Distant Shores

"Youre good at it, you know. "

"What?"

"Denial. I mean, if I didnt know you, I might think everything was just peachy for you. "

"I made a choice. I wanted to be alone. " Elizabeths voice softened; hurt feelings flooded through the barriers shed built. Suddenly she was drowning in sorrow; a minute ago shed been happy. Shed buried herself in denial because she knew how much a birthday without her family would hurt. No one had even called her today.

That was the realization shed been running from all morning. No one had called.

Elizabeth forced a smile. "Im going to go paint now. I need to finish four more pieces before the festival. "

Anita stood up from the table and unwrapped her apron. "Do you mind if I tag along? I could knit while you paint. "

"Id appreciate the company," Elizabeth answered truthfully. "Ill go change my clothes and grab my stuff. "

Upstairs, she changed into a pair of baggy Levis and a well-worn blue denim shirt. She was almost to the door when she realized that she needed a belt.

She went back to the bureau and dug through her clothes, finally finding an old leather belt with a big silver buckle. She threaded it through the loops and cinched it tight, then went back downstairs.

Anita grinned at her. "You look like one of those country-and-western singers from home. "

"Daddy bought me this belt at Opryland, remember? I havent been able to wear it in years. " Smiling at that, Elizabeth gathered her supplies. It wasnt ten minutes later that she and

Anita were climbing down the steps.

"I cant believe you can carry all that stuff down these horrible old stairs. I keep thinkin Im gonna twist my ankle and plant my wrinkled face in the sand. "

Elizabeth laughed. She felt good again. The girls would call tonight. Most definitely. "The tides out," she observed. "We can spend hours down here. "

Anita picked up the knitting bag shed dropped down from the top of the stairs. Flipping her blanket out on the sand, she sat down and started knitting. A pile of fuzzy white yarn settled in her lap like an angora birds nest.

Elizabeth set up her easel, tacked the paper in place, and looked around for a subject. It was easy to find things to paint, but difficult to settle on just one. Her practiced eye saw a dozen opportunities: Terrible Tilly, the lighthouse in the distance, lonely and stark against the aqua-blue expanse of sea and sky . . . Dagger Rock, the black stone monolith that rose from the ocean in a cuff of foamy surf . . . a Brandts cormorant circling the lands edge.

She settled on the ocean itself; it was definitely a watercolor day. No oils or acrylics. She needed to complete four paintings in time for the festival; there was no way she could make the deadline if she worked in oil.

Happy with that decision, she started work.

It wasnt as easy as she remembered. She started and stopped three times, unable to find the flow she needed in watercolor. Everything was so damned wet; the colors kept bleeding into one another. She wasnt controlling the paint.

"Damn it. " She ripped the latest attempt off the easel and tossed it to the ground.

"Its never easy to start a thing," Anita said, barely looking up. "I guess thats what separates the dreamers from the doers. "

Elizabeth sighed, unaware until that moment that she was breathing badly again. "I used to know how to do this. "

"In high school, I spoke Spanish. "

Elizabeth got the point. Skills came and went in life. If you wanted one back, sometimes you had to dig deep to find it. She walked out to the water and stood there, staring out. She let the colors seduce her, reveal themselves in their own way and time.

She was doing it incorrectly. Trying to impose her will on the paper. That was a level of skill she had lost. Now what she needed to do was feel. Be childlike with wonder again.

She released another breath and went back to the easel. She set everything up again. And waited.

Sea air caressed her cheeks, filled her nostrils with the scents of drying kelp and baking sand. The steady, even whooshing of the waves became music. She swayed along with it. This time, when she lifted her brush and dipped it in paint, she felt the old magic.

For the next few hours, she worked at a furious, breathless pace. Finally, she drew back and looked critically at her work.

In a palette of pale blue and rose and lavender, shed captured the dramatic, sloping coastline and the glistening curve of sand. The distant peak of Dagger Rock was barely discernable, a dark shadow amidst a misty blue-white sky. A few strokes of red and gray formed a couple, far off in the distance, walking along the sand. But something was wrong . . .