Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Only two days after Anna and Bea’s arrival, Meg Walsh found her project-management mug filled with paint water at six-thirty in the morning. That’s it. That’s how long it had taken for them to shake their jet lag and transform her carefully organized house into an art installation.
Meg had braced for chaos—she just hadn’t expected it to move in, unpack, and redecorate before breakfast.
Her kitchen looked like a Jackson Pollock crime scene. Paint tubes were scattered across the counter, and her favorite mug—the one that read Caffeine: Because Murder Is Illegal—was now holding something suspiciously teal. She stared at it, torn between annoyed and amused.
“Oh, you’re up!” Anna breezed into the kitchen, a paintbrush tucked behind her ear like a pencil. “I made coffee. Well, I tried to make coffee. The machine’s being temperamental.”
“Convenient,” Meg said, rinsing her mug and putting it in the dishwasher.
Luke would be here soon for their morning walk—one of the few routines she’d managed to keep intact despite the artistic invasion.
“Mom, have you seen my good brushes?” Bea wandered in, wearing a silk scarf over paint-stained jeans. “Not the travel ones—the Florence ones.”
“Check the bathroom,” Anna suggested. “You were painting in there yesterday. The morning light through that frosted window—”
“Amazing!” Bea finished, eyes bright. “Way different from Florence. Makes everything look clearer.”
They vanished down the hall. Meg reached for her backup mug—the one she’d hidden on the top shelf after finding it full of paint thinner on day three. At least she was learning.
The front door opened and Tyler appeared, camera bag slung over his shoulder. One look at the kitchen and he burst out laughing.
“Oh man,” he said, backing toward the door. “It’s like high school all over again. I’m getting coffee at the Shack. At least Joey’s chaos has a system.”
“Coward,” Meg called after him, though she was smiling.
“Self-preservation!” he shot back. “I still have paint PTSD from the Great Art Project of 2002.”
“That was experimental!” Anna protested, returning with brushes now tucked into her messy bun. “And Mom loved it.”
“Mom was in Peru and never saw it,” Meg reminded her. “We had to repaint before she got back.”
“Details.” Anna waved a hand, then began setting up her easel—next to the stove.
“Anna,” Meg said evenly, “you can’t paint there.”
“Why not? The light is perfect.”
“It’s also where I cook.”
“Oh.” Anna blinked, as if this were brand-new information. “Well, I’ll move it when you need to cook. When do you usually cook?”
Meg opened her mouth, then closed it. When would she usually cook? Whenever she could navigate around the installations apparently happening in every room.
“Aunt Meg, do you have any old sheets?” Bea returned, dragging a massive canvas behind her. “We want to protect the floors. This piece might get messy.”
“This piece?”
“I want to paint about this house where you guys grew up,” Bea said earnestly. “Even though I mostly just visited. I remember this place differently than it actually was, you know?”
“She’s exploring memory,” Anna translated proudly.
Meg glanced at the hardwood near Bea’s feet—new paint splatters, definitely.
Her laptop chimed. San Clemente. She opened the email, trying to focus as Anna dragged the easel across the floor with a screech that probably woke the neighbors.
“Oh, you’re working!” Anna said. “I’ll be quiet.” She immediately knocked over a jar of brushes. “Sorry! They’re multiplying.”
“Sure they are.” Meg remembered Anna’s “twelve” brushes from high school that filled three drawers.
“Just like you only brought ‘a few’ canvases?”
“I’m an optimist,” Anna said. She held a canvas up to the light, tilting it back and forth. “This light really is extraordinary. Different from Florence. Sharper.”
Meg checked the clock again. 6:47. Luke would be here soon. She could escape for an hour—breathe air that didn’t smell like turpentine.
“Meg?” Luke appeared in the doorway, eyes widening at the scene. “Wow. It’s like an art supply store exploded.”
“Welcome to my teenage years,” Meg said dryly. “Except now there are two of them.”
“It’s wonderful,” Anna said. “The whole family together, creating. Well, Meg creates in the kitchen. Her cooking is definitely art.”
“When I can find the stove,” Meg muttered.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Stella, and Meg read it out loud.
Bernie’s starting a Festival pool. Wants to know which Walshes are entering.
Meg typed back.
Not sure yet. Definitely not me.
“Oh, the Festival!” Bea perked up. “Are you entering, Mom?”
“Maybe,” Anna said vaguely, already painting again. “Haven’t decided.”
“You should,” Bea said. “Your Florence work was amazing.”
“What about you, Aunt Meg?” Bea asked. “You could totally make art with food.”
“I don’t think grilled cheese counts as Festival art,” Meg said.
“Everything can be art,” Bea said with sixteen-year-old certainty. “It’s about what you mean by it.”
“My intention,” Meg said, “is usually lunch.”
Luke laughed. “Speaking of lunch—breakfast? Before the kitchen becomes a studio?”
“Excellent idea,” Meg said, closing her laptop with perhaps more force than necessary.
She looked around the chaos—her childhood home transformed back into the creative whirlwind it had once been. Anna painting by the stove. Bea spreading tarps. Paint footprints leading toward the hallway.
She should be annoyed. She was annoyed. But underneath it was something else—a weird, warm nostalgia for exactly this kind of chaos.
“Don’t let Bernie put odds on me,” Anna called as they headed out. “I don’t compete anymore. It’s not about winning.”
“Since when?” Meg asked.
“Since I realized the best art happens when you’re not trying to prove anything.”
“Very zen,” Luke said.
“Very Anna,” Meg said. “She’s been saying variations of that since high school.”
“And you’ve been organizing variations since high school,” Anna shot back, grinning. “Some things never change.”
“Some things never change,” Meg agreed, stepping over a paint tray Bea had left in the exact spot she’d put her work bag last night.
Six more weeks of this. Six weeks of paint in unexpected places, of tripping over easels, of her sister and niece turning their childhood home into an art studio.
They were ridiculous. They were messy. They were family.
“Fair warning,” she told Luke as they walked to his truck. “This is mild. Wait until they really get going.”
“Should be interesting,” he said.
“That’s because you don’t have paint in your coffee maker,” she pointed out.
Outside, the morning light spilled across the porch, catching a faint shimmer of blue on her sleeve. She brushed at it, then stopped. Maybe a little color wouldn’t kill her.
Inside, Anna was already humming, Bea was talking about memory and light, and the familiar scent of turpentine mingled with coffee.
Meg sighed, but the sound softened into a smile. Loving creative people meant living in the splash zone. At least paint was washable.