Taking a deep breath, she continued to look at the other paintings.
One was from sometime during her early teens when she was crouched in a garden, a camera in her hands, sunlight catching her hair.
The next was of her climbing a stone wall, grinning at whoever had told her not to.
The paintings continued, each one older than the last.
At the far end of the row, set slightly apart from the others, almost like something placed deliberately rather than simply hung, was the smallest painting in the room.
The brushwork was different. It lacked the technique of the other paintings. It looked almost as if someone young had painted it.
The painting was of a muddy girl laughing and standing in a fountain.
She stepped closer.
Something about the image tugged at the very edge of her memory—a fountain, mud on her ankles, and being scolded, but not caring.
She knew it was when she visited the Rewa Palace with her mother.
Before the engagement. Before she ran away. Before any of it.
He had seen her then and painted her. He must have been a child at that time, too.
Her mind spun with questions.
She turned and stared at the gap on the wall where there were no paintings.
She realized the gap was between the engagement and the environmental event. Five years.
The years she had run away. The years she had been married to someone else.
Her chest tightened.
He had painted her for years. Then, during her marriage, nothing.
Just empty space.
She wasn't sure why that hurt.
It was the only gap in the entire room. The only years that weren't here.
He had not stopped because he forgot her. The rest of the room made that impossible to believe.
He had stopped because she had chosen someone else.
And he had let her.
Taking a deep breath, she turned away from the empty space and then looked at one more painting. It was the biggest one in the room.
She was wearing a simple blue dress, the emerald fish pendant resting at her throat. Every emerald rendered in careful, exact detail. The curve of the chain precise.
He had remembered the exact cut of the stones. He had painted the pendant the way she photographed things she loved. Patiently. Obsessively.
You both express your feelings through art.
She finally understood what Rani Suchitra had meant.
Her hand lifted slowly and brushed the edge of that frame.
