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impression that she wanted him to come to her, and she was completely nude. She had no idea how he
could have seen her that way because she'd purposely kept her back to the cavern entrance when she
dried off, in the event someone might come. But unlike the other full-length drawings, which were
sketches, except for her face, this drawing showed the shadows and highlights of her entire body in
full relief&
The door swept open and Tyler entered. "Rick just left," he said, shutting the door.
"What did he say about Gypsy?" Rose asked, while clutching the tablet in her hand.
"He doesn't know what's wrong," Tyler replied. "Assuming it's an abscess, I'll be soaking her
foot a couple of times a day and we'll wait and see what happens." His gaze dropped to Rose's hand
and the tablet, which was open to the nude picture.
It was awkward because she'd found the tablet on a shelf and she had no business looking through
it, but now she wanted an explanation. Holding up the picture, she said, "You told me you didn't see
me like this."
"I didn't," Tyler replied. "I drew it because that's what kept going through my mind and I needed
to get my thoughts organized." He walked up to her, and looking at the picture, he said in a thoughtful
voice, "Did I get it right?" The way he said it wasn't suggestive in any way, but simply a man wanting
to know if his thoughts had been accurate.
"Mostly," Rose replied. "The proportions up top might be a little exaggerated."
"They're not," Tyler replied. "You can tear it out and throw it away if you want. It was just
something I wanted to draw because I wanted to get to know all of you, but I didn't think I ever would
because I figured when you found out about my problem you wouldn't want to go any further."
"It's a beautiful drawing," Rose said, "and I already told you your so-called problem doesn't
matter. As for the picture, I don't want everyone around here to know what I look like, or to think I
posed for you, so maybe you could keep it out of sight."
"It was out of sight," Tyler pointed out.
Rose found her face growing hot. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been looking through your things,
but I wanted to know more about you." She turned the tablet around and flipped the pages until she
came to the pictures of the little girl and what she assumed were her mother and father, and said,
"Who's the little girl? You've drawn a lot of pictures of her."
"My niece, Amy," Tyler replied.
"Why so many of her?" Rose asked.
Tyler got a kind of wistful look on his face as he stared at the drawing. "She's& special," he
replied. "I held her and she smiled."
"Of course she did," Rose said. "You make females smile. I see it all the time on your mares
faces, and you definitely make me smile." She turned the pages to a picture of the clown holding the
little girl. "Then this must be your brother Josh, the rodeo clown."
After a long stretch of silence, Tyler replied, "No, that's my brother, Jeremy."
Rose looked at him, baffled. "Then two of your brothers are rodeo clowns?"
After another long pause, Tyler replied, "Jeremy was just dressed that way."
"He's obviously at a rodeo, so why was he dressed like a clown if he isn't one?" Rose asked.
Tyler drew in a long breath, and said, "Jeremy and his family are in Witness Protection and no
one knows where they are."
"Except you," Rose said. "You just saw him in Wyoming, didn't you?" When Tyler didn't
respond," she said, "I'll never say anything, but why are they hiding?"
"Here's the thing& "
After Tyler gave Rose the background story that included the mafia ties of Billy's brother-in-law,
and his role as an informant, Rose said, "So then, Jeremy went into hiding with Billy, knowing he
might never see your parents or any of you ever again, including his twin?"
Tyler nodded. "It was either that or chance never seeing Billy again. It never made sense to me
before I met you, but now I understand."
Rose was touched by Tyler's admittance, but she was also tempted to ask if he'd ever leave his
mares behind to follow her, but knowing she'd never put him in that position, she touched her fingers
to the drawing, and said, "How did you learn to draw the way you do?"
"From Josh," Tyler replied. "He was always sketching everything around when we were growing
up, but after watching him draw a series of pictures of a bull rider, first sitting on the bull in the chute,
then hanging on, then being bucked off, it dawned on me that I could use pictures in sequences to
memorize things, so I came up with a kind of picture language that translated words and concepts into
pictures, and I was able to memorize things that way. I had to work three times as hard as everyone
else in my class, but it got me through all the homework and tests that required memorization. Now I
use it for note taking and memorizing lists."
"That's not only resourceful, it's ingenious," Rose said. "But these aren't just simple pictures like
cartoons, they're works of art. No wonder you worked three times as hard as the other kids when you
were in school."
Tyler laughed. "You were right the first time. In school the pictures were more like cartoons, but
when I write in my journal, that's how I do it."
"A journal," Rose mused. "I never would have thought that's what this is all about, but then your
entire thinking process is hard to understand, just as the mind of a genius would be. But you did all
these from memory, yet you claim you have a problem memorizing things."
"I don't have a problem memorizing what I see, it's what's written that's the problem," Tyler
explained. "What's around me comes back in detail, like I've snapped a picture of it with my mind,
and when I draw it later the details are still there."
"Like this one?" Rose turned the tablet over and opened it to the picture of her in the cavern in the
pool. "How soon after you saw me sitting like this did you draw this picture?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]