I’m where I’ve been since I woke up, no sense of time’s passage. My headphones ooze string music, the raw slide of a violin, the cello’s carved-out ache. A spasm in my back, the fact that I’ve lost feeling in my butt, gnawing hunger pains dwindled to dull cramps, all indicate I’ve been here for a long time.

More banging on the door means I’ve been here too long. At least according to mother hen Juliet.

BAM BAM BAM.

The banging is quieter than it was this morning, muffled by my sound-canceling headphones and the string music. I hit pause and slide them off my ears. “Come in.”

The door swings open. “How nice to do this twice in one day,” she says tartly.

“What would I do without you, Juliet? Draw until I’m done? Have some peace? Live blissfully unaware of people’s capacity for biting sarcasm?”

Helping herself to my room, she attacks my sheets, quickly making my bed. “You’d be bored. And lonely. Now, get up. Movie time.”

I blink at her, stunned. Movie nights have been rare since she and Jean-Claude started their whirlwind romance, but not so rare that I forget when they start. “It’s eight o’clock already?”

Done with the bed, Jules strolls past me and throws open my curtains to . . . darkness.

“Huh.” I spin on my chair and take in the smoked-glass sky, sparkling with city lights.

“Shower, please,” she says, softening the remark with a gentle tweak of my messy bun. “You’re ripe.”

“Yes, Mother.” I set my charcoal in its tin and close the sketchbook. But once Jules is out of my room, I open it again for just a moment, lifting the pages and fanning through them. It’s a slow movie unfolding, the way they used to draw cartoons. Each frame a different study of Jamie, some part of him or the whole. Those long, rough-knuckled, yet elegant fingers. His strong profile. Drinking tea over a chessboard, a disobedient lock of hair fallen on his forehead. Cupping my face in his hands, his mouth a whisper away from mine.

I stare at the last drawing. Last night’s kiss. My stomach knots with more than hunger pains.

Drawing didn’t help. Drawing made it worse. No, drawing can’t do that. My art’s always been tangled up in complex emotions, especially after Tod, but I’ve never believed art could make anything worse. Art can only reveal, only make us more truthful. It’s just that sometimes being truthful feels like it’s made things worse. Because when you face the facts, then you have to live with them. Eventually, you have to do something about them.

I have no idea what to do.