“Paint me,” the Fool said. “Before the sun comes up. Before I have to go back to the highway.”
It was a stupid chore to assign at 10 p.m., but her mother had been crying again—the soft, gulping kind that didn’t ask for help—and June needed to disappear. So she took the sponge and the hose into the damp California night, and she scrubbed the ghost of her father out of the paintwork.
“The warpaint.” The Fool tapped her temple. “In your head. The sound you make when you’re trying to be brave but you’re really just a fool.”
The Fool smiled—not a happy smile, but a true one. “Because love is a battle. And the bravest thing you can do is go into it looking exactly like yourself, even when yourself is a mess.”
“Everything,” she called. “The whole damn fool thing.”
“What’s the next part?”