When she trolled around for something else to paint, she saw possibilities everywhere--and only one true choice.
The ocean.
She started slowly, methodically stretching the canvas in the way shed been taught more than two dozen years ago. It came so easily, this beginning of it all, that she wondered if, for all these years, shed been painting in her sleep, dreaming of primed and stretched canvases, of mixing medium and pigment, of colors slurried on a well-used palette.
The sun had been bright and shining on that day she began to put her love of the sea on canvas. She took her new easel and primed canvas and her paints and brushes out to the edge of the yard. There, she laid out an eight-by-ten sheet of thick blue plastic and set up the easel on it.
The sleeping blue ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see. Today, she saw it in tiny increments, in slashes of hue and texture, in light and shadow. She saw each component that comprised the whole; and just that, seeing it as shed once been able to, made her feel young again--hope-filled, as opposed to the lesser, more common, hopeful.
She held a brush in her now steady hand and stared out to sea, noticing the blurry shapes that came forward and those that remained background. She studied the various tints of light that coalesced into sand and water, rock and sky, then, very slowly, she looked down at her palette and chose a base color.
Cobalt blue.
The color of Jacks eyes.
The thought came out of nowhere and surprised her.
She dipped her paintbrush into the color and began.
Day after day, she returned to this very spot, dragging her easel with her, setting up her work. Each day she added a new layer of color, one atop another, until it was impossible to tell that shed started with the cobalt. Gradually, shed felt it return, her own potent magic. The painting--her painting--revealed everything that she loved about this view, and everything that she longed to be. Dangerous, rough-edged, vibrant.
Tonight, at last, she would take her work to class. She couldnt wait to show it to Daniel.
She had worked her ass off--though all that hard work had produced not a pound of weight loss (there was something cosmically wrong with that)--to get a piece ready for tonight. It had been the homework assignment. Begin a work of your own. Any work.
At four oclock, though it wasnt yet done, she checked that the paint had dried--it had--then wrapped the canvas in cheesecloth and carefully placed it in the backseat of her car. She took a shower, brushed her hair until it shone, and dressed in a black jersey tunic and straight-legged pantsuit that shed bought from Coldwater Creeks last catalog. A chunky turquoise-and-silver necklace was her only accessory.
All in all, she looked good.
She got to the classroom and found it empty. When she looked down at her watch, she saw that she was almost twenty minutes early.
"Idiot," she said aloud. Now she was trapped. If she walked away, she might meet up with someone from class, or worse, Daniel, and then have to explain why she was leaving. If she stayed, however, Daniel might come to class early and wonder how long shed been standing there by the door like a bridesmaid waiting for her turn.
"Did you say something?"
And suddenly he was there, standing in front of her, filling the open doorway. His smile seemed too big for his face; it crinkled his blue eyes and carved leathery quotation marks on his cheeks.
"I came early," she stammered.
"A great quality in a woman, coming early. " His smile broadened, showcased a row of white, even teeth. "Do you have something to show me?"
Elizabeth couldnt tell if hed meant that "coming" comment as a sexual innuendo or not. She might have asked him, but when she looked up into his handsome face, her mind went blank. "Huh?"
Idiot.
"I asked you if you brought me something. "
He knows, she realized. He knew she was trembling and sweating like a teenager trapped beside the best-looking boy in school.
No wonder he was smiling. What young man wouldnt be amused by a middle-aged womans runaway lust?
"The painting," she said quickly. "You told us to paint something that moved us. I chose the view from my house. "
"Let me see. "
&n
bsp; She waited for him to turn and go inside, but he just stood there, arms crossed, smiling down at her.