Page 138 of The Substitute Fiancée

Little by little, I’m realizing how much pressure I had put on MatchMapping. It was as if I needed to prove something—to my family, to the world, to myself. I do love my work, that much is true, but I had become a slave to the validation it gave me. My relationship with Kristel didn’t provide the fulfillment I was hoping for, so instead of ending it, I drowned myself in work. As if extra hours could fill the void.

Since then, I’ve decided to strike a better balance between my professional and personal life.

I leave the office at exactly 6 p.m., no matter how much work remains. Even if there’s no one waiting for me at home in the evenings, I take the time to cook, to read, to find new activities.

Among them, my favorite has become restoring the canvases I’ve salvaged from trash bins.

After showing them to experts, I followed their advice. I learned the techniques: removing staples without tearing the fabric, humidifying to relax the fibers, flattening under weight, mounting onto a new support, then stretching again. Precision work—one mistake, and everything is ruined.

“Ouch!” I shout, smacking my finger for the fifth time.

Oliver laughs, savoring my thirty-year-old whisky, comfortably settled on my couch.

“If someone had told me that you—the clumsiest guy I know—would one day take up manual work, I never would’ve believed it.”

“Maybe,” I reply, “but I did a good job.”

He smiles, raises his glass in my direction, his gaze warm with affection.

“Yes. You did a good job.”

Hearing him admit it feels good, even if, in the end, I didn’t accomplish anything extraordinary. I just saved a few canvases that were headed for the landfill.

But what I did, I’m proud of it.

*

The following Saturday morning, I ring the doorbell of a modest apartment in the 20th arrondissement.

A young woman appears in the doorway. She must be around Sam’s age—twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. She radiates a quiet gentleness that immediately puts me at ease.

“Hello, Miss Rain?”

“Please, call me Lucile. Come in.”

She steps aside to let me in and closes the door behind us.

Her studio smells of turpentine and oil paint. Everywhere, canvases in various stages of restoration, jars of varnish, brushes soaking in glass containers. An organized chaos.

I set my load down on the table.

She unwraps the package carefully, examines each canvas in silence. Then she nods, satisfied.

“Excellent work. The flaws are barely visible. You can come pick them up in two weeks.”

*

When I return two weeks later, I’m blown away by the result.

Lucile has filled in the missing sections, restored the most damaged areas. It’s almost impossible to tell that these paintings were once abused, crumpled, thrown away. They’ve been given a second life.

I pay her the agreed amount and add extra.

“That’s too much,” she protests.

“No,” I say simply. “You deserve it.”

*