Though clearly unwell and so, so frail, Elise is exactly as beautiful as she looks in pictures, even in her current surroundings. She’s in a white satin gown that she must’ve gotten from home, her hair brushed to a soft shine.
“Hi,” I croak, floating in the doorway like someone who’s never socialized in her life.
“Ophelia,” she replies, and I don’t know how someone can squeeze so much warmth and so much welcome into seven little letters, but she manages it. Her accent is heavy, like that tiny hint of French that runs through Alex’s.
Something about her pulls me forward. She’s safe and kind and smiling at me like Alex does. Her eyes are glittering pools of pale green, just like his. “You look so wonderful.”
“I look like I’ve been electrocuted. Twice,” I say, sinking into the chair beside her bed. She holds out her hand for me to take, laughing softly. Her fingers are cold and thin beneath mine.
“You don’t. Not at all. And nobodyeverlooks their best after a long flight.”
“I don’t know how Alex flies so often. I was convinced we were going down the whole time.”
“Are you staying a while?”
I look up at Alex. We haven’t discussed it. I have no idea what my plans are. I only have three more days of underwear. I have no ideaif he wants me to meet his sisters, if Fleur would even let me into their home without killing me.
“I hope so,” is all he says, looking at me with so much emotion in his eyes. Yellow happiness and red passion and the fierce blue of his unwavering loyalty.
I love it when he isn’t gray.
“He was lost without you.”
“Mom.”
“You were!”
“I think we had to take some time apart to work through some stuff for ourselves,” I say, enjoying the feel of my hand in hers. It eases my mother’s absence and makes it so much worse all at once.
Alex steps outside to take an urgent work call, and I scoot my chair closer to the edge of the bed so I can show Elise some photos of the clothes I bought at the charity shops with Colette. It seems to take her mind off things, at least.
Elise is easy to talk to. She doesn’t ask me any of the questions I’d worried about. She asks me how my time with Colette was, how swimming is going, whether I’d like a cup of tea.
“I knew you were good for him from the very start,” she says, smiling down at my lock screen when I’ve finished showing her all the random pictures in my camera roll so that I don’t have to think of a new conversation topic.
I stare at the photo, taken last December. A blurry selfie outside the Nightshade mansion, snow gathered on our eyelashes, windburn on our cheeks. “Sometimes I think he’s really extraordinary, and I’m …”
“Don’t you dare say you’re ordinary.”
“A mug of hot chocolate is my idea of a big treat. Walking to the corner store is a day out.”
That makes her laugh. “You’re extraordinary, Ophelia. Don’t fall into the same trap I did, don’t let them make you believe that it’s wealth or fame that makes a person. It’s what you do in the quiet moments.”
I think back to my last quiet moment. I think I spent it balancing a tube of Pringles and my phone on my stomach. “I guess so.”
“He started drawing in color again.”
That has my head snapping up. “What?”
“After he met you. He started drawing in color again, not just black and white.”
I think back to the sketches I saw when I first met Alex. Messy, chaotic, often repetitive. Always in black charcoal.
And then to the first time he drew me, in bright orange pastel. To the artworks from the life drawing class: colored portraits in muted pastels.
“I didn’t know that.”
Her hand squeezes mine, her heavy-lidded gaze soft and sleepy. “Makes you seem quite extraordinary to me.”
