The lights were on in the kitchen, where she assumed he was busy cooking. The scent of sausage, basil and oregano drifted out to her. She loved Italian food, but her stomach was churning too much to feel any interest in eating tonight.

“Well? What do you think?”

She startled at the sound of his voice and looked over to find him watching her from the doorway of his bedroom. She hadn’t expected him to be there. That part of the house was dark. He must’ve just finished changing or something and was on his way back to the kitchen. “I don’t know anything about art.”

“Isn’t that the point? You don’t have to know anything to enjoy it.”

She could’ve told him that it made her feel something profound—that she couldn’t avoid feeling whatever he was depicting when she looked at his work. The painting in the guesthouse hit her like a sledgehammer, as it was meant to.

But she refused to pay him the compliment. She wasn’t here to flatter him. She was here to take care of Kiki and, she suspected, reassure him that she wasn’t going to commit suicide while staying in the guesthouse next door. “How much is something like this worth?”

He shrugged. “A lot.”

“Then, you don’t need me to tell you it’s good.”

“Money isn’t the only measure, is it?”

“You don’t care about money?”

“It becomes a lot less important when you have enough of it.”

She had to agree. She had enough right now, too. But what she’d made from the movie wouldn’t last for the rest of her life. At some point, she’d have to figure out what to do next, and she cringed to imagine how people would stare and whisper if she had to work in public—as a waitress or in retail or sales or whatever. She’d draw attention for who she was no matter what she did, would never be able to return to the anonymity of a regular person. One day she’d probably be pictured in a small inset on the cover of the tabloids reporting on bigger stars: Tia Beckett now working at Target!

Imagining the future, which had seemed so bright only a month ago, made her want to crawl right back into bed. “Not everyone can retire at...what, thirty?” she said.

“Twenty-eight,” he corrected.

“Success came quickly for you.”

“I started right out of high school.”

She’d started young, too, which was now part of the problem. She had no safety net. “You’re a lucky man.”

“It might look that way.”

“It’s not true?”

He didn’t clarify. “I watched a few clips of your movie,” he volunteered instead.