I nodded carefully, fearful that showing too much enthusiasm might make Leah change her mind. We got up from the table and I followed her, expecting her to take me to the room off the kitchen that was her art studio. Instead, she led me upstairs to the bedroom opposite mine. She patted down a corner of the duvet and motioned for me to sit. Her room was the color of hot chocolate and made me feel like I was wrapped in a blanket. She got down on her knees and searched underneath. The mattress creaked as I shifted. It sounded like a cat and I pretended that Leah had one living in the springs of her mattress that she snuggled with at night.

She pulled out a large worn maroon portfolio and released the rubber band that held it together. Then she slipped out the drawings stacked between sheets of tissue paper and arranged them on the floor so I could see. There were ten all together, all portraits of my mother. There was something about the very last drawing, something about her expression that made me feel that if I reached out to touch it, I would feel flesh instead of paper. Her back had been to Leah, but she turned her head so that her eyes were visible. She looked like she was caught in the middle of thought and I wondered how Leah was able to capture her in that kind of a moment, almost like she knew what my mother was thinking.

“You like that one,” Leah said and pointed to the one I was staring at.

I nodded.

“I do too. I remember that day.” She was quiet and looked down at her lap. “Therese means a lot to me.” She reached back to retrieve the layers of tissue paper and suddenly an envelope appeared.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to it and hoping that her generosity would continue.

She unhinged the flap and revealed its contents. Photographs of my mother smiling and laughing. In one photo, she was sitting at a kitchen table, her fingers laced around a coffee mug and she was looking straight at me. Leah put the drawings back into the portfolio. She returned the photographs to the envelope and handed me the one that had caught my eye.

That night I studied it, trying to understand what it was that bound Leah to my mother. Why it was that Leah was whom she had chosen to leave me with. I slipped it into Matilda’s journal when I was through, but not before noticing that there was something very familiar about the setting. It was Leah’s kitchen. Except instead of being stark white like it was now, it was painted all the colors of the rainbow.