and said something close to his ear and whatever had moved there was gone.

He did not come to her.

He stood near the entrance with Vanessa's hand on his arm and looked around the room like he was assessing it. Lily watched him from beside her painting with Mr. Rabbit pressed to her chest and waited.

He did not come.

Noah found her first.

He wandered over with his hands in his pockets and stopped in front of Lily's painting with an expression too practiced for a five year old.

"That one is ugly," he said.

Lily looked at him. "It is not ugly."

"My mum said sad children paint like that." He looked at the three figures without blinking. "Your daddy does not even want to be here. He came because my mum said he should. He loves us. Not you."

Lily went very still.

"That is not true," she said quietly.

Vanessa appeared from somewhere with tears already forming. Perfectly timed. Perfectly placed.

"She called my son a liar." Her voice broke just enough. "I was standing right here."

Derek crossed the room.

He looked at Noah. Then at Lily. Then at me with an expression that had already made its decision before hearing a single word.

"Lily. Apologize to Noah and Vanessa."

"But Daddy—"

"Now."

"He said you do not love me." Her voice was very small. "I just said it was not true."

Derek turned to me. Cold and final.

"Every time Callie. Every single time." His voice was low and controlled and utterly dismissive. "You cannot help yourself. You bring her to every place you know I will be and then you set these little scenes up and expect me to—"

"Daddy." Lily stepped forward. Just one small step. "Lily did not lie."

He looked down at her.

And said nothing.

Just looked at her with that same face. The one that gave nothing. The one that had been giving nothing her entire life.

Her chin dropped.

The room had gone very quiet around us. Parents watching from a careful distance. Staff pretending not to look. Someone near the door had stopped moving entirely.

Then that someone made a sound.

Not loud. Just a sharp intake of breath. The sound a person makes when they see something they were not expecting.

I turned around.

A man stood just inside the doorway.

Tall. Dark suit that did not need to announce how much it cost.

He was looking at me.

And I felt the blood leave my face completely.

Six years...Six years and he looked exactly the same except for something in his eyes that had not been there before. Something harder. l

His jaw tightened.

He took one step forward.

"Callie."

Just my name. One word. But the way he said it made three people in the immediate vicinity turn to look at him and then look at me and then look at each other.

I could not speak.

He looked at Lily one more time. At her yellow dress and her rabbit and her painting on the wall with three figures holding hands. Then back at me.

"Is this your husband?"