“Can I help you?” Daphne finally managed to ask.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” Nicola said, then tapped the sketchbook in her hands, the one the resort provided for the art students. “I was hoping to use April’s model to work on that bird drawing we started a few days ago. I cannot get the feet right. They look like desiccated worms.”
Daphne laughed as she walked to the back closet and took out the sketch of a bird in flight that April had modeled during their first illustration class. It was a goldfinch, its feet curled up to its body, wings spread as though taking off or landing. The shading was exquisite, and Daphne herself had learned a lot about working with pencil from the lesson.
She brought the thick paper to the front of the room to clip to April’s easel, but when she got there, Daphne found Nicola staring at her painting. She stopped short, her heart leaping into her throat as Nicola’s eyes roamed the canvas.
She wasn’t supposed to see this yet.
No one was, but certainly not Nicola Reece, who, after an extensive deep dive on the internet last week, Daphne had discovered was not only a curator at the Devon, but the youngest chief curator in the museum’s history, as well as the first Black woman to hold the position.
Daphne froze, waiting for the investigation to end, ready to play off whatever comment Nicola might have, but Nicola continued to stare, her brows lowered in thought, eyes a bit narrowed as she leaned closer, within inches of the paint.
Finally, Nicola straightened and turned to face Daphne. “Tragic,” she said, her eyes locked on Daphne’s before moving toward the painting again.
Daphne waited for more, for anything, really, becausetragiccould not be all Nicola had to say about this painting that felt like Daphne’s own beating heart on a canvas.
But the other woman said nothing else. She studied thepainting for a few more seconds, her fingers on her chin, before she walked toward the chair and easel she utilized during class.
Daphne grabbed the sides of her canvas to move it to the back of the room to fully dry, facing away from any more analysis.
“Is there more?” Nicola asked when Daphne came back to the front of the room. The woman’s sketchbook was propped on her lap, and she wasn’t even looking at Daphne, instead scrutinizing April’s bird drawing.
Daphne paused, saw that preteen girl in the chapel again, her hair a little longer, her body developing in ways that made her feel excited and ashamed all at once. She’d never quite understood her body’s place in the kind of church she’d grown up in—God’s temple, a man’s property, an evil temptation. She remembered feeling confused and even scared, terrified when she saw that first red streak in her underwear when she was twelve.
“I think so,” she said quietly.
Nicola’s smile was brief, her eyes now on her own sketch pad. “It’s probably best to know.”
Daphne swallowed thickly, all that bravery vanishing like fog under the late-morning sun. Her throat ached, and suddenly, this entire thing—the Devon, her painting, her ideas—felt ridiculous.
Because Daphne rarelyknewanything.
Daphne nodded, even though Nicola wasn’t looking at her, and was about to excuse herself to possibly go cry in the bathroom, when her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She fished it out of her jean shorts, then blinked at the name flashing across the screen.
Elena.
Daphne’s vision swam, the letters rearranging themselves as she stared at the phone. Elena loved a cold call, had hardly ever texted when they were together.
And of course, Daphne always answered.
So when her finger slid across the screen, picking up the call, it didn’t feel wrong. Didn’t feel strange or unwise. It simply felt like what Daphne had always done.
She pressed the phone to her ear, muscle memory taking over, but didn’t say anything. Everything felt suddenly dreamlike—Elena wasn’t actually on the other end after over a month of silence, Daphne hadn’t actually answered the call.
But then—
“Daphne?”
Elena’s alto voice, a bit of a Sophia Bush husk to it, a tone that had always made Daphne’s insides melt just a little.
And right now was no exception.
She sank down onto one of the student stools, her legs suddenly rubbery.
“You all right, love?” Nicola asked, pencil hovering in the air.
Daphne nodded, a reflex, but the truth was she had no idea. She knew she should hang up. Throw her phone in the lake, even. But then Elena said her name again—soft and familiar—and Daphne could barely think, much less take action on anything.
