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She studies it a little longer. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

I cannot tell whether that is good, and the uncertainty bothers me more than it should. “Bad?”

“No.” The answer comes quickly enough that I believe her. She rests one hand on the edge of the table and leans closer without touching the wet paint. “No, not bad. I like it. A lot, actually.”

My fingers curl slightly around the brush when she says it. Laura is standing beside me, close enough that the paint stops mattering for a moment. I want her to keep looking.

“You do?”

“I do.”

I turn back to the canvas, but I am seeing it differently now. Not because Laura told me it is good. I still know which parts I do not like. There is too much pale blue on one side. The brown needs more red over it. I need more yellow, and much more orange.

But she saw it and liked it, and that matters in a way I do not understand yet. I tap one of the tiny paint pots. “Too small.”

Laura follows the movement. “The containers?”

“Yes. Not enough.” I touch the clean edge of the canvas next. “And this. Too small.”

Her smile widens. “You need more room.”

“Yes.”

She is still smiling when she turns to me again, and this time neither of us moves. Something about the moment feels different from praise for the painting. I don’t have a word for it yet, but I don’t want it to end.

I turn back to the table. The picture on the box is still sitting beside my canvas, neat mountains reflected in calm water, every color exactly where someone decided it should go.

Mine looks nothing like it. Good.

Chapter Seven

Laura

Monday morning begins with Kell barefoot in my kitchen, wearing Tom’s dark green T-shirt and one of his older pairs of jeans, eating strawberry jam directly from the jar with a spoon. I stop in the doorway with one earring in my hand. “No.”

Kell turns toward me, spoon halfway to his mouth. “No what?”

“You can’t eat jam out of the jar.”

His gaze drops to the jar as if the objection might be written on the label. “Why?”

“Because other people use it.”

“I am using spoon.”

“That isn’t the point.” I finish putting in the earring while I search for an answer that doesn’t amount to because civilized people don’t do that. “If you put the spoon in your mouth and then back in the jar, somebody else gets whatever was in your mouth.”

Kell studies me with the seriousness he gave Janet’s paint-by-number instructions on Saturday. Then he takes one last bite before carrying the jar to the counter.

“You just did it again.”

“Last time.” He sets the jar down. “Finished.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it finished.”

I put up my hand in a stop motion before this becomes an argument I don’t have time for. “Put it away.”