Emma smiled. “Are you calling me pushy because I think researching and writing this book would be a better use of your talents than sales? I just want you to be happy. Dash wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer like this, especially forhissins, would he?”
“How am I supposed to know what Dash would have wanted?” Rosalyn snapped.
Along with “He’s in a better place now,” this was one of the things well-meaning friends said to comfort the grief-stricken. Rosalyn found it deeply annoying, though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why. How could she, or anyone, presume to know what Dash would have wanted? He had always said he wanted her to have a lifetime of laughter—but then he had gotten sick. And left her. And that had made laughter impossible.
“I’m just saying you don’t owe Hugh your whole life, and if he’s half the man you suggest he is, he wouldn’t want that, either. First you lived for Dash, Rosalyn, and now for Hugh. Does that sound smart to you?”
“You’d rather I live my life for you?”
“Heaven forbid,” Emma chuckled. “I’m offering you an opportunity, Rosalyn. Creating a life is on you. But maybe we see this differently. What’s the expression in French?Chacun voit midi à sa porte.”
“Meaning?”
“‘We all see noon on our own doorstep.’ In other words, everyone sees things according to their own perspective. All I know is that in the end, no one can make you happy but you.” Emma let out a long sigh. “Anyway, I’m exhausted. I’m going to lie down.”
“Rest well, Emma. And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For your thoughts.”
“It didn’t sound like you enjoyed hearing them.”
“I didn’t. But I appreciate them. I’ll see you at dinner.”
“After that lunch? I don’t know that I could eat another bite.”
“Can’t skip meals in France. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that.”
Chapter Forty-eight
The exchange with Emma left Rosalyn agitated. She gazed out the window, fiddling with the silver locket around her neck.
She glanced at Émile’s letters—there were still dozens she hadn’t yet read, much less translated. But after what they had discovered about Lucie today, she didn’t have the heart to face Émile’s handwriting, to think of him in those god-awful trenches, carefully composing his thoughts and hopes and dreams for the future.
Instead, she opened the new paint set.Sap green, Payne’s gray, Vandyke brown, turnsole red lake, burnt umber...
She gazed at the pristine cream-colored walls ofChambre Chardonnay. Did she dare?
Pietro could always paint over it.
Without a plan or preliminary sketches, she started painting, right there on the walls. Before long, green champagne bottles took shape under her brush, their fat corks flying. She painted golden flutes of the bubbly, spattered pigment on the walls to create the impression of effervescence escaping, then added painted bunches of purple and green grapes and, just for the heck of it, a few birdsflitting by. She dragged a chair over to the wall, climbed on it, and painted a loose border of grapevines just below the ceiling.
Ever since Dash died, Rosalyn’s life had been nothing but gradations of gray. But now she felt the urge, thespace, for color. Great splashes and splatters of color, washes and opaques and glazes. She wanted it all.
She needed the beauty.
Exhausted after hours of painting, Rosalyn sat down at her computer to e-mail Hugh. She remembered a time when the paint splatter on her hands would have bothered her, but now she enjoyed it.
She worked on the message for a long time. What would she do if she didn’t work for Hugh? She had terrible credit and still owed money to Hugh and many others. But she had to trust herself to figure that part out; if worse came to worst, she could always go back to waiting tables, and she could pick up a second job. Right now Rosalyn knew, in her core, that she needed to make a change. She had to save herself.
She concentrated on finding just the right words to express to Hugh all that she felt: profound gratitude for the generosity he had shown her and Dash, as a friend and a mentor, and why attending tomorrow’s festival of Saint Vincent would be her last official act as a Small Fortune wine rep.
Somehow she doubted Hugh would be surprised.
?The next morning, Blondine arrived early with a bag of fresh croissants, a pot of strong coffee, a cold bottle of champagne, and four colorful costumes.
“I have one for you, me, and Emma, and Dominique will come here to dress as well. It’s more fun that way. I hope they fit....”
