She bites her lip. “It’s complex. How Tod treated me, how bad it was, that was hard to recognize at first. I spent some time in therapy, working through it after he broke up with me. He got some advantageous career offer and moved to a different city, thank God, and I know now that he was full of shit. I’ve still struggled with painting, though, not so much to get his voice out of my head but to find my own again, if that makes sense? Painting is so personal. It’s emotional for me. I haven’t been in the right space for it.”

Her pen falters. And my heart plummets.

I’m not the most emotionally advanced person, but even I can see how Bea’s “spinsterhood,” as Juliet’s teasingly referred to it, has been just like her painting—that dating is something she had to set aside while she healed, until she could feel safe and ready to move forward. “Your sisters know this? How he treated you? What happened?”

She stares at the paper napkin. “He and I mostly hung out just the two of us, or in the art scene. Kate’s barely been home in years, and the little bit of time he was up for hanging out with Jules, he was on his good behavior. So my sisters didn’t know the real Tod, and I . . . I never told them what happened because I didn’t want to admit to them who he really was, that I’d fucked up so bad in picking a guy like him. I wanted to move on. It’s embarrassing.”

“Bea. There’s nothing to be embarrassed of. He was cruel to you. That’s not your fault. It’s all his.”

She bites her lip. “Yeah, I know. I want to tell them. I will soon, I hope. I just have to find the guts.” Clearing her throat, she rolls her shoulders, as if shaking off a chill. “Anyway, since the breakup, I’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern. It won’t last forever. I know that I want to try again. With art. Maybe with a relationship, too, eventually. But, starting with painting. I haven’t been able to do more than pick up a brush. I just stand there, staring at a blank canvas. I’m sick of it.”

“You’ll paint again,” I tell her.

Bea throws me a peeved look. “Yeah, thanks to you and this horrible paint date you came up with.”

“Perhaps it’s serendipitous. That could be your fresh start.”

“Maybe,” she says quietly, taking a bite of chocolate croissant. “I’ve just been stuck in this rut for so long.”

I brush a crumb off her cheek, where fine, dark tendrils of hair have fallen and kiss her skin. “All of us get stuck sometimes, Bea. I know I’ve been.”