Chapter 30
Eliza
Three months after Jasper had moved me into Blackwood Manor, he pitched his brilliant idea to me—an idea that at the time had seemed like a dream.
Now, it was making my stomach tighten with nerves.
“Okay, but can you bend your waist back more and look at me?” I was struggling.
The paintbrush kept slipping and adjusting in my sweaty, nervous hand and messing the whole thing up.
I adjusted in my seat, trying to get a better look at Hester’s nose. Painting noses sucked.
My foot bumped into the A-frame easel, nearly knocking down the whole thing. I jumped to grab it, kicking my brush washer and splashing dirty water all over my foot.
“Fuck!” I tossed the brush in my hand on the grass and ran my hands over my face. Thankfully it had only spilled in the backyard.
What was I doing? I didn’t know what I was doing.
This was going to be the most embarrassing night of my entire life.
If it weren’t for Jasper’s obnoxiously enthusiastic support, I doubt I would have even attempted to pursue painting.
Not because I didn’t love it—from now on, I would always paint, but I never would have had the sheer audacity to try and make a career out of it, especially not until I was good.
Don’t get me wrong, I knew I wasn’t awful by the reactions of others, but I couldn’t help but feel I was tricking them somehow and that if they looked too closely, they would see what a fucking fraud I was.
For the last month and a half, Jasper had been the most supportive, encouraging boyfriend on the planet.
He was ambitious and caring, and I wasn’t going to fault him for wanting to help me; the problem was that he was blinded by love, and no one else at the party tonight was in love with me.
It was okay; I had agreed to try it, and he had agreed that if it didn’t work out, I could sell and ship propagations and starters from the conservatory.
Plants are amazing. You can plow them over, cut them down, and dig them up, and if they are strong enough and want to be there, they pull through—kind of like people.
The number of plants we were able to save after the police had left the conservatory was shocking.
We found a forty-pound root ball still intact from the discarded corpse flower bloom and were able to save one of the others.
Jasper’s landscapers had the entire garden back together and looking incredible in two weeks.
Had I not been so grateful that I hadn’t had to do it all—again—I would have been quite upset since it had taken me over two months.
It was fun to go in and enjoy the plants for their beauty and not have to take care of them.
Instead, I started painting them.
The locket in my pocket warmed.
“No. Stop doing this, or I’ll start painting you without a nose,” I grumbled into my hands. “You don’t have to pose anymore; I got what I needed. Ow!” The locket burned.
I glared at the smiling, nearly fifty percent transparent ghost woman and pulled the locket from my pocket. I opened it up, expecting Hester’s usual words of encouragement—she was worse than her son—and looked back up, unable to hold back my laughter.
My nose isn’t that big.
I returned the locket to my pocket and smiled at the ghost.
Hester still hadn’t left yet; I was still the only one who could see her.
Selfishly, I didn’t want her to leave. She was happy and wonderful and in an ironic turn of events…my muse.
It started when I grabbed a black calla lily before it got planted and set up to paint it.
Most of the painting I had ever done was of flowers, and I was happy with how it had turned out, though it felt a bit boring.
I wanted to learn how to paint things other than plants.
Hester had appeared as she often did now, and I got the idea to practice painting people with her.
When I asked if I could paint her, she was thrilled.
She literally lit up the whole room, her whole body brightening.
Besides that, she could stand in the same position for hours, and sometimes I couldn’t get it right, and it took a really long time.
If that hadn’t been enough of a reason to keep painting her with the flowers, Jasper’s reaction was.
Of course, I had to lie and say I’d used one of the pictures in her old notebook, which Hester was kind enough to supply, but the painting had brought Jasper to tears—stiff, angry tears, but tears—which then brought his mom to tears, which then of course brought me to tears.
He hung the picture in the hallway outside of our room, and every time he walked past it, he talked to her as if she could hear him—which she could, but he didn’t know that.
Seeing the way something I created has helped him heal even a little bit has done more for me than I could ever explain.
The paintings we were—I was showcasing tonight were all of the flowers from the garden with a beautiful woman in a red dress growing out of them. The showcase was Jasper’s brilliant idea.
Tonight, art agents, dealers, collectors, wealthy patrons, and some influential figures in the art world were all coming to a private showing of some unknown artist that the media apparently had been buzzing about.
Me.
Utterly ridiculous, but seeing how Hester and Jasper had reacted to the painting made me agree to it.
I loved doing it, so it had been fun and easy to make more.
I had five paintings in total that would be shown tonight.
Jasper, being the businessman that he was, made sure it was okay if he sold them tonight, to which I agreed and laughed.
No one was going to buy them; I didn’t have a single raised hope for any of this. To be honest, I had been dreading tonight after the first week passed, and I realized Jasper was one of those types who followed through with the wild things they said they would do.
“What are you doing out here still? People are arriving, and you need to get dressed,” a feminine voice called out as they came up behind me.
The best part of it all was that my sister, Lucy, had flown in and was staying with us for a week.
“Eeek! This is all so exciting and proper!” She laughed. “They have classical music playing and champagne set up on that big round table in the entryway.”
We went inside, and Lucy helped get me into my dress. She was a hairstylist and couldn’t help herself from styling my hair and doing my makeup. It felt like we were kids again—or at least how it should have been when we were kids.
My mom and dad weren’t coming; they hadn’t been invited.
Mom and I didn’t talk. And that was okay.
I still held out hope that one day she would change and be able to have a conversation with me that didn’t leave me in tears, but for now, we couldn’t, and that was okay too.
Some days, it was harder than others, but reconnecting with Lucy had made it easier.
I was going to miss her so much when she left, but apparently, Jasper had a house in London, not too far from where Lucy and her husband lived.