“Delicious,” she commented.
“Come,” Albert said, guiding her past the musicians. They arrived at a space cleared for games, where the clang of metal meeting metal signified another round of horseshoes.
“Care to try your hand?” Albert asked, his voice shaded with a challenge.
“Very well,” Izzy replied, accepting the heavy horseshoe. She felt its weight, a symbol of the burdens she carried silently, a reminder of the strength she mustered daily to wield her life with poise under the watchful eyes of a world that offered little room for error.
Albert explained the rules, simple yet demanding precision. Together they stood, side by side. Her first throw fell short while Albert’s horseshoe arced true, encircling the stake with a triumphant clink.
“See? It’s all in the wrist,” he said.
Izzy nodded, her next attempt mirroring his technique. The horseshoe spun, carving through the air with defiance until it embraced the stake with a satisfying ring. A cheer erupted from the onlookers, and for a fleeting moment, Izzy tasted victory.
“Bravo, Izzy!” Albert said, his hands firm on her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said.
Together, they cheered each other on, competitors in sport but partners in the spectacle of survival.
After the game, Izzy led the way to the sanctuary of a nearby park. They chose a bench at random, sitting down together, looking out over the crowd of people there.
“Isn’t it strange,” Izzy said, “how we’re all expected to follow paths laid out before us by others? To tread the tracks of their choosing?”
Albert, his suit no longer the armor of a businessman but the mere clothing of a man, nodded. “It’s a heavy yoke, the expectations placed upon our shoulders.” His eyes held a flicker of vulnerability.
“Tell me, Albert,” she said, turning to face him fully, “what would you do if you weren’t shackled by these...these societal chains?”
He hesitated, the question drawing a line in the sand of his carefully curated existence. “I paint,” he confessed. “With oils and brushes. When I was a boy, I wanted to be an artist more than anything, but my father wanted me to go West and make my own fortune.”
“Why?” Izzy asked. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand a parent’s expectations, but it had never occurred to her that his father had pointed him to where he was now.
“Why do I paint?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding her.
“No, why did your father not want you to paint?”
He sighed. “My father was born the eldest son of a rich man. He inherited his father’s wealth. I’m the second son, and I always knew the wealth would be my brother’s. Father wanted me to make my own way. He wanted to travel west himself, but my mother would never agree. So, he put the expectation on me from the time I was a small boy.”
Izzy nodded. “You’ve never mentioned it before.”
“It’s not something I share,” Albert admitted, his fingers tracing an absent pattern on the bench. “It’s deemed...frivolous for a man to focus on the arts.”
“Would you show me?” Izzy’s request hung between them.
Albert looked as if he was torn by indecision. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll show you.”
The conversation that followed would be something Izzy would look back on with a smile. He talked of what he’d once dreamed of his life to be, and she mentioned how she’d always been locked away with her sisters.
Izzy glimpsed the artist behind the entrepreneur, the dreamer within the realist. As Albert spoke of his paintings, he seemed to truly come alive before her. The same way he did in bed at night.
Albert led Izzy to his studio. It was obvious that Martha didn’t know what the room was or had been told to never open the door. Or both. There were layers of dust over the cloths that covered the paintings. He pulled one cover back, unveiling a tapestry of color beneath—a silent testament to a world beyond ledgers and contracts.
Izzy’s breath caught in her throat as she beheld the painting—a landscape where the wildness of nature was captured with bold strokes and impassioned hues. And in that moment, she knew her husband shouldn’t have ever been a miner. What if he’d injured his hands?
“Your paintings...” Izzy whispered, “they’re beautiful. I had no idea all of this was inside you!” Her husband was more than she’d seen him as. This room told her so much about him that she hadn’t realized was there. She was seeing the man in a whole new light, and she was happy to know there was more to him than the boring businessman.
Albert watched her, his guarded demeanor softening. “And what of you, Isabelle? What passions lay hidden beneath your surface?”
She hesitated. Then, emboldened by their newfound kinship, Izzy divulged her own clandestine pursuit. “I write,” she confessed, her voice almost a sigh. “Ridiculous little tales that make me laugh—stories of women who dare to dream within the confines of their corseted lives.”
