I didn’t have anything against the guy exactly. Or I wouldn’t have, if he’d made Rose happy. But I was pretty sure he didn’t. Every time she or anyone else mentioned him, her mouth tightened, just for asecond.
Like it did right now. “I’m acting like everything’s fine with him too,” she said. “I have no idea if he even knows about the payoff, after all. It didn’t go tohim. His parents might be manipulating him like Celestine is trying to manipulate me. If that is what she’sdoing.”
“You could postpone the wedding until youhave—”
“No,” Rose broke in sharply. “Jin, I can’t. There are parts of the situation you don’tunderstand.”
Parts she wasn’t willing to tell me. It was all right. I could give her that space, like we always had. But when she looked that downcast, I couldn’t just leaveit.
“I’m sure there are,” I said. “But I’m also sure that there’s a way out of any bad situation, even if you can’t see it right away. So keep looking, all right? And we’ll look withyou.”
“I know you will,” she said, and I got the smile I’d been hoping for. Maybe it wasn’t as relaxed or as happy as she deserved to feel, but I could keep working onthat.
I’d closed my little gallery space for the morning. I unlocked the door and motioned Rose in with a little bow. Her lips parted as she ventured inside, taking in the same mingled smells of oils and acrylics, glue and gesso, that I was. Our feet clattered loud against the floor in thequiet.
“Wow,” Rose said, turning around. “These aren’t allyours.”
A couple dozen paintings and mixed media pieces scattered the white walls. Five sculptures posed on display stands spaced around the room. I’d wanted to capture the feeling of all those great modern art galleries I’d gotten to visit over the years around the world, squeezed into miniatureform.
“Only about a quarter of the pieces are mine,” I agreed. “I take works on consignment from local artists across the state. The place doesn’t get a lot of visitors, but I’ve made it into a few guide books, so we get some tourists stopping by. And people from around here come by more often than you mightthink.”
I didn’t sell enough to fully justify the space, but my dad covered half the costs, and I had no problem taking advantage of that generosity. It was his way of apologizing for not being around half thetime.
“This is yours,” Rose said, pointing to a red-tinged piece with an archingbridge.
The corner of my mouth twitched up. She could recognize me in my work already, huh? “There’s a lot of Paris in that one,” Isaid.
“And this?” She motioned to a jumbled city street streaked withblue.
“Berlin.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “You’ve gotten around alot.”
I grinned back. “My dad thought it’d be good for me to take some time after high school, broaden my horizons. And the band he was substituting bass for was on a world-wide tour. I got to tag along for some pretty wild adventures. Lots of material to drawfrom.”
Rose wandered deeper into the room and paused by another work of mine. Fragments of glass pressed into the blues and greens gleamed under the overhead lights. She stared at it for a moment and then looked atme.
“This is the stream on myestate.”
I nodded. She swiveled on her heel, scanning the room, and found the other one in just a few seconds. A stone wall draped with vines, lit with the shifting colors of a clouded sunrise. Those were just the two I had out ondisplay.
“I still get a lot of inspiration from those times, too,” I said. “There was… something really special about that time, wasn’t there? The way we all bounced off each other but somehow kept a perfect harmony.” For six years the six of us had roamed Rose’s property together, and I couldn’t remember a single fight that had lasted beyond onevisit.
“Yeah,” Rose said softly. “I missthat.”
The words hit me with a punch of emotion so sudden I didn’t even think before saying, “Metoo.”
Maybe that was true. But like I’d said to her before, there was no point in dwelling on what was gone. What I wanted was a Rose as bright and lively as she’d been back then. How could she think she was bound to whatever jerk her family had set her upwith?
I stepped closer to her and gave a strand of her hair a playful tug. “I’d like to paint you sometime, you know. Not that I have much hope of doing youjustice.”
She laughed. “I don’t think I’m quitethatstunning.”
“Ah, that’s just because you haven’t seen yourself through someone else’s eyes. The line of your cheek… The angle of your jaw…” I traced a finger down her face. “It’s calling to be put to canvas, I’m tellingyou.”
A hint of a glow came into her face then. It took all my self-control not to keep trailing my hand downward to take in the other curves of her body. She was taken, and I could respectthat.
But maybe I’d already overstepped a boundary. Rose blinked, and the glow faded. She backed up a step, looking around the gallery one moretime.