“Your mother isn’t supportive of your art?”
“That’s the problem. She doesn’t see it as art. At least not proper art.”
“What is proper art?”
“The masters. Rembrandt. Raphael. Caravaggio.”
“They’ve all been dead for hundreds of years.”
“Exactly.”
He frowned, shaking his head. “So you have to be dead for your work to be worthy? That hardly seems fair.”
“It’s not. But there we are. Unless you’ve sold well at auction, no one wants to take a chance on your work. If I had my way, I’d see to it that there were galleries dedicated entirely to artists no one’s ever heard of.”
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
“Then open one. Right here in Boston.”
She stared at him as the idea began to take shape. A showcase for artists no one had ever heard of. She had no idea how to go about it, and her mother would absolutely hate the idea. Still, it was hard to ignore the sudden flutter of excitement she felt at the thought.
“Do you really think I could?”
“Why not? You have the resources, the connections, the dream.”
“What if that’s all it is? A dream?”
He’d wound an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close enough to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “Dreams are like waves, babe. You have to wait for the right one to come along, the one that has your name on it. And then when it does, you have to get up and ride it. This dream has your name all over it.”
She’d believed it then. But did she still?
Her dream of being a textile artist had actually begun as a fetish for vintage clothing. Not because she loved clothes. She’d never cared about fashion. It was fabric that captivated her, the way it moved and felt and behaved. Watered silks and pebbly knits, crisp organdy, diaphanous lace, nubby tweeds and lamb-soft worsteds, each with a texture and personality all its own.
Her first attempt had been crude and unsophisticated, but a passion for creation had already found its way into her blood, driving her to perfect her craft with practice and new techniques. What had started as a fetish had become a quiet obsession, resulting in a series of pieces dubbed the Storm Watch Collection.
Her mother had referred to them as her arts and crafts projects, but the owner of the interior design shop had been enthusiastic enough to put several pieces in his window. By summer’s end, he’d sold the entire collection, including the one hanging in the window of Finn’s.
When the call came that North of November had sold and would hang in a public place, she was so excited that she’d burst into her mother’s study without knocking. Camilla had smiled indulgently at the news, declaring herself not a bit surprised. It was a pretty piece, and tourists loved that sort of thing. She hadn’t meant to be condescending, but the remark stung more than Rory ever let on. After that, she’d worked less and less on her art. Until Hux had rekindled her creative flame with talk of a gallery. But when he disappeared, the flame had gone out.
By the time the microwave dinged, Rory had lost interest in her soup. Instead, she headed for the spare room she had set up as a makeshift studio. She hadn’t set foot inside since Hux vanished, too frantic to work at first and then later, unable to look at anything that reminded her of him.
The room felt smaller than she remembered, cluttered and a little overwhelming, with the faint tang of fabric glue still hanging in the air. A desk strewn with art supply catalogs occupied one corner; an easel used for sketching filled another. Shelves piled with fabric swatches lined one wall, and under the window sat the secondhand Bernina she’d bought early on but rarely used after discovering she preferred hand stitching. All collecting dust now.
Her eyes slid to the unframed piece behind the desk—an enormous wave purling around the eastern wall of a stoic granite lighthouse. It was her personal favorite, inspired by a photo she’d seen once and never forgotten. She had titled it Fearless, because that’s how it felt. Stoic and indomitable.
There were four more in the closet, part of the new collection she’d been working on when Hux disappeared. Not long ago—had it really only been five months?—she’d imagined them hanging on a gallery wall—on her gallery wall. Now she couldn’t imagine anything.
Moving deeper into the room, she stood before two large needlework frames, where a pair of unfinished pieces had languished for months. She ran her fingers over one, recalling the hours of felting required to create each whirl and eddy. She wouldn’t finish them now. School would start in the fall, and there wouldn’t be time. And there really wasn’t much point.