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None of it matches, but I like every piece.

Tom stands in the doorway and surveys the room. “You got sheets?”

“Yes.”

“Towels?”

“Yes.”

“Soap?”

“Yes, Tom.”

Locke looks at him. “He’s been living here.”

Tom sighs. “I know.”

“Successfully,” I add.

They refuse the money I offer for their help and head out together a few minutes later. Before Locke leaves, he takes one last look around the studio and at the canvases leaning along the wall.

He doesn’t ask about the one turned backward. Nobody does.

After they’re gone, I turn it around. Laura is becoming easier to recognize. That isn’t the same as getting her right.

I started with the morning light because I understood that better than her face. Pale gold across the bed. The angle of her shoulder against the pillow. The rumpled sheet gathered near her waist.

I’ve scraped her mouth away three times. She was half awake that morning, her hair flattened on one side, her face relaxed before the day had a chance to put everything back in place. I can make the features look like Laura. I still can’t make them look like that Laura.

I mix a little more red into the color I’ve been trying for her skin, decide I’ve made it worse, and scrape it away. Reading is easier. Not easy. Easier.

Locke has loaned me some of the books Rachel bought him when he was learning to read, along with a couple she bought for me. Nothing made for children. Short stories, simple nonfiction, things written for adults who are still learning the words. He also sends me photographs sometimes when he sees a sign or a label he thinks I can manage.

I practice on those and on whatever is already here. Paint tubes. Receipts. The instructions on the linseed oil. I can read most of those now, although one word fought me for longer than I want to admit. Ventilation. I’m sounding it out again when someone knocks against the open studio door.

Meredith, the woman who bought my painting from the park, stands outside with a paper cup in each hand. She has come by a few times since then, sometimes to see what I’m working on and sometimes because she has found something about the local art scene she thinks I should know.

“I come bearing bribery.”

“I already have coffee.”

“Then consider this a second opinion.”

She hands me one of the cups and walks toward the newest painting. Meredith never touches anything without asking, which is one of the reasons I don’t mind her coming. Today she also has a folded card advertising a group show at a gallery in Springfield.

“They’ve got three open spots,” she says. “Emerging local artists. You should submit.”

I take the card and read the large words first. SPRINGFIELD REGIONAL ARTISTS.

The smaller print takes longer. Meredith waits without pretending not to notice.

People who know I’m learning usually do one of two things. They start reading for me before I ask, or they become so determined not to embarrass me that they act as if taking five minutes to read six sentences is completely ordinary.

Meredith just drinks her coffee. I get through the submission date and the part about entering three pieces before one word stops me.

“Juried.”

“Judged by a selection committee.”