“What do you mean by that?” Teri asked.
They turned into the classroom, which had huge windows facing south, bringing in a plethora of natural light. A dozen stations had been set up with easels and canvases, and Briar stopped for a moment just to breathe it all in.
“I cut wood and stain it and make signs,” she said. “I can show you some.”
She and Teri picked out two stations in the middle row on the right side, and Briar set down her bag of supplies to swipe through her phone. She found the sign for the Goateland showed Teri. “I work out on this farm in the Deerfield area,” she said. “And the owner has over one hundred goats, and I made this Goatel sign.”
“Oh, that’s adorable,” Teri said, peering at the phone.
“If you swipe, you can see a sign I made for my boyfriend,” Briar said. “It saysHome Sweet Home.He’s a former rodeo rider, so I put on a horse, and he loves my dog, Wiggins.”
“Oh, that’s cute,” she said as she swiped. “Do you cut these with a jigsaw?” She looked up, interest in her eyes. “My husband does custom cabinetry, and I’ve never thought about cutting out wood and doing stuff like that.”
“It is a jigsaw,” she said. “Stabilized with a table, so I guide the wood, not the saw.” Briar swiped one more time. “This is one I made for one of my boss’s clients. He’s a current rodeo rider—a roper.”
She could see theEat, Sleep, Rope, Repeatsign in her mind that she’d made for Alex Monterro. He’d laughed and laughed when she’d given it to him, and he’d placed it above the small window in his trailer, where he could see it every day.
“The lasso was really hard on that one,” she said. “I cut through it three times before I finally got it right.” She took the phone back and smiled at Teri. “Do you have any of your oil paintings I could see?”
Teri dove into her phone too, because of course she had pictures of her art. Briar realized at first glance that this woman was far more talented than she was, and she gushed over the woman’s fall landscapes—reds with such vibrant golds, tangerine, crimson, and even green, as leaves didn’t change color all at the same time.
“These are incredible,” Briar said.
“All right, everyone,” the instructor called, and Teri quickly took her phone back, smiled at Briar, and the two of them settled onto their stools. The instructor stood up on a platform so that they could see her past their easels, and she wore a light-blue dress with an art apron over it.
Briar had not brought an apron, as it had not been on the list of supplies she’d been told to bring, and she glanced around to see if anyone else had.
“My name is Arantha Adams,” the woman said. “I know it’s a pretty weird first name—my mother was from Colombia—and I mostly go by Ari.”
She smiled and extended her arms wide to both sides. “I’ve been painting since I was a child, and I attended art school at the Art Institute of Chicago.” She grinned and scanned the students. “We’re going to be here together for the next twelve weeks, learning and experimenting with watercolors, and I’ve brought you all a gift.”
She stepped over to a table where she also had an easel. “Now don’t all rush up at once, but you can come forward and get your art aprons. I sewed these myself, and I make one for all of my students, because you need somewhere to wipe your hands or your brush, and you don’t want it to be on your clothes.” She grinned out at all of them. “Though I suppose with watercolors, it would wash out easier than other types of mediums.”
She held up one apron that had been done in a bright patchwork quilt of colors with black rickrack between the squares. “Come on; don’t be shy. Come get your aprons.”
Briar stood up and followed Teri past her easel to the aisle, suddenly anxious to get her art apron. This was the second apron that had meant so much to her in the past couple of weeks, and as Briar tied it around her waist, she could almost feel Tarr’s hands doing it for her.
She felt like she’d climbed so many mountains in such a short time and turned several corners, and as she settled back at her station for the first lesson, that same feeling descended upon her.
I see youran through her head, and it took her a moment to realize that it was a message from God. Warmth filled her fromhead to toe, because while she believed in God and even prayed to Him, she hadn’t felt like He knew who she was or cared where she went or saw anything she did, but the wordsI see yourang through her mind again, as didI always have. You are mine, and I will never abandon you.
Briar’s vision blurred behind tears, and she quickly blinked them away as Ari was already demonstrating the first lesson—blending colors to make skies—and she didn’t want to miss a moment of this class.
She also didn’t want to miss another moment of living her life, and she realized that the past few years had been exactly that: her trying to hide from who she’d been and tryingnotto live her life. She hadn’t become the person she should be, the person God wanted her to be.
“And this is just the first step,” Ari said, and Briar could apply that to almost every aspect of her life as she started mixing her paint and her water and swishing her brush across the canvas.
Some of the burdens she’d been carrying simply washed onto the paper. She didn’t have to carry them anymore. The canvas could. She never had to carry them again, because Christ would.
As her class finished and Briar started packing up her things and looking at Teri’s sky and gushing over how she’d gotten the blue and indigo to fade so perfectly together, she couldn’t wait to get back to the farm and tell Tarr everything, from how she’d made a new friend, learned a new skill, and realized that she was a child of a God who hadnotforgotten her.
twenty-six
Tarr swung himself up into the saddle, a familiar position for him, and one that made his heartbeat settle into a new rhythm as it attempted to match the horse’s. “That’s a good girl.” He leaned down and patted Daisy Chain’s neck.
He’d been working with her for a few months now, and he’d been increasing her speed coming out of the turn around the barrels. Now he needed her to make those turns tighter.
Horses didn’t like getting close to objects—certainly not when they had to be almost horizontal to go around them. She practically came to a stop as she turned, and then he expected her to explode back toward the other side of the pattern. But one thing Tarr loved most about horses was the same thing he loved about dogs: their loyalty and their ability to be trained.
