Stroke of Love (23 page)

Kate looked at Luce. “The pictures?”

“Thanks a lot, Sage.”

“You PR people are sneaky. I’m not taking any chances that Kate’s left in the dark with your wicked scheme. Kate, good luck. I’ll see you there.”

She watched Sage leave; then Kate locked eyes with Luce. “Spill it.”

“Right after you do. What are you scared of?”

Kate dropped her eyes. “Everything. I think I like him way too much.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Am I in one of those fake relationships because we’re here?”

Luce rolled her eyes. “You really won’t just let yourself trust, will you? You’re so jaded by the celebs that you can’t see straight. Repeat after me.” Luce held Kate’s hand. “I, Kate Paletto.”

“I, Kate Paletto.”

“Will not listen to my head. I am not a celeb chaser, and Sage is not a typical celeb.”

Kate pulled her hand from Luce’s. “Okay, I get it.” She bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from smiling. “Thanks for the reality check.”

“My pleasure. Now look at these pics. Let’s focus on something important.” She shoved her phone over to Kate again. “See how excited the kids are? They wanted to know if their pictures were going to be in an American newspaper, so I thought…”

“You thought, let’s hype the mural and see what happens.”
Of course you did
.

“Why not, Kate? You are leaving money on the table. Hell, you’re leaving money in the pockets of people who don’t need it, and you’re doing it out of what? Pride?”

Kate clenched her teeth. She hated when Luce was right, and the more she’d thought about the things Luce had said to her, the more she saw the logic behind it. “So you think that by writing articles about the mural, you’re going to get donations? How does that work exactly?”

“I swear AIA should hire me.” Luce pushed her curls from her face. “We go from the perspective of the kids. The pride they take in what they’re doing for the community, and we do a full story on Punta Palacia. The village, the community, the town, and what AIA does for them. We paint the real picture, one they cannot ignore. Can you imagine children from the States fetching water before dawn or sleeping in hammocks?”

Kate shook her head. “If we do this, doesn’t it just reiterate what I hate?”

“I’ve said it before…You know I love you, but how can you hate the very thing these people need? They need money. They need resources. Your fight is that you don’t get the right kind of volunteers, but that’s because AIA is marketing this area to celebrities. Punta Palacia is small, so a diva refusing to help has a little less of an impact than in a larger village where every extra hand is needed. So AIA is doing what works for their business plan. They’re appealing to volunteers other than celebs for larger villages, where the need for bodies is greater. It’s all how they spin the marketing.”

“What the hell? You knew all of this and you didn’t think you should sit me down and pound it into my head?”

“Have you ever argued with yourself? Especially about this subject? I don’t know how Sage hasn’t already walked away from that particular fight. The man is offering to pour money down Punta Palacia’s throat by doing nothing more than what he loves, and you keep shutting him down. That’s love for you. He is in deep.”

Kate smiled. “You think so?” She knew so. She heard it in every word he spoke and felt it in his touch. Even the way he looked at her, like she was the most beautiful and the most important, person in the world, reeked of his love for her. And she was sure her love for him was just as evident.

Luce pretended to bang her forehead on the table. “For an intelligent woman, you sure are an idiot. Focus, Kate. I’m leaving soon, so if you really want to turn things around, you have a lot of lobbying to do, and be sure you want to, because once these wheels starts turning, they don’t stop easily.”

“I can’t make those types of decisions. That’s up to Raymond and his bosses. There’s a lot of red tape with things like this. Procedures, guidelines. Luce, this seems like such an easy premise. Market it here or market it there, and how the villages benefit depends on what type of volunteers AIA brings in. How could I have been so blind?”

“You’re not blind. You’re trusting. AIA must need a place for problem celebrities. God knows celebrities are more than happy to throw money at their problems to make them go away, and this is a good cause. So they donate half a million dollars, flash a few pictures, and voilà. They’re instantly the apple of the public’s eye again. It’s a win-win situation. Except for you, and for the programs that need more attention.”

“I know you’re teasing, but it makes me wonder. I mean I’ve begged for real volunteers for two years. And Raymond always blows me off.” Kate rose to her feet. “I gotta get over to the clinic.”

“I’m coming with you. Clayton and Cassidy are sleeping in.” She made air quote signs with her fingers when she said
sleeping in
.

They cleared their places, and Kate waved to Sylvia as they left.

Sylvia blew her a kiss, making Kate’s cheeks flush again.

“I’ve given five years to AIA. You’d think that my suggestions would at least be respected by now.” She was getting angrier by the minute. “You know, I’m not just pissed about what this might mean in the grand scheme of things, but look at me. Oh my God. What kind of person am I? I thought I was helping the community by wanting labor, physical beings here to help, and the whole time I could have changed my thinking and come up with programs that would bring in more funding for their needs.”

Kate stopped at the Internet café on the way to the clinic and sent an email to Raymond spelling out the things she and Luce talked about.

SAGE FOUND OSCAR in the school’s small stockroom organizing his supplies. Wooden shelves lined the wall to the right, neatly organized with tools, buckets, and other supplies.

“Good morning.” A friendly smile softened Oscar’s eyes.

“Hi, Oscar. Would you like some help before I start painting for the day?”

“No, thank you. The painting is making the children very happy.” He nodded, then glanced behind Sage.

Sage turned at a tug on his shorts. “Javier. Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

“Can I paint today?”

“Of course you can.” Sage laughed and crouched down to look him in the eye.

Javier looked down, his smile fading. “I’m having trouble with my lessons.”

Sage drew his brows together. “Did you work with your teacher?”

He nodded, his hair flopping over his eyes.

“Did you try your hardest? I mean really try? Not rush through so you could paint?”

Javier drew his brows together and nodded.

“And did you ask your teacher for help?” Sage glanced at Oscar, who shrugged.

He nodded emphatically, his mouth pressed into a serious line.

“Hard work is important, Javier. If you tried your best, that’s all we can ask for.” He rumpled his hair. “I’ll make you a deal. You can paint, but you have to continue to work your hardest to learn what your teacher has to teach you. Okay?”

Javier wrapped his arms around Sage’s legs. “Thank you, Mr. Sage. Thank you!” Javier ran back to the classroom.

Sage watched him scamper away and turned his attention back to Oscar. “Oscar, do you mind if I keep a canvas in here after I start working on it? I’m going to ship them back to New York when I leave, but I don’t want to take a chance of anything happening to them.”

“No problem. I’ll make room this afternoon. The kids will miss you when you’re gone.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna miss them, too.” He would miss everything about Belize, from the horridly hot weather to the children’s beaming smiles and Oscar’s steadfast dedication. “I’ll miss you, too, Oscar.”

Oscar nodded, his cheeks flushing. “Kate too. She will miss you the most.”

Sage patted him on the back. “Leaving Kate will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m counting on you to keep an eye on her.”

Oscar pulled his shoulders back and gave a firm nod. “You can count on me.”

Sage set to work on the mural. He’d left the bigger elements for the children—the sand, the forest, the animals—and had added finite details as the mural progressed. This morning he fleshed out the tree trunk, adding depth and slim cracks in the bark and rounding out a full umbrella of green leaves that stretched across the length of the building. The first group of children came out the door, and one of the teenage boys
whooped
.

“Look! Look!” he called to the others.

A collective gasp pulled Sage from the ladder where he was working. The sight of the children’s joyful faces, their eyes dancing with happiness as they pointed to the wall, filled a hole that he’d been carrying within him for a long time.
This is what my life has been missing
. He climbed from the ladder and set down his paintbrush.

“Don’t just stand there. Pick up your brushes and let’s bring this mural to life,” he said with a sweep of his hands. The children gathered around the paint, crouching on their haunches as they dipped their brushes and ran to the wall, where they set to work with intent eyes and careful hands.

A little girl, probably around nine or ten, pulled his arm and led him over to where a large green drip from the leaf she’d been painting was making a slow crawl south toward the ground. It dripped right through the petal of a red flower. She pressed her lips into a frown.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly with just a touch of a Creole accent.

Sage patted her on the shoulder. “This is perfect.”

The little girl looked from him to the wall and back again, her eyebrows knitted together. The boy next to her stopped painting to peek at what was going on.

“Let me show you something. May I?” Sage nodded at her paintbrush. She shoved it toward him. He carefully outlined a green leaf that bent from the stem of the plant she’d been painting and covered the drip. “See? It needed another leaf and that was the perfect spot. There are no mistakes in art. When something drips, it’s okay. We just create something new from it.”

The little girl beamed up at him.

Sage handed her back the paintbrush. “Go ahead. It’s your leaf. You get to paint it.”

For the next few hours, the children took turns painting, and Sage helped them learn about smooth strokes and shading, but mostly, he focused on the children having fun. He realized how much he’d been missing out on by working endless hours and focusing so intently on his art when there was so much more he could be doing for others. Sage was beginning to wonder
how
he would go back to the life he led now that he had experienced being a part of something so much bigger and more important, and he knew he never could. He was going to make the nonprofit work one way or another.

KATE, LUCE, AND Caleb made plans for a little surprise celebration for Sage in honor of finishing the mural. Caleb would take care of most of the details and let the parents and children know, and they hoped a handful would be able to show up on such short notice. With Sage and Luce leaving on Sunday, they planned to hold the party on Saturday morning. By the time they finished making plans and handling the rounds at the clinic, the afternoon sun was blazing hot, and when Kate and Luce reached the outskirts of the village, Kate’s shirt was drenched. She had been thinking about their earlier conversation all afternoon, and she saw more clearly how she’d been standing in the way of funding, but she also began to wonder if she was working with the wrong organization. Would her requests have been taken seriously elsewhere?

“Luce, I feel like a total idiot. I’m a bright woman. How can I not have seen the benefit that went along with the annoying…obnoxious…self-righteous celebs?”

Luce fanned her face. “Sometimes we’re blinded by our desire to do the right thing. You grew up believing that money was the root of all evil or some shit like that.”

“Not the root of all evil, just overrated. Sort of unnecessary.”

“Right, well, I’m sure your parents are lovely people, but that’s really fucked up. Look around you. How did they get the Internet? How did the old logging cabins get renovated? How did they get water and electricity at the cabins? It all costs money.”

An unfamiliar, much-too-new for the area truck rumbled down the road behind them, and Kate’s stomach clenched.
The government reps
. They stepped to the side to let it pass and moved backward to try to avoid the clouds of dust left in its wake. They fanned the air in front of them and walked along the grass to keep from sucking in the dust.

“I know that, but I took it all on face value. When Raymond said we were getting all the funding we could and to make it work, that’s what I did. I made it work, and I never minded that. I was resentful that I didn’t have more interested volunteers, but I didn’t mind the work I was doing. You know, this makes me want to step back from it all—or go full force to fix it. Have you ever felt that way? Like you want to run away and curse a blue streak all at once?”

“Only every day of my career.”

People of all ages gathered in groups in the road and in the yards of their small huts, talking among themselves. Most of the men were still out at the fields, and while many children were at school, there were several young girls who regularly stayed to help their mothers with the cooking and cleaning, as well as toddlers, too young for school. Kate waved to an elderly gentleman sitting in a chair by his front door. He nodded and waved back.

The truck that had passed them was parked to the side, and two men dressed in short-sleeved, button-down shirts were traipsing through the grass, holding enormous maps. Their faces were serious as they studied the area, pointing to different parts of the land. Panic prickled Kate’s nerves.
What if this is our only chance? What if they deny us and they won’t consider it again for a year or two? Then I’ve failed the community
. She had an urge to throw her hands up in the air and say,
Wait! I made a huge mistake. We can raise the money for the well. I know we can. Give me six months and then come back.
She also had an urge to turn and run back to the cabins, to find Sage and apologize for being so damn stubborn until she had no words left.