That work, the work I needed to do once I was done painting, should have taken all summer. The realization of this hit me the moment that I woke up at Max’s house—and then I was filled with the desire to lie in bed all day. I didn’t want to go to work. I wanted to do anything but work. But I can’t, I reminded myself. I need to finish, as soon as possible, or there will be no more money to send my mother, no more money for shelter, or food, or for more paintings. It’s not negotiable. There’s no time to take off—no boss to call—nobody to cover my shift. I told myself that this was the last time they would be mine. As I held the knob of the door in my hand, I heard Carey’s words echoing inside my head: The work comes first. Always.

I drove the long way back to the studio, clockwise, so that I didn’t pass the entrance to Pine City, and then I worked. I was now an entire week behind schedule.

But when I saw my paintings—those long, winking stripes of color, innocent and helpless—I was their mother again and nobody else mattered. They needed me. I had so much work to do, and so little time to do it in.

I spent the day with Purity, using a V-shaped tool to carve a little series of trenches. Then I took a propane torch and fired a smelting bucket full of tiny lead ingots until it turned red. When the molten metal splashed down—first, burning the paint, then that black-silver pewter color pouring down the trenches in mercurial runnels—it was so delicious that I nearly touched it.

It would have cleaved the skin right from my fingers.

At sunset, I sat on the rickety dock and watched the sun go down over the far side of the black lake. Tyler would be doing the same, somewhere around the bend, with his real friends.

The ones he would do absolutely anything for.

*  *  *

In those moments, so close to the end, I wanted to quit. Perhaps I could have.

Back at Max’s, there was a note on the kitchen counter. At opening tonite in Hudson!! If you want to come it’s the Bright Gallery 7–9 and the dinner after is at Wazo. If not back later xmax

I had the house all to myself for the third time.

That profanely beautiful house.