AllFreeNovel
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It’s worse than that. When I get new paints, I do more than take them out of the bag, out of the package. I take off the tops and put the color on my fingertips so I can drag it across the canvas. So I know how it’ll feel at the end of a brush. So I can see the colors wet and dry. I have to know before I can paint. Even if there’s no ocean. Even if it’s just canvas. I should be covered in paint. This room should be full of new canvases.
“No, I didn’t.”
Leo runs a hand over his face, scanning over the unopened canvases and paints and books and brushes. “You’ve always wanted to paint. Always.”
I’m sure it was Leo who sat with me while I fingerpainted for the first time in my life. I don’t remember it exactly, but I don’t have to. I can feel the paints now. I can feel the familiar presence next to me. That was Leo. I’m sure he has one of those early paintings somewhere in his house. He would have been the one to save them, just like he was always trying to save me.
“It feels wrong,” I admit. I have to tell him something. This polite way of avoiding each other, of not talking, is eating me alive. “I feel like there’s not enough light. Or color. To paint.”
Leo’s face falls, anger arcing across his dark eyes. He lets out a sharp breath. “He stole the color from you?”
“No. He didn’t.”
“How can you say that? How can you—” He looks out the window. Steadies himself. Meets my eyes again. “You’re not yourself, Daphne.”
“You would know about that. Wouldn’t you?”
The anger in his eyes is replaced by fear. A single flash. The weight on my chest deepens. Most people never see all the layers in a painting. There’s always more than one.
“Daph—”
“I just don’t feel like painting. Maybe I will again, but I don’t feel like it now.”
“What can I do? Are they the wrong paints? The wrong canvases? You were full of color.” The last part he says so quietly that I don’t think he means for me to hear. “Now you’re a shadow. What do I do?”
“I’ll be okay.”
Leo shakes his head, his shoulders tense. I wonder if he’s thinking of the first line of that book. Or of the ultrasound photo. I wonder if he’s made up his mind about Emerson.
“It’s almost time for dinner,” he says. “Will you come down?”
“Of course I will.”
He walks next to me all the way to the dining room.
