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“I took the red eye last night. I was lucky to get on last minute and arrived in Boston at six thirty this morning. Lincoln had spent the night in Boston after I texted him and came to get me at Logan and flew me back to the island before he picked up his passengers for the day. It was almost like it was meant for me to get home earlier. I texted Carson I was home and my head hit the pillow before eight and I was up at two.”
It was five thirty right now and Josie had gone to the back to get ready.
“That’s not a lot of sleep being up for twenty-four hours,” Avery said.
“I slept on the plane as well. I don’t have a problem doing that. I didn’t even want to sleep as late as I had today but no reason to fight it.”
“How was it?” Avery asked.
“Successful,” she said. “Very. My private showing on Friday night sold three pieces. Saturday was wonderful meeting so many in the area. Sunday the same. My agent called me this afternoon and said that ten more pieces were sold over the weekend and there are four people interested in custom pieces.”
“Geez, Laine, that is awesome.”
“Not bad for a few days' work,” she said, laughing. Some of those pieces were priced at over fifteen thousand. One close to twenty. It always made her giggle to see that.
“We know it’s not a few days' work. It’s a lot more than that.”
“It is,” she said. “But not work when I love it. Some of the pieces had been in the gallery for a while so it’s not like I had to do a ton other than make sure I had a few new pieces for each of the series being presented. The same for the next two weekends. Thankfully it’s only two showings next weekend and the one following.”
She didn’t always have three in a weekend, but the private one had been added last minute since she was going to be there anyway.
“Have you seen Carson yet?” Avery asked.
“No,” she said. “He’s working. I probably won’t see him until tomorrow night. It’s fine. We were in contact as much as we could be with me being unavailable and him working.”
“Things seem to be going so well,” Avery said.
“I could have never imagined this,” she said, doing a little twirl in space. “That’s all I’ve got the energy for.”
“I know that feeling,” Avery said. “I’ll let you go back to your lesson. I’m sure Josie is waiting.”
“She most likely started. She doesn’t need me once we start on new techniques. She just goes and goes and asks me questions. I think I’ll paint next to her tonight. She loves that.”
“Colleen would love this,” Avery said softly. “I’m not talented to do that with Josie, but she does need and enjoy it. She loves you like you’re family.”
“And I love her too, you know that,” she said.
Avery left after that and Laine went to see what Josie was doing. They were working on portraits. Last week Josie started to sketch one of her mother. She thought the little girl might be sad doing it, but Josie had asked to try this next.
“What do you think?” Josie asked her.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “You’ve captured her smile perfectly. It’s all in the eyes and you’ve nailed it.”
“I think painting it is going to be so hard.”
She put her hand to her chin. “Let’s try something. I know this means a great deal to you and you’ve got a nice base there. You said you were thinking charcoal or paint, you weren’t sure. Your pencil drawing is wonderful.”
“I’m afraid that if it doesn’t come out the way I want with one of those mediums I've ruined it.”
“There is no such thing as a ruined piece of art,” she said cheerfully. “But, we are going to put your sketch on other canvases if you like so you’ve got the same base to try different things.”
“Really?” Josie asked. “I think I’m done with this but am afraid to do anything else.”
“Yes.” She pulled her camera out, found the perfect lens and started to snap pictures. “I’m going to upload these, then I’ll ask Avery to bring your projector here next week. We’ll put it on a canvas and then you can trace it for other mediums. What do you think of that?”
“I love it,” Josie said. “But what are we going to do today?”
“We are going to paint together. Side by side. Something small we can both do.”
