Provenance by Laney Salisbury Read Free Book Online

him to come over. He jumped into his car and raced to her house. When he arrived, he found her bruised and bloodied. She told him that she feared her boyfriend would return and hurt her more seriously.
    Myatt packed her into the car and drove her home to Sugnall. He said she could stay with him as long as she needed to. She would be safe with him.
    She stayed for a week, and Myatt was glad to have her around. She was a real and familiar comfort. Soon, however, she was talking about going back to her lover. Myatt argued against it. He was worried about the children’s safety. He had custody of them, but he’d promised her he wouldn’t stand in the way of their visiting her. Having her there in the farmhouse felt tantalizingly like old times, as if the family were whole again, and yet he realized that he no longer loved her, and that he was feeling more and more confident as a father, even though his life hadn’t been easy since she left. He was torn.
    Myatt turned to Drewe for advice. The professor always seemed happy to listen to him when he had a problem at home.
    “Don’t be a fool!” Drewe said firmly when he heard about the latest round of fireworks. “You’re not responsible for her well-being. You’re divorced. Except for the children’s safety, what matters most now is your work. You have to paint. You must provide for the children.”
    Myatt agreed to put an end to his ex-wife’s extended stay, and placed a call to his former in-laws to tell them that their daughter needed help. Before long, his ex-father-in-law had moved her out of her boyfriend’s house and into a new one near Myatt, and the boyfriend began to come around less and less.
    Within a few weeks the storm had passed, and Myatt felt comfortable enough to let her take the children when she wanted to. He returned to his painting full force. Several weeks later, however, he received an unpleasant surprise visit from Social Services. It was billed as a routine checkup to make sure he was providing a healthy environment for the kids, but the experience left him shaken. It was clear that he was barely making ends meet. The house was a single-father nightmare: frames and canvases, toys and finger paints, food and diapers were everywhere. In addition, the sleeping arrangements were far from ideal. Amy slept in the attic, up a steep, narrow flight of stairs, in a room with a ceiling that sloped so badly Myatt could hardly stand up straight. Sam, a fretful child, had the room next to his, so Myatt rarely got a good night’s sleep.
    The visit from Social Services ended without incident, but Myatt was rattled by the notion that the government could simply march into his house, declare him an unfit father, and take off with the kids. A few days after the visit, when he took the train to Euston station to drop off another piece for Drewe, he was still in a deep funk.
    “Calm down,” said Drewe, who was waiting for him at the bar. “You don’t have to be a perfect housekeeper or live in a palace to prove you’re a good father and a good man. This will pass.”
    Again Drewe encouraged him to focus on his painting and not to let anxiety get in the way of his life with the kids. Family and loved ones came first, he said. Something would turn up. Myatt’s finances would improve. All he needed was patience.
    Drewe was no stranger to family upheavals. When he was a boy, he told Myatt, his father, a scientist, had beaten up Drewe’s mother after learning that she was having an affair with one of his colleagues. The scandal ended in divorce, and his father spent a year in prison for assault. Drewe hadn’t seen him since. To dissociate himself from his family’s unsavory past, he had changed the surname he was born with, Cockett, and become John Drewe, adopting a variation on his mother’s maiden name.
    While Myatt was digesting this news, Drewe went on to say that he had married a Cambridge mathematician, the love of his life, but she had left him and