Liz
A day like today shouldn’t have been so perfect.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” I said, slipping my hand into my buyer’s.
She gave me a smile. When she first walked into my gallery with an impeccably tailored suit and black hair with a strip that looked dyed white at first but now seemed natural to me, I didn't think this would happen.
We got a lot of walk-ins here just to have a look. Even if they were usually people with money, less than ten percent of my sales came from them, but she was different.
She was actually exactly who I’d been looking for. And it seemed serendipitous that she would stumble upon this place.
“The pleasure is all mine,” she replied and handed me her card. “I'll send someone to come pick them up later.”
She nodded to Jen, and we both watched as she left and got into a sleek-looking vehicle.
I slipped my assistant the small note I’d written with the amount we’d agreed upon and a scribble, letting her know we were selling the royal collection, and she let out a small gasp.
“Wait, I thought you’d never sell those?” Jen asked, her voice raising a few octaves.
“I wanted to hold onto them until I had the right buyer,” I said as I watched the car pull away. “I think she's part of the royal family.”
When Jen still hesitated, I turned to look at her.
“I remember you really liked the one of the family cottage… Are you sure?”
I gave her a nod. “I’m sure. I have a feeling this buyer is the right one. It's not every day one of those walks into the shop now, is it?”
“But how do you…?”
“Call it a gut feeling.” I started walking back to my office. “First of all, she has the same name as the person on the back of the painting. And if you look closely, on every painting there is always someone with a strip of white hair. I'm thinking it's a birth defect that runs in the family.”
Jen followed me quietly. I leaned over my desk and grabbed my bag. My heart was pounding in my chest, and anxiety was starting to crawl up my spine.
I had had a winning day so far, but now was the time for the most important part of it.
“So you're guessing?”
“Absolutely,” I said with a small laugh. “But her vibes are infinitely better than those people Stefan sent me.”
“Yeah… Those guys were assholes.” She looked at the note more carefully. “Okay, well, if you trust her, then, so do I.”
Jen also had opinions on various artworks and who they went to. We were alike in the sense that we saw them as pieces the artist spent their sweat and tears on, and they couldn't go to just anyone willing to throw cash at us. They deserved a home. People who would treat them well.
“Can you start preparing this for me? I have a date with my daughter for lunch?” I asked as I handed her the customer’s card.
“Of course! Have fun!” She waved at me and disappeared to do her work.
I took that as my chance to leave, though just as I was walking out the door, I saw Claire walking up. I smiled when I saw she was carrying two bags containing some very yummy-smelling Thai food.
“I thought we could sit at the park nearby?” she asked.
“I picked that restaurant because it was closer to you, silly,” I said and pulled her into a quick hug as I took the bags from her, ignoring her attempts to take them back.
I had a whole plan in place. We would go to the restaurant, have a nice lunch, and then head back here to talk.
To be fair, if the park wasn't too crowded, it might give us a little bit more freedom. The last thing I wanted was for Claire to feel like she didn't have a choice. At the office, she might feel under attack, so maybe some fresh air would do us some good.
“Saves you a trip, doesn't it?” she asked with a smile and put her arm through mine.
I took her in as we walked down the street. She seemed happy. The sky was awfully clear and the birds were chirping. Everyone outside seemed to be in a good mood, which was really weird for the city.
It looked like I was set up for success.
I leaned into my daughter, taking in her familiar warmth and smell.
Even if I had just seen her a week ago, it was so easy to miss her.
“You're in a good mood today, huh?”
She nodded. “Things have been going really well at work. Oh yeah, did you ever go to that concert? Maybe take a date?”
She must've noticed the blush through my makeup and started jabbing her elbow into me like I was one of her friends.
Memories of that night flashed through my mind. It had been one of the catalysts to Jax and me being together. It was the first night I realized how freeing it felt to be with her. How exciting. The first night I fully let go of all of my inhibitions.
“OMG Mom!”
I rolled my eyes at her. “I'm glad your work is going well. And I'm sorry again that you didn't feel like you could tell me the truth back then. It was my fault.”
She dropped her smile to a pout.
“Please don’t go there again. I already feel bad about lying to you and being mean to you. I was just under a lot of stress, but now that I've settled into the job, I feel much better.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said, pulling her closer.
Even though I do.
But instead of trying to make myself feel better and get it off my chest right away, I led us to the park, where we sat under a nice, shaded area.
We enjoyed our lunch, talking about the new projects that she was taking up. I might not fully understand the tech world, but I knew she was doing well, and, more importantly, she obviously found excitement in it.
She was happy, and I was more than excited for her. She deserved a career that she enjoyed. I knew my daughter and I knew she would excel at whatever she set her mind to. There was nothing she couldn’t accomplish, and I would support her all the way.
When there was a lull in the conversation, I cleared my throat. Claire's eyes shifted to mine. She was still wiping the food from her mouth.
“What? Why do you look so serious?”
I sat up straight and locked my hands together to stop myself from anxiously picking at them. A burning smell reached my nose, so I tried to see if anyone was smoking, but no one was.
Maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks on me so I don’t tell her the truth.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” I said and took a deep breath.
Claire looked around as if something was going to pop out at her and then looked closer at me.
“Are you moving or something? Or sick? Oh God, are you sick, Mom?” She then narrowed her eyes further and must have seen something on my face that told her it wasn’t life-threatening. “You're not pregnant, are you? Can someone your age even get pregnant?”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it, and after a few seconds, it turned off.
“Okay. First off, ouch,” I said, giving her a glare. The smile on her face told me she was just kidding. “I'm not that old.”
“No, you’re not,” she said, and grabbed my hands. “So what is it? Why are you so nervous?”
My phone started ringing incessantly in my pocket. No one ever really needed me so urgently to call me this many times, not even Stefan.
I gave Claire an apologetic look and quickly grabbed my phone, noticing Jen’s name on the screen.
“Jen, what’s—”
“There’s a fire! Liz, hurry!”
Claire must've overheard it because she shot me a look.
The universe slowed around me. The pumping of my heart drowned out all the noise in my ears. My breath was having trouble escaping my lungs. Alarm belts were going off in my head, my body seeming to be coming to terms with something my mind could not.
“A fire? Where?”
No. Not possible. Claire’s hands were on me, pulling me up.
“The gallery! Liz… it's all going up in flames!”
I'd never run as fast as I did from the park to my gallery. The closer we got, the darker and more ominous it looked, with smoke covering the entire area.
Oh my God. It’s all going to be gone.
When we finally got to the front, I saw Jen and a crowd outside. The firefighters were just pulling up. I tried to head for the door, but Claire held me back. She wasn’t the only one—my security team also stopped us from going further.
“Mom!”
“Liz!”
Jen was running up to me, her face panicked and her hair a mess.
“I'm so sorry. I went outside for a quick call. You know I don't get any reception in there. And I just wanted to make sure that the buyer was right and then… I don’t know what happened. I turned around and it was on fire!”
I pulled her closer, wrapping my arms around her.
“Thank God you’re okay. No one else was in there, right? Milo wasn't working today, right?”
She shook her head. My heart was pounding in my chest as fear took over my entire being.
“But the royal collection—it’s inside!”
I tried to focus on what I could see and feel and smell, but all of it just made me more panicked. Because all of it was on fire. The only thing that remained the same was my feet on the ground, but that ground felt like it was going to collapse under me at any moment.
“As long as you're okay. As long as everyone's safe. The art being destroyed is the least of our worries.”
But as I looked at the gallery, I couldn't help but feel like everything was going down the drain.
Stefan might be the owner of this place, but I handled the business. I brought in all the clients. I worked tirelessly when I had nothing else to make a name for myself. This gallery was all I had. It was me. It was the combination of all my pain and struggle and anger and spite.
Now it was burning right before my very eyes. And there was nothing I could do about it.
“It’s okay,” Claire whispered in my ear.
But it wasn't. It was far from okay. And the worst thing was that I knew exactly who had done this. There was no way that this happened by accident.
We had fucked up. We had been lured into a false sense of security because of the lack of action on my ex-husband's part. But he had been waiting. He had been strategizing.
It was my fault. All of this was my fault. I had gotten cocky.
We’d been reckless. He’d seen us—we’d wanted him to see us—and he got angry because of it.
There was no doubt in my mind that he was responsible for this.
But with a fire of this scale… he’d wanted to seriously hurt whoever was inside.
Did he think I was in there? Or did he want to take Jen from me too? Was this his sick way of getting back at me?
I couldn't hold on anymore. As I watched most of my life go up in flames in front of me, I lost it. Tears burst out of me, sobs racking my body.
When I'd gotten divorced, and even when he had tried to take everything from me, I’d never cried this hard. I’d always had two things to hold on to, and one of them was this gallery.
The other was Claire, who fell to the floor with me. My daughter, my rock. She was holding me and whispering in my ear that it would be okay. I wanted to be strong for her. But I couldn't.
For the first time in her life, I let myself crumble into her arms.