So, Bea asked. And Carmen set down the brush she’d been cleaning and came back to the wall and told her.
She showed Bea the glazes—how thin they were, how long each layer took to dry before the next went down. She showed her the linen she used, unprimed, the weave still visible through the paint. She showed her how she scraped back when it wasn’t right, taking off a week’s work with a palette knife and starting over because the painting needed what it needed and Carmen wasn’t going to argue with it.
Sam was right there with them—leaning in, asking Carmen about the pigment sourcing, comparing notes on palette knives, the two of them falling into the easy shorthand of painters who’d known each other for years. The three of them at the far wall, deep in the layers and the light and the linen. Bea could feel herself inside something she’d only ever read about—the way two real painters talked to each other. She didn’t want it to end.
Carmen let Bea touch a work in progress—a half-finished canyon piece leaning against the east wall, the surface tacky in places where the newest layer was still setting. Bea put her fingers on the edge of the canvas and felt the linen through the paint and understood something she couldn’t have understood from a photograph.
After an hour Carmen walked them to the door. She put her hand on Bea’s shoulder—the paint-stained hand, the one she hadn’t washed.
“You have a good eye,” Carmen said. “Sam wasn’t exaggerating.”
“Thank you,” Bea said, and her voice did something embarrassing that she couldn’t control.
“Come back if you’re ever in Sedona. I mean that.”
Then Carmen looked past Bea and noticed Stella—still near the entrance, bag over her shoulder, quiet.
“Oh—hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t even see you there.” Carmen wiped her hand on her jeans and extended it. “I’m Carmen. Who are you?”
Bea waited a beat, assuming that Sam would introduce Stella, and felt a pang in her chest. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she jumped in.
“This is my cousin Stella,” Bea said. “She’s a brilliant photographer.”
Carmen shook Stella’s hand and smiled. “Wonderful. I’m sorry I didn’t come over sooner—I get tunnel vision when the glazes come out.”
“It’s okay,” Stella said. “The paintings are worth it.”
Sam put her arm around Bea’s shoulder as they walked out, pulling her close—and Bea couldn’t tell if Sam was proud of her or proud of herself for making this happen, and she didn’t want to think about that right now because the layers were still in her fingers and Carmen Sandoval had said she had a good eye.
Before they got to the car, Stella smiled and looked back at the barn. “Good visit?”
“Epic,” Bea said. Her voice was still doing the embarrassing thing.
“Nice.”
Sam let go of Bea’s shoulder and went around to the driver’s side. On the way back down the mesa, Bea sat in the front and listened to the gravel crunch under the tires and couldn’t talk for a few minutes.
Bea watched the canyon go past and thought about the pause at the door—the pause where Sam should have said and this is Stella—and felt the sharp thing in her chest again, quieter now but still there.
That night. The guest room. The sheets and the dark and the rock outside the window with the moon on it.
Stella pulled the covers up and stared at the ceiling. “Your grandmother is really something.”
“She’s your grandmother too,” Bea said.
Stella was quiet for a second. “Yeah. Technically.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. She’s great.”
“She called Carmen early for me,” Bea said. “She just picked up the phone and called. Like it was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. It was a big deal.”
“I know.”
“It was also very Sam.” Stella shifted in the bed. “She called Carmen for you the way she makes the ice cream. Big gesture. Spotlight on.”
