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On the opposite wall is a piece she spent three full days working on. Mornings. Afternoons. Nights. Leo pauses in front of it now.
Daphne turns her head, as if she senses him getting closer to it. She excuses herself from her conversation and pretends to fuss over a nearby flower arrangement. She hunts down a server and gets a glass of champagne, then abandons it on a standing table. Leo looks at the painting for a long time, and then he turns around and looks for Daphne.
There is no sign of blood in the water. Not this time.
Instead, she’s painted a beam of light. Sunrise over the ocean, abstracted in the waves. Someone is reaching for that new day. Only their shadow touches the light, but it’s clear the two are inextricable. A tiny, diamondlike sunbeam, brighter than all the rest, has caught in the center.
Daphne looks up into his face. I can hardly hear their voices over the murmurs of the other guests.
“What do you think?”
“I’m so proud of you.” He wraps his arm around her shoulders. “You’re going to be busy after this. Everyone will want a Daphne Morelli. As they should. There’s nobody more talented in the world. Not a single soul.”
She grins. “Oh, stop.”
“I mean it,” he insists. “I’ve never seen more beautiful art.”
“Good. Because it’s yours. Haley already gave me your credit card.”
Daphne puts her arm around his waist. One of the event photographers notices and takes a photo of them standing there together, looking up at the sunrise. Leo’s wife joins them then, looking beautiful and awed and thrilled for Daphne. She’s very happy, too. Glowing with her pregnancy.
Even Daphne’s parents made a short appearance, early in the evening. They didn’t stay long, ostensibly to avoid overshadowing her. They’re still modern day royalty in New York City. There were some comments on Bryant and Sarah’s quick departure. Those people don’t know that Daphne’s father was the first person to get here after Leo left.
My little painter had gone to meet with the event staff, so she didn’t see him arrive. Bryant came through the museum doors as if he owned it. It was only when they closed that his shoulders let down. Dark eyes took in the large foyer and landed on me.
“Hello, Bryant.”
“Show me her work.”
He looked at her paintings for nearly an hour, going slowly from one piece to the next. Bryant stopped in front of one in particular. Started to move past. Came back again.
The ocean is the focal point, as always, but this perspective includes a strip of the shore. It’s relatively rare for figures to appear in Daphne’s paintings, so this one stands out. There is a man standing at the edge of the sea. He looks out at the waves with his hands in his pockets. He’s softly focused, drawing the eye to the waves in the distance. A cliff juts out into the sea, and on the cliff, in miniature, is a home of some kind—a castle, perhaps, or a mansion. It’s distant enough that its true form is unclear.
I came into the gallery.
“This one’s not for sale,” he said. Bryant took something out of his pocket. A blank check, and a pen. He scribbled down the necessary numbers and signature and pressed it into my hand. “I want it sent to the house tonight.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
He strode out of the gallery and through the foyer, pausing at the exit to look back at me. “Don’t tell Daphne. Let her think someone better bought it.”
Of course, he’s not the only one to have been personally represented by a piece.
The largest work, and the focal point of the gallery, might as well be titled The Inside of Emerson’s Mind.
When I first saw it, my heart tripped over itself, racing fast against my ribs. I had to leave the room and collect myself.
It’s the darkest, deepest part of the ocean. Daphne has a way of representing the lack of light through texture and layered blues. The viewer is looking up through the water, toward the surface.
From this perspective, you could be forgiven for seeing something there in the waves. Faint light, filtered through miles of water. Ghost outlines in gold and yellow. The narrowest threads in the outline of a doorframe.
It’s as evocative as the first painting I saw from her. The sensations don’t stay on the canvas. I can feel the weight of the water. It’s as heavy as the dark used to seem, and the light.
Daphne had been up all night working on it. After she’d given me some time to look, for my heart to settle, she put her hand in mine.
“It’s nice to know the ending, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean, little painter?”
