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“That seems accurate.”

She laughs again. Then she asks, “Do you want me there?”

The question makes me stop. Laura used to assume she was taking me somewhere because I needed her to. She doesn’t do that now.

“Yes,” I say. “I want you there.”

“Then I’ll be there.”

Nine days later, on the Friday before Thanksgiving, the reception is busier than I expected. The gallery occupies two connected rooms in an old building near downtown Springfield, with white walls, wood floors, and enough people holding plastic cups of wine that I understand Laura’s prediction immediately. My painting hangs on the far wall of the second room.

It looks different here. I’ve seen it at the studio, where everything around it belongs to me, but here it sits between a charcoal drawing of an old woman and a painting made almost entirely of blue squares. A small card beside mine has my name printed on it.

Kell

There is no explanation underneath. No Wicker Man. No story about where I came from. Just my name and the title I gave the painting after staring at the application form for twenty minutes.

Instead

I’m still looking at the card when Laura comes up beside me. She’s wearing black pants, boots, and a fitted dark red top I’ve never seen before. Her hair is swept away from the clipped side, and she gives me the expression that means she knows I’m looking.

“You look good,” I tell her.

“So do you.”

I glance down at my black shirt. “There’s no paint on it.”

“I noticed. Impressive.”

“I changed before I came.”

“A sound strategy.”

Her shoulder brushes mine as she turns toward the painting. She looks at it for a moment before she says anything.

Finally she says, “It belongs here.”

I turn toward her.

She gestures at the room. “That isn’t me saying it’s better because someone put it on a white wall. It just doesn’t look like a first attempt at something.”

“It wasn’t my first.”

“You know what I mean.”

I do. The gallery door opens, and Shannon’s voice carries across the large room.

“Kell!”

A moment later, the whole group comes through the doorway. Shannon and Tom are in front, with Rachel and Locke, Blair, and Janet behind them.

I look from one face to the next. “All of you came?”

“We’re on our way to Evan’s game,” Shannon says. “It’s here in Springfield, so we stopped on the way.”

“Maddie went ahead with a friend and her parents,” Tom adds. “Evan’s on the team bus.”

Shannon grins. “Which left us with a brand-new Suburban and more empty seats than we knew what to do with.”