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She presses both palms flat against the counter, then nods. “Okay.” The answer comes so easily that I’m not sure I heard her right.
“Okay?”
“Yes. We’ll figure out what the supplies and clothes cost.”
The words settle into place with a certainty I haven’t felt before.
“There’s one complication,” Laura says. “You don’t have a bank account yet.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Then how does Meredith pay me?”
“For now, she can pay me and I’ll put it in an account with both our names on it. We’ll keep track of every dollar, and I’ll get you a card you can use against it until we get your own account sorted out.”
“My money.”
“Your money,” she says. “I’m just the inconvenient middleman.”
I like that answer.
My paint. My canvas. My clothes. My money.
Laura has been giving me things since the first day I existed, and I like what she gives me.
I want to be able to give too.
Monday afternoon, I take the willow I didn’t use for the mat back to Locke.
Laura is at work, and I could stay at the condo until she gets home. Instead, I open the rideshare app she set up on my phone. Her card is still attached to it because, as she explained, being able to get somewhere without waiting for her is part of having choices.
Rachel’s cottage is already saved as a destination, so I request a car and take the bundle of willow downstairs with me. The driver asks twice whether he has the right address once the houses thin out and the road starts winding through open country.
He does. Locke is in the workshop when I arrive. He’s sanding the edge of a small wooden box, and fine dust covers the front of his shirt.
“You finished the mat?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Good?”
“It’s a mat.”
Locke runs his thumb over the wood. “That wasn’t what I asked.”
“It’s better than the first one.”
“That’s something.”
I put the unused willow near the soaking tub while Locke sets the box aside.
“I sold a painting.”
His hands stop. “You sold it?”
“Yes.”
When I tell him how much, his woven eyebrows rise.
“That’s good.”
