Chapter 11
Clara
The building doesn’t look like what I expected.
No gray walls, no sharp smell of bleach or resignation.
Light pours through tall windows, spilling across pale wood floors and canvases propped against the walls.
Some are half-finished paintings, all are bold and messy and full of life.
A faint scent of coffee and turpentine hangs in the air.
It’s the kind of place that feels lived in, not left behind.
Jeremy’s hand rests on the small of my back as we walk in. His touch is light, guiding me without steering.
“My mom paints too,” he says quietly. “When the meds work, she paints.”
The receptionist looks up, smiling. “Morning, Mr. Weston. She’s in the studio.”
He nods, thanks her, and we follow the jazz rhythm of sax and piano down the hall.
Inside the studio, a woman stands before a wide canvas, brush poised mid-air.
Her hair, silver and wild, frizzes around her face like static.
She’s wearing an oversized denim shirt spattered with color, sleeves rolled to the elbows.
There’s paint on her cheekbone, a streak of blue that somehow suits her.
When she hears us, she turns, eyes lighting up. “Jeremy!”
Her voice is strong and warm, carrying none of the fragility I’d feared.
“Hey, Mom.” He bends to kiss her cheek, careful not to touch the wet canvas behind her. “You’re up early.”
“Inspiration doesn’t wait for polite hours.” She pauses mid-stroke, the brush hovering above the canvas. Her head tilts and her eyes narrow as she takes me in, then widen again like she’s cataloging details she doesn’t want to forget. The corner of her mouth lifts. “And who’s this?”
“This is Clara Bennett,” Jeremy says. “We work together.”
Her smile widens, but there’s knowing in it. “Do you, now?”
I can feel the flush rise up my neck. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Weston.”
“Oh, please. Everyone here calls me Elise.” She gestures with the brush, a small arc of color flicking into the air. “Jeremy doesn’t bring people here. You must be special.”
“Mom,” he murmurs, and the warning in his tone only makes her grin.
Her hand pauses mid-stroke. For a moment she doesn’t look at us at all, her gaze turned inward, lashes trembling against her cheeks.
When she speaks, it’s careful, like the memory might splinter if she lets it too close.
“He gets that from his father,” she says, eyes glinting with something that could be pride or pain.
Next to me, Jeremy goes rigid. I glance at him. The tension around his mouth tightens. “Dad didn’t always look serious,” he counters. “He wasn’t a jokester, but he knew how to enjoy life.”
His mother’s shoulders tighten, and when she turns, something in her face changes.
The spark dims, replaced by a hollow kind of focus, like she’s listening to a voice none of us can hear.
“One moment he was mowing the lawn, the next…” Her breath stutters, the brush quivering in her grip.
“I still don’t know why he didn’t tell anyone. He never told me…”
Her words hang in the air, heavy as wet paint. The room feels smaller, quieter, the sunlight suddenly too bright. I watch as her spine curves inward, her vibrant energy shrinking, folding in on itself like a flower withering without water.;
My throat tightens. How do you live through that? To lose the person who steadied you, who made the world make sense and to lose him so fast there’s no time to brace?
Jeremy’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “He didn’t tell anyone how sick he was. Pancreatic cancer. By the time they caught it…” He swallows. “Six weeks from diagnosis to hospice. He went fast. Too fast.”
His mother doesn’t move. Her eyes are on the painting, but she’s somewhere far beyond it. Her fingers twitch once, then drop the brush.
“Mom,” Jeremy says softly, stepping closer. “Hey. Look at me.”
She doesn’t blink. Just stares past him, lips parting like she’s about to say something but can’t find the words.
“Mrs. Weston?” I take a small step forward, uselessly. My heart aches for her. For them both.
Jeremy doesn’t panic. He knows this dance. He signals with two fingers toward the doorway, and within seconds, a nurse appears, cheerful and calm, like she’s done this a hundred times.
“Morning, Elise,” the nurse says brightly, easing in with a disarming smile. “You promised to help me with the cookies, remember? The lemon ones you like.”
At the word lemon, Elise’s eyes flicker. Her breath shudders out, and some tension leaks from her shoulders. “The cookies,” she murmurs. “Yes, lemon cookies.”
“Good,” the nurse says. “Let’s wash up first.”
Jeremy steps back, letting the nurse take over. He doesn’t look away from his mother until she’s following the nurse out, her hand resting lightly on the woman’s arm.
The studio feels different once she’s gone. Quieter, but not empty. My gaze drifts to the painting she left behind. It is bold and fearless, full of life and heat. But now, standing in the silence she left, the colors look almost violent. A scream trapped on canvas.
“She was so bright a minute ago,” I say softly.
“She always is,” he answers. “Until she’s not.”
I look at him, at the sadness in his eyes that doesn’t belong to a man who’s ever stopped fighting. “You’ve done this before.”
“Too many times.” His gaze lingers on the doorway. “But she’s still in there. The woman who taught me to throw a ball, who sang in the kitchen, who laughed until she snorted. She’s just buried under the noise some days.”
I study the streaks of blue on the canvas, the wild beauty of them. They feel like her—messy, unfiltered, alive—but surrounded by so much stillness it hurts to look at.
“She paints like she’s trying to remind the world it’s still beautiful,” I whisper.
Jeremy glances at me. “She paints like she’s trying to remind herself.”
I drive one-handed, my right palm loose on the wheel, my left hand tangled with Clara’s between us.
Her fingers fit mine like they’ve been waiting to, warm and steady, even though she hasn’t said a word since we left the facility.
The silence isn’t awkward but it’s heavy.
Like she’s still back there in that bright room, surrounded by my mother’s ghosts and the things she didn’t know how to say.
The road unwinds ahead through open fields, the horizon so wide it swallows the sky.
Heat wavers above the asphalt, and hills loom somewhere in the distance.
Inside the car, it’s quiet except for the low thrum of tires and the faint rhythm of engine.
I glance at her. Her eyes are on the scenery outside like she’s never seen it before.
I can’t tell if she’s thinking about my mother or me.
Part of me wonders if she’s afraid. If she’s sitting there cataloging the genetics, imagining years from now I’ll wake up hearing voices or battling ghosts that aren’t there. The thought makes my grip tighten before I catch myself.
She notices, gives a small squeeze, and that’s all it takes for the knot in my chest to ease.
When she finally speaks, her voice is soft, scratchy from holding too much back.
“My dad used to bet on horse races.” She lets out a breath that sounds more like defeat than laughter. “Then football. Then the stock market. Whatever let him believe he was smarter than the odds.”
I stay quiet. She needs space to unspool it.
“He used to drag me along to the tracks. I’d sit with a soda and a notebook while he pretended we were doing math. Said I was his lucky charm.” Her mouth twists. “Guess luck ran out.”
Her thumb strokes the ridge of my knuckles, absentminded, as if the motion helps her think.
“When my mom left, he said it was her fault. That she didn’t have faith in him.
He was already in debt back then, though I didn’t know it.
” She shifts in the seat, turning her face toward the windshield.
“She’s in New Zealand now. Husband number three or four, I’ve lost count.
She stopped replying to my messages a few years ago. ”
Her voice wavers, not enough to break, just enough to show how much it still stings.
“I kept sending updates about the factory, birthdays, whatever. Then one day I realized I was the only one writing. So I stopped.”
Wind rushes through the cracked window, carrying the scent of pine and asphalt. I want to say something, anything, but nothing feels right. She’s not asking for comfort; she’s purging.
“My dad’s worse now,” she says. “Online betting made it easy. He doesn’t even need to leave the couch. Baseball, elections, rainfall totals, he’ll gamble on anything that moves.”
She lets out a short laugh that breaks halfway through, the sound catching on itself before fading.
“And when he loses, which he always does, he comes to me. Says it’s just a loan, that he’ll pay me back once he wins big.
But he never does. I tell myself no, but then I picture him desperate, and I feel like a bitch.
” She turns her face to the window again.
“What kind of daughter lets her father sink like that?”
I lift our joined hands to my mouth and brush a kiss over her knuckles. “The kind who’s been carrying the weight he should’ve shouldered himself.”
Her breath catches, a soft, uneven sound. She doesn’t look at me, but her fingers tighten around mine.
For a while, we drive in silence again. The road stretches ahead, long and straight, sun flashing between the trees.
I keep her hand in mine, thumb tracing the faint pulse beneath her skin, hoping she feels what I can’t quite say: that she’s not alone in this, that some weights don’t have to be carried alone anymore.