Seth’s eyes felt like sandpaper. As if he wasn’t tired enough, his in-laws had the heat cranked up so high he’d taken off his coat and his pullover sweater and still felt like he might melt.

“You love my shepherd’s pie, don’t you?” Lois said as he waited for her to serve dinner while watching TV in the living room with Graham.

Seth struggled to keep his heavy eyelids from closing of their own accord. “I do,” he said, but that was true of almost any kind of old-fashioned comfort food. He perceived those dishes as something a loving mother would make her family, and he’d always longed for the kind of mother who would gather her kids around the dinner table instead of driving them over to a fast-food joint.

Graham used the remote to lower the volume on the TV. “How’s work been going?”

Seth struggled to resist the memory that had suddenly emerged from some dark corner of his mind—his birth mother blowing the smoke from her cigarette out the open window of the driver’s side of the car while he and his brothers devoured Happy Meals and tried to trade each other for a different toy. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been busy.”

“Maxi buying many pieces?”

“Maxi always hits me up to see what I’m working on, but these days I’ve mostly been doing commissioned pieces—for parks, buildings, state and local governments and the like—so I haven’t had much to sell him.”

“Doesn’t that take all the fun out of it? To have to create something that someone else has commissioned?”

“Not really,” he said. “There are parameters—it has to fit the setting and purpose—but I can use my imagination from there.” And he could always do what he wanted on the side. It had just been a long time since he’d felt as inspired as he’d been today when he’d painted Tia. The outpouring of creative energy reminded him of how it used to be when he started a new project. But as happy as he was when he could do exactly what he wanted, he was grateful to be successful and wasn’t going to complain just because he had to please someone other than himself.

“Seems like it would be restrictive,” Graham said.

“Sometimes it is. But it’s a good thing to be able to pay rent and be able to eat, you know?” he said in a joking tone, alluding to the practical side of his career.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re struggling with bills. We know you’ve made a fortune, don’t we, Mother?” Graham said, loudly enough that Lois could hear him in the kitchen.

“Graham, you’re not supposed to say things like that,” she admonished, but Seth could tell she was used to her husband making statements that were a little embarrassing.