Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Anna Walsh stood in the Laguna Beach Community Center art room, watching chaos unfold with the satisfaction of watching the happy smiles she'd missed. Here, at least, her kind of chaos made sense.
“Ms. Walsh! Ms. Walsh! Look what I made while you were gone!” Seven-year-old Claire thrust a clay sculpture at her that might have been a dog. Or a dinosaur. Or possibly a self-portrait.
“Did you use the techniques we practiced?” Anna asked, examining the lumpy creation with genuine interest.
“No! I made up my own way! Like you said—rules are just suggestions!”
Behind Claire, her father winced. “She’s been telling her teacher that all summer. Thanks for that.”
Anna grinned at her father, who despite his pained expression, was trying not to smile. “Creative thinking is important.”
“So is following her math homework instructions,” he said dryly. “But apparently those are ‘suggestions’ too now.”
“Math has room for creativity,” Anna said. “Think of all those beautiful patterns in fractals—”
“Please don’t give her more ammunition.”
The art room was filling up fast. Anna had sent out a casual email saying she was back early from Italy, and she’d be at the center if anyone wanted to drop by, and apparently the entire summer class from the previous summer had shown up.
Kids clutched art supplies, parents carried coffee, and everyone talked at once.
“Did you see the David in Florence?” asked Candace, one of her teenage students. “Was it as magnificent as they say?”
“Every time,” Anna said. “Though honestly? The copies all over the city are almost as interesting. Art living in the world instead of behind glass.”
“That’s what you always say!” piped up Everett, age nine. “Art should be everywhere!”
“Is that why you drew on the kitchen cabinets?” his mother asked.
“It needed color,” Everett said defensively.
Anna stifled a laugh. “Maybe we stick to paper at home. But here...” She gestured at the art room walls, covered in student work. “Here we can make all the color we want.”
“Are you back for good?” Claire asked, wrapping her arms around Anna’s waist. “Forever and ever?”
“For the summer at least,” Anna said. “Until my teaching job starts again in the fall.”
“My mom says you’re entering the Festival this year,” Claire said. “Is that true?”
“It is!” Anna said, her excitement evident. “I’m working on a series based on what I learned about light in Florence. Morning light, specifically—the way it transforms everything it touches.”
“That’s so cool!” Claire bounced on her toes. “What are you painting?”
“Light studies of familiar places, but seeing them with new eyes,” Anna explained. “Florence taught me so much about capturing those golden moments when everything feels magical.”
“You should totally enter,” Everett said. “Then we can all go see your art!”
“You definitely will,” Anna laughed. “I’m planning to submit a piece about the way morning light moves through the Beach Shack. Very different from the Italian work, but using the same techniques.”
“Speaking of the Festival,” said a mother Anna didn’t recognize, “are you the Anna Walsh whose daughter Bea just got back from Italy?”
“That’s me.”
“My son goes to school with her. He says she’s like, basically Italian now? So sophisticated.”
Anna laughed. “She’s sixteen. She’s exactly as sophisticated as she thinks she is, which changes hourly.”
“Teenagers,” several parents said knowingly.
“Is she entering the Festival too?” Candace asked. “She’s an artist, right?”
“She is, and she’s considering it,” Anna said. “We’ve both been working on pieces since we got back. Italy inspired us both, just in different ways.”
“Must be nice being back,” David said. “Claire missed you. We tried the other art teacher but—”
“She made us stay inside the lines,” Claire interrupted with disgust. “Inside! The lines!”
“The horror,” David said, but he was smiling at his daughter’s outrage.
“Art doesn’t have lines,” Everett announced. “It has suggestions of boundaries.”
His mother sighed. “This is why we need you back, Anna. Someone else needs to explain to him why he can’t paint the neighbor’s fence without permission.”
The room filled with laughter and chatter, kids showing work they’d done over the summer, parents updating Anna on various art-related disasters. She’d missed this—the controlled chaos, the enthusiasm, the way kids saw possibility everywhere.
“So,” Candace said during a lull, “I saw the work on your Instagram from Florence. It’s incredible. The Festival judges are going to love it.”
Anna felt heat rise in her cheeks. “Those were studies for the larger pieces I’m working on now. Florence taught me to see light differently—more layered, more complex.”
“They were beautiful,” said another parent. “Especially that series of the bridges.”
“That bridge series actually inspired my Festival submission,” Anna said. “I’m applying those same techniques to capture the morning light at the Beach Shack. Very different subject, same approach to color and luminosity.”
“We’ll all come see it!” Claire declared. “Right, Dad?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” David said. “Claire’s been talking about the Festival nonstop. Apparently it’s the social event of the summer.”
“It is,” several parents confirmed in unison.
“My sister entered last year with her photography,” Candace added. “She didn’t win, but she got to display at the grounds all month. It was so cool seeing her work there.”
David checked his watch. “Speaking of cool, we need to go. Math tutor in twenty minutes.”
As parents started gathering their kids, Anna noticed how natural this felt.
Like slipping into an old sweater that still fit perfectly.
She’d thought Florence would change her, make her into some serious artist. Instead, it had just reminded her that art lived everywhere—in lumpy clay dogs and painted kitchen cabinets and the way kids saw the world.
“Ms. Walsh?” Candace lingered as others left. “I’m really excited to see your Festival piece. It’s so cool that our teacher is showing with all the official artists.”
“You think I’m not an official artist?” Anna teased.
“You know what I mean. In the actual Festival, with the little white cards and everything.”
Anna smiled. “Those little white cards don’t make someone an artist, Candace. You know what does?”
“Making art?”
“Making art that means something. To you, to someone else, to the world. The Festival is just one way to share it.”
Candace nodded, looking convinced. “I can’t wait to see what you created about our town with your Florence eyes.”
After everyone left, Anna stood in the quiet art room, surrounded by student work. Bright, bold, unafraid of breaking rules or going outside lines. They’d learned well.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Meg.
Where are you? Bea’s reorganizing our spice cabinet by ‘color harmony.’
Then another.
Never mind. She got distracted by the light through the window. Crisis averted.
Anna smiled. Her daughter, the beautiful artist. Her sister, the organization devotee. Somehow they were all under one roof again, bumping into each other's lives like they always had.
She looked around the art room one more time. Her students were excited about her Festival entry. They wanted to see their teacher’s work displayed officially, applying everything she’d learned in Florence to their shared home.
It was time to stop thinking of herself as just a teacher who painted sometimes. Maybe Florence hadn’t changed her into a serious artist—maybe it had just reminded her she’d been one all along.
Her students were right to be excited. She’d already started her Festival piece, but maybe this time she saw it differently — not as a teacher’s side project, but as an artist’s work.
“Lines are suggestions,” she murmured, echoing Everett.
Outside, the Laguna light was doing its thing—sharp and clear and honest. The kind of light that made you want to capture it, hold it, share it.
The kind of light that made you want to paint.
Anna grabbed her bag and headed home, already thinking about canvas and color and the way the ocean looked when the afternoon sun hit it just right. Her Festival piece was coming together beautifully, and tomorrow she’d start implementing what she’d learned about café design at the Beach Shack.
Everything was going to be perfect.
All art had feelings. And hers were finally ready to show the world.