April made a business of wadding her napkin. “That’s right. I’m sorry. I guess I was thinking about someone else.” She gave Blue an overly bright smile. “Riley and I’ll clean up while you relax.”

They ended up working together. April tried to distract Riley with talk of clothes and movie stars. One of Riley’s offhand remarks revealed that Marli had deliberately bought Riley’s clothes too small, hoping to shame her into losing weight. Soon after, April excused herself to go to the cottage. She tried to convince Riley to come with her until her father’s assistant arrived, but Riley was still hoping Dean would return.

Blue set Riley up at the kitchen table with a set of watercolors. Riley studied the blank paper. “Would you draw some dogs for me so I can paint them?”

“Wouldn’t you rather draw them yourself?”

“I don’t think I have enough time for that.”

Blue squeezed her arm and drew four different dogs. As Riley started to paint, Blue grabbed some clothes upstairs and took them out to the caravan. On her way back inside, she stopped in the dining room and gazed at the four blank walls. She imagined them covered with dreamy landscape murals, the kind of work her art professors had so tactfully criticized her for painting.

“A bit derivative, don’t you think, Blue?”

“You need to start stretching yourself. Pushing the boundaries.”

“I’m sure an interior decorator would love what you’ve done,” her only female professor had said, more bluntly. “But sofa paintings don’t make good art. This isn’t a real statement. It’s sentimental claptrap, an insecure girl looking for a romanticized world to hide in.”

Her words made Blue feel as though she’d been stripped naked. She’d given up her dreamy landscapes and begun producing bold mixed-media pieces using motor oil and Plexiglas, latex and broken beer bottles, hot wax and even her own hair. Her professors were delighted, but Blue knew the work was phony, and she left school at the beginning of her junior year.

Now the blank dining room walls wanted to lure her back to those dreamy places where life was simple, where people stayed in place, where only good things happened, and where she would finally feel safe. Disgusted with herself, she went outside to sit on the porch steps and watch the sunset. Maybe painting kids’ portraits didn’t inspire her, but she was good at it, and she could have built up a respectable business in any of the cities where she’d lived. She never did, though. Sooner or later, she started feeling panicky, and she knew the time had come to move.