sucked back a sigh. She had better know what she was doing.
She turned to Antonio with a smile. “What was unique about your upbringing?”
He shrugged, walked to the stack of paintings where Tucker stood and flipped the first away from the second. “My mom died when I was young.” He took painting one and slid it aside so Tucker could more clearly see painting two. “I was raised in foster care.”
“So was I.” This time he didn’t look to Olivia for consent. This was Business Conversation 101. Identify with your client and have them identify with you. “Someone left me in a church.” He focused attention on the painting Antonio had bared for him. It was the proverbial field of wildflowers Vivi had talked about. Antonio had painted his backyard and it was stunning. He could almost feel the warmth of the sun, smell the flowers.
Antonio removed painting two, displaying painting three.
Olivia said, “So tell us more about yourself.”
“As I said, my mom died.” He slid it aside and stood beside Tucker again, patient, as if he’d had others view his work before and knew the drill. “I don’t know who my father is. But my mom was from around here. When I got old enough and had saved a few bucks, I came here to meet my relatives.” He laughed lightly. “And with landscapes like this to paint, you can see why I never left.”
Tucker reverently said, “I can.”
Olivia hung back. She didn’t have an artist’s eye, but she knew the paintings were good. Tucker, on the other hand, clearly thought they were magnificent. But it didn’t matter. Her brain had stalled on his quiet statement that he’d been left at a church, didn’t know his parents. Her heart broke a little bit picturing a tiny baby, wrapped in a blue blanket, alone for God knows how long in an empty church that had probably echoed with his cries.
But she forced herself to think about business. They’d opened a door for discussions about his parentage and one for displaying his work in a showing. She didn’t want to push too hard, too fast. It was time to go.
She stepped forward. “Mr. Engle will give you his cell phone number.” She smiled at Antonio, then Tucker. “And you can give us yours.” Antonio quickly tore a sheet from a drawing pad and scribbled his number before he handed it to Tucker. He tore off another sheet and offered it to Tucker to write his number too.
Instead Vivi’s boss pulled a business card from his jacket pocket.
“You’ll be hearing from us.”
Antonio beamed. “Great.”
The second they were in the car, Tucker turned on her. “What the hell was that all about? We could have stayed there for hours, asked a million questions. He loved us. He’d have done anything we wanted.”
“We’re supposed to be scouting, not hiring him on the spot. I wanted this to look real.”
“There were at least three chances for us to have ‘the’ real conversation. I could have easily told him who he was.”
“And he could have easily turned on us. He’s proud of his work. You seemed to agree with his assessment that it’s very good. We’ll go back to Constanzo’s, tell him my plan, see if he likes it. If he does, we ease into Antonio’s life over the next few days and ease Constanzo into the art show plan. When the moment is right, we’ll tell him.”
“Do you know how many ways that could go wrong?”
“Yes. But I also know that if we do it my way, give them a little time together before we drop the bomb, even if he freaks and heads for the hills, he’ll still know his dad and when he calms down he could come back.”
Tucker started the car. “You’d better be right.”
“I may not be.”
He gaped at her.
“But I think my plan is better than just dropping him in a pot of boiling water.” She peeked over at him. “You know the rule about cooking a live frog don’t you?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You put him in warm water, water he’s comfortable with and turn up the heat so gradually he doesn’t even realize the water is boiling until it’s too late.”
He shook his head, but didn’t argue.
Vivi relaxed. “So, how did you learn about art? Anything looks good to me. I mean, it was clear Antonio’s work was good, but I couldn’t tell you if it was exceptional. Yet you knew it was.”
“It’s in the eye of the beholder. If the technique is good, you just check your gut...did it touch you, say something?”
“And what did his work say to you?”
Tucker turned onto the country road again, heading back to Constanzo’s. Seconds ticked off the clock. Then a minute. Vivi wondered if he was going to reply to her question.
Just as she was about to ask again, he sighed. “His work tells me that he sees beauty even in an ugly world.”
“He thinks the world is ugly?”
“He knows the world is ugly. He was raised as a foster kid, remember? Even the foster parents who loved him probably gave him up from time to time, depending upon their own conditions. A foster dad can need heart surgery or a knee replacement. Sometimes they just can’t keep you. When he turned eighteen, government help ended. And it’s possible he might have suddenly found himself out on the street.”
He spoke with such confidence, such surety, that her heart melted a bit. She pictured the baby in the blue blanket, crying in the church again. “I’m guessing some of that happened to you.”
He sighed. “I’m not special and I’m not crazily depressed. Things like that happen to a lot of kids. Growing up as a foster kid isn’t easy.”
“But you made something of yourself.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you still think the world is ugly?”
“I think the world is hard, not a sweet soft place like you do.”
She gasped. “Are you calling me a Pollyanna? I’m not a Pollyanna!”
He sniffed a laugh. “Right.”
“There are things in my past, too.”
“Uh-huh. The law suit.”
Her chin lifted. “It was humiliating.”
“And I’m sure it probably scared you. But I also know the kid dropped his suit. And I’m pretty sure your two parents cuddled you the whole way through it.”
“Well, you snob!”
His mouth fell open. “Snob?”
“Do you think everybody with parents had it easy?”
“Certainly easier
