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Laura sets the bags on the floor and closes the door behind her. “Unless you think I’ve secretly taken up painting in the last twenty-four hours.”

“You could.”

“I absolutely could not.”

“Why?”

“Because I know what my paintings would look like.”

I wait.

“Bad, Kell. They would look bad.”

“That does not mean you cannot paint.”

She goes quiet. Then she points at the bags. “Before you accidentally make me reconsider my entire approach to hobbies, there’s more.”

There is much more. I carry everything to the dining table while Laura kicks off her shoes. The first bag has tubes of paint larger than the tiny pots Janet brought. Red, yellow, blue, green, orange, white, black, and colors I do not know yet. The second holds brushes in different sizes, flat pieces of metal with wooden handles, and a plastic tray with a large empty center.

“Palette knives,” Laura says when I pick up one of the metal tools. “The woman at the store said you can use them to spread paint or scrape it off.”

I run my thumb carefully along the flat edge. “Knife that does not cut.”

“Basically.”

“Good.”

“I thought you’d approve.”

The first paint tube I grab is orange. I hold it up.

Laura smiles. “I remembered.”

On Sunday I ran out of orange first. A single heavy beat catches deep inside me, and my fingers tighten around the tube. She noticed which color disappeared first. Two days later, when I was not even with her, she remembered.

“You bought a lot.”

“I had help. I told the woman at the store that you’d used a paint-by-number kit, ignored the numbers, painted over most of the picture, and complained that both the canvas and the paint were too small.”

“What did she say?”

“That you sounded like you were going to need bigger canvases than I was asking for.”

I look at the largest one leaning nearby. “She was right.”

Laura opens the third bag. “Then she asked what you were painting.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I had no idea.”

“Good answer.”

“It was the only answer I had.”

I grab one of the canvases. It is blank. No mountain. No lake. No little numbers telling me what belongs where. Nothing has already been decided.

I like it before I put paint on it. Laura starts gathering the bags. “I’ll get out of your way.”