Chapter 23: Steel TealBump,
Mom showed up unannounced this morning. I swear, sometimes she’s like a stray hair sticking to my canvas.
Myles was out with his sister Anne, who’s not well and needing his ear again, and Nick was downstairs, prepping for a wedding we’re—he’s—catering this week. So, all alone, I was working on my Marseilles sky, listening to Edith Piaf, feeling lucid, confident, and capable, when the doorbell rang and my morning went downhill.
I opened the door to find my mother standing on the narrow wrought-iron landing, clad in her heavy navy-blue wool coat and already crinkling her eyes at me in vague disapproval. “Why don’t you answer your phone?” she asked, stepping in and shaking the snow off her coat. She snatched her pretty pink hat off and looked me over. “You were
