She didn't need supplies. She needed Lena.
Lena's studio was a converted boathouse at the end of Harbor Street, wedged between the marina office and a bait shop that had closed three years ago and now served as an unofficial seagull hotel. The sign outside read RHODES STUDIO in hand-painted letters that were peeling in a way Lena claimed was "intentional weathering" and everyone else called "too lazy to repaint."
Clara found her cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by half-squeezed tubes of oil paint and what appeared to be a six-foot canvas of the harbor at sunset. Or possibly sunrise. Or possibly on fire. With Lena's abstracts, it was sometimes hard to tell.
"You have the face," Lena said without looking up.
"I don't have a face."
"You havetheface. The one where your mouth says everything's fine and your eyes are doing that panicky sideways thing." Lena set down her palette knife and looked up. Paint in her hair. Overalls splattered with cadmium orange. Canvas tote bag on the stool beside her:I CAME, I SAW, I NEED A NAP."Sit. Talk."
Clara sat on the floor next to her, back against the wall, and for a moment she just breathed. The studio smelled like linseed oil and turpentine and the faint salt of the harbor through the open windows. Familiar. Safe. The smell of a thousand afternoons spent in this room over the past three years, watching Lena paint while Clara sketched, neither of them needing to fill the silence.
"Jack's being weird," Clara said.
"Weird how? Weird like forgetting to put the toilet seat down, or weird like emotionally retreating into a fortress of unspoken feelings?"
"The fortress one."
Lena sighed. "Damn. I was hoping for the toilet seat."
Clara pulled her knees up. Wrapped her arms around them. A posture she recognized — the same one she'd caught herself in after reading Nora's email, after hearing Sam's voice in her head, after every moment inher life when the ground shifted and she needed to make herself small enough that the shaking couldn't reach her.
"He got a phone call from his sister a few days ago," she said. "I don't know what she said — he went out to the gallery to take it, and when he came back he was... different. Quieter. He stopped whistling when he cooks. He smiles but it's the wrong smile — like he's doing it from a script instead of from wherever his real smiles come from." She paused. "He's working on a railing project he'd planned for September. He's doing it now. At six in the morning."
Lena was quiet for a moment, processing. She had a way of listening that Clara had always valued — not the performative nodding andmm-hmming that some people did, but a genuine stillness, like she was letting the words settle before she decided what to do with them.
"Have you asked him what's wrong?"
"He said he was tired."
"And you believed him?"
"No. But I didn't push."
"Why not?"
Clara examined the paint-spattered floor. A drip of cerulean blue had dried in a shape thatlooked almost like a wave. "Because pushing feels like chasing. And I don't chase. Not anymore."
Lena's expression softened. She knew why. They both knew why.
"Clara. This isn't Sam."
"I know it's not Sam."
"Do you? Because you're sitting on my floor doing the knee-hug thing, and the last time you did the knee-hug thing in this studio you were telling me about the time Sam went silent for four days after you mentioned wanting to try selling your illustrations online."
The accuracy of that stung. Clara unhooked her arms. Put her feet flat on the floor. Tried to take up more space.
"Jack isn't punishing me," she said. "He's not... it's not that. He's going through something. His family, his brother — there's stuff he hasn't dealt with, and I think the phone call stirred it up. I can feel him pulling back, but it's notatme. It's just... away."
"And you think there's a difference?"
"There's a huge difference."
"Is there?" Lena said it gently, without accusation. "Because someone pulling away from you and someone pulling away from everything look pretty similar fromwhere you're standing. The result's the same. You're alone in that lighthouse wondering what you did wrong."
"I didn't do anything wrong."
