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He turned to find Jacinta in the doorway, fury in her eyes.
“You can’t be in here.” She waved a hand to indicate he should leave. He’d thought she was freaked out before, but watching her now, colour high in her cheeks, outrage making her body a temple of rigidity, he knew he’d truly frightened her, like the woman in the paining who wore Jacinta’s face.
“This is you.” He meant the room. This was where she lived, here with the colours and smells, not in the pristine stillness outside the door.
“Please come out.”
“And this is you.” He looked from Jacinta to the painting. “It’s incredible.”
“Mace.” A warning.
Not heeded. “You should let people see this.”
“This is not what you think. I hardly ever come in here. I haven’t picked up a brush for years. I can’t remember how long it’s been.”
“Shame.” He knew next to nothing about art, but Buster had been a craft nut. Sewed, embroidered, knitted, fired ceramics, painted. He knew enough to tell that what Jacinta was doing in this room wasn’t paint by numbers amateur hour.
“Please come outside.”
“You gave it up.”
“It was a hobby. I don’t have time. It’s not important.”
He watched her face. He saw a veil of grief, of longing, steal across her features. She still stood at attention but her hands had dropped from her hips to her sides.
“It is important.”
“Once, maybe, not anymore. Come out.”
“Show me.”
“I’m busy.”
“Then leave me here. I won’t damage anything.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s private.”
“You scared I might learn something about you?”
“You do think you’re special, don’t you, Mace?”
He lifted the sheet back over the running Jacinta. “That was special.” He pointed to another canvas against the wall, a stormy scene all dark colours and torn vistas. It was upside down. He tilted his head to see it better. “That’s amazing.”
“You have no idea what you’re looking at.”
“Show me.”
“No.”
“Never picked you for a coward.”
She left him there. He’d hoped for a fight. He’d hoped she might relent and show him all about this hidden life of hers etched and scraped and daubed on the canvases. He felt like he’d found the secret essence of her. The interior of the woman whose physical body had melted in his arms and shook apart when he was inside her.
He moved around the room, paging through the canv
