perused another dozen photos before Scott stopped her. “I like this one. It’s so...so real.” A boy sat in a sailboat, gazing up at the moon as a faerie sprinkled stardust on him. It was fantasy, yes, but there was something so genuine in the boy’s expression.
“You don’t think it’s too, well, childish?”
“Absolutely not. And it’s a departure. There’s such longing in his face. He’s so unhappy.”
Isabelle considered the boy. “He’s you.”
“What?”
“I painted him two years ago. He reminds me of you. Looking to the stars for something, but he doesn’t know what. At least not yet.”
Scott stared at her. She’d done it again. Stopped his heart. Mesmerized him. He took her hands. “I’m sorry we argue so much, Isabelle. I don’t want us to be like that.”
“Neither do I. It’s my fault. I’m too ambitious for my own good.” She squeezed his hands. “But I can’t help it, Scott. I have so much I want to do with my life.”
“Isabelle, I don’t want to hold you back or do anything to discourage you.”
She turned off her iPad. “I hate it when we argue. I need to be able to count on you, Scott. But this is my golden opportunity. You do see that, right?”
“It’s just that I don’t want you to be hurt again...if it...if it doesn’t work out.”
She moved close and dropped her eyes to his lips. “It will work out. I can feel it. Have faith.”
Then she pressed her lips lightly to his. It was a good thing he was sitting down because he was completely under her spell.
His cell phone buzzed and played the screechy, sci-fi sound that Scott thought was funny, but which was annoying to just about anyone in listening distance. Isabelle broke the kiss and passed him his phone. “You better answer this,” she said. “It’s Trent.”
“I can talk to him later,” Scott replied.
“No. I have to go anyway.” She rose quickly as his phone rang again.
The doorbell tinkled. “Are you still open, Scott?” a woman’s voice called.
“Sure am.” He turned around. “Hi, Mrs. Knowland. How are you? You remember Isabelle?”
“Of course. Isabelle, how are you? And your mother? Did you have a nice Christmas?”
“My mother is fine and it was the best Christmas ever,” Isabelle gushed.
Helen Knowland looked between them, a knowing smirk on her face.
Scott turned, wiped off Isabelle’s lip gloss and rose. He held out his hand. “I’ll call you later, Isabelle,” he said.
“Great,” Isabelle said and kissed his cheek. “Bye.”
Isabelle gave Helen a little wave as she left.
“Lovely girl,” Helen said, watching Isabelle’s back for an inordinately long moment, no doubt formulating a new round of gossip, Scott thought. Finally, she looked down at Scott’s lighted glass case. “Are those the South African coffee beans that Mr. Knowland bought me for Christmas? If so, I’ll take those last three bags.”
“Great.” His phone rang again, and he smiled apologetically at Helen as he answered while ringing her through. “Trent. What’s up?”
Scott handed the coffee to Helen, swiped her credit card and handed her the receipt and a pen while he listened to Trent telling him about a bust that had just gone down.
Helen took her coffee and left.
“I’m closing the shop right now,” Scott said. “Be there in ten.”
SNUGGLED AMID TOWERING sugar maple trees, just a block off Main Street and three blocks from Maple Boulevard stood the only remaining apartment building in Indian Lake. Four stories high, built in the early 1920s with masses of heavy oak and walnut stairs, doors, coping, molding and trim, the building creaked, moaned and extolled its history and brittle bones to Isabelle’s artistic soul. Isabelle had first seen the apartment when her mother had been commissioned to build an estate-sized home for a Chicago investment banker who wanted to retire to Indian Lake. The man and his wife had rented the north-facing top floor apartment of La Bellevue on a month-by-month basis during the construction of their home. With only two apartments per floor and eight units in the building, Connie Hawks had deemed the residence safe, suitable and affordable for Isabelle.
Isabelle had no idea how many times the building had changed hands, but in the ten years she’d lived in 4A, she’d not seen a single improvement. The plumbing, electricity and heating worked fine, and the landlord’s hired maintenance company claimed they weren’t responsible for anything else.
On the flip side, Isabelle had been free, if not encouraged, to paint and decorate in any way she pleased—at her own cost, of course.
Isabelle unlocked the heavy iron dead bolt with her antique key. There were no chains on her door, no keypads forcing her to remember codes. The walnut door was ten feet tall and weighed a ton. A weightlifter would have a hard time breaking it down, she thought, as she placed her keys on the half-moon entry table in her miniscule foyer. Because all the apartments had twelve-foot-high ceilings, the climb to the fourth floor was a workout. Intruders would have to be in excellent shape to want to break into La Bellevue—at least her unit.
Climbing the stairs, along with sculling on Indian Lake with Sarah Jensen Bosworth, Olivia Melton, Maddie Strong Barzonni and Liz Barzonni, the two sisters-in-law who would soon be welcoming Olivia to their family, and occasionally Cate Sullivan, meant Isabelle didn’t have to worry about workouts. Besides, she didn’t have time, she rationalized. A gym rat, she was not.
She hefted her heavy bag onto the scarred antique dining room table she’d bought at an estate sale for twenty dollars. She’d intended to fix the uneven, wobbling pedestal, but never got around to it. She was always in a rush to get to her painting and put the vision in her head on canvas and make her dreams become real. Today was no exception.
The bag contained supplies for three new canvases; Isabelle preferred to stretch her own to save money. However, with the possibility of showing her work in a gallery, time was of the essence. She wondered if she could get Scott to help her.
She moved to the kitchen with her groceries: some yogurt, a bag of spring salad and a baguette. Her kitchen was barely eight feet by eight feet. She’d painted the walls in pewter, dove and pearl grays and had hand-painted angels and faeries in the corners of the cabinets as if they were peeking out at her. She hoped their inspiration would never fade.
Isabelle shoved the food into the seventies-era refrigerator, the newest feature in the entire apartment. The sink was a wide single bay porcelain monstrosity that still bore the year of its manufacture: 1919. It stood on black wrought iron legs.
Just as she hung her wool coat on the peg, next to a shelf filled with
