The only light came from a distant street lamp, but even in the pale illumination, Burke could see Carter’s large smile in contrast to his dark skin. “My wife would have liked you, Nic. She used to tell me almost the same thing every time I came home discouraged, feeling that I hadn’t done enough.”

Nic took a sip from his glass and said, “Sounds like a wise woman. Someday maybe I can find one of those.”

“She was a white woman,” Burke said. He saw Nic’s brow furrow and his head tilt, which seemed to indicate that he had said something inappropriate. “I just wasn’t sure if you were aware of that information,” Burke added.

Carter laughed. “Yes, she was of Italian descent actually. You would have loved her, Nic. And she would have loved both of you boys. She was my world. Beautiful, compassionate, funny, and stubborn as an old mule. But she saw the world in ways that I never could. She was a lawyer by day, but her real passion was art.”

“Admiring or creating?” Nic asked.

“She was a painter. Twice a year, she would complete a painting. And then we would have a dinner party to show it off. She was so talented.”

“What did she paint?” Burke asked.

“Whatever came from her heart. Sometimes portraits or landscapes. Sometimes she would see a woman in the park or a homeless man on the street and try to capture the emotion of that moment. Sometimes they were only colors. But the thing about her paintings was that she poured her soul into them. When you looked at them, you could feel a part of her essence resonating from the canvas. It was magical.”

“Did she have her own gallery?” Nic asked.

“No, actually, she burned them all.”

Burke blinked a few times and waited for the explanation, not sure that he had heard correctly. “Did you say she burned them?”

“Yes, I did.”

Nic said, “She created beautiful, soulful art, pouring her heart into it, and then burned the paintings?”

“That’s right. Every six months, she would do a painting, have a dinner party, invite everyone we knew, and then at the end of the night, for the finale, she gathered everyone around her newest work and lit it on fire.”

“I don’t understand,” Burke said. “Why would she do something like that? That seems—”

“Crazy? Like it doesn’t fit in a neat little box? It took me years to understand why. I tried to get her to sell the paintings. I thought maybe she didn’t believe in herself, didn’t think she was good enough, too afraid to put herself out there. Once, I even stole one of them that she finished early and sent it to a gallery. They had multiple people interested, but when she found out, she made me get it back so that she could burn it at the party.”

“But why? Why burn them?” Nic asked.

Carter’s smile grew. “People would often weep at the parties as the paintings went up in flames. All of that work. That piece of her life and soul, burned to ash. It broke my heart every time. I asked her about it, of course, but all she would say was ‘None of this lasts forever’. Finally, after I tried to sell one of the paintings, I made her explain. I told that I needed to know. They were her work, and she could do what she wanted with them, but I needed to know.”