Work Text:
Process
There were no pictures of Daniel in their new home. Not anywhere Maddie could see. “Promise us you’ll never talk about him, Maddie, it’s better for us if people here don’t know.” There’s no need to mention someone to little Evan whom he’ll never remember now –
But Maddie remembers, and Maddie wants Evan to remember, because her promise to Mom and Dad is one thing but before she ever promised them she promised Daniel.
There are no pictures anywhere except the memories seared into Maddie’s mind. So she draws. All her first attempts leave her frustrated because it’s a ten-year-old’s art and what she manages to put on paper can’t compare to what’s in her head. Then she looks at Evan trying to clumsily draw a babyish picture of her – a precious blob – and refuses to give up.
In middle school, the art teacher helps her. Wanting to draw a portrait of her brother is normal enough, so every trick she is taught she practices on Evan, on her friends, on her parents who smile when given their framed image for their birthdays even if they don’t really appreciate the effort that went into it. Throughout high school she gets constantly better. The skill thoroughly helps her biology grades and can be justified by med school ambitions.
People know Maddie sketches. It gains her admiration and favors from acquaintances and friends. Some scorn, but that’s high school for you. For every picture she draws in public she draws another one in secret so that she will eventually reach her goal, and so that the features of the boy stuck at eight forever won’t blur.
Her efforts are still not good enough but when Evan surprises her in the living room one day she doesn’t hide; her brother doesn’t deserve being hidden away.
Their parents don’t like nicknames. “That’s Danny,” she says. Evan never digs deeper then.
The first few times she draws Doug he is flattered. Later it flatters him if his wife the nurse can hand out cute sketches of kids; Maddie understands early on that she can no longer draw other adults. Or Evan.
After Evan is gone with her Jeep she defiantly draws him all the same every time he sends her a new postcard. A hidden sketch book joins the growing pile kept in Omar’s locker at the hospital. Two pictures every few months: One of Daniel, one of Evan.
Once she feels settled enough in L.A., after Doug – while Chimney heals she signs up for a portrait drawing class. Evan sits for her as often as she wants.
It’s easy by now to remember Daniel by all the ways his features differed from Buck’s even if you discount that Buck is almost thirty now. She draws self-portraits as part of therapy and traces shared features among the three of them.
Her sketches are not a secret, never were apart from those she hid from Mom and Dad and Doug. It’s that thought that makes her nod in agreement when Evan stretches his hand out toward her sketch book and holds it there, hesitant. He turns over the pages with curiosity and quiet reverence. “Maddie, you’ve gotten really good at this!” He pauses several times when there are pictures of himself as a child, Maddie’s younger self, and another boy about whom Evan has never asked and Maddie has never spoken. Maddie waits for it, her younger brother staring back – finally her skills are good enough – no longer afraid.
Buck looks at the trio in the sketchbook, deep in thought. “That’s… Danny, right, you said? I remember you saying that.”
Maddie nods, bites her lip. He takes her hand. “Maddie, who is Danny?”
Maddie tells him.
.