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“What were you thinking of in terms of cost?” I asked. I was getting mixed messages, wondering now if I was doing the right thing. I hoped he wasn’t someone who would carry tales from Whitefern. There were enough rumors about us.

“How’s twenty-five dollars an hour sound?”

“It sounds okay,” I said. I had no idea whether it was fair, and I was sure Arden would have something negative to say about it.

“You can pay me every two weeks so it’s not a chore,” he added.

We started up to the cupola. I could hear his heavy breathing already.

“This will be good for me,” he said, aware that I heard it.

“I hope it will be good for us all,” I replied.

Sylvia opened the door to the cupola, and we stepped in. Her sheet of paper was on the easel, but I could have sworn it was completely blank when we had left earlier.

Right now, there was the start of a baby’s head.

Voices in the Brush

I was still trembling a little when I walked Mr. Price to the door to say good-bye. Sylvia followed closely behind us and stood behind me. When I glanced at her and nodded at Mr. Price, she moved quickly to say good-bye properly, adding, “I’m pleased to meet you.”

“To have met you,” I prompted, and she repeated it.

“And I am very pleased to have met you, too, Sylvia. I look forward to helping you with your artwork,” Mr. Price told her. He offered her his hand.

She looked at it suspiciously and then touched it as if it might be a hot stovetop and quickly stepped back.

He smiled at me and said, “She’s precious.”

He had dictated a list of supplies, and we had decided he would begin in two days. He liked Sylvia’s studio space, his only criticism being that there was not enough light. I assured him that we would bring up two more lamps.

The sun was already losing its grip on the day. Fall twilights were much earlier, so the shadows were thicker in and out of Whitefern. Papa used to call fall the “dying season.” Trees were beautiful only for a short while with their brown and yellow leaves. “It’s like a last breath of beauty,” he had said. “Then come the skeletons.”

I waited for Mr. Price to go to his car and wave to me before I closed the door. For a moment, I stood there catching my breath. Without my asking her to, Sylvia began to clean away the tea and the remaining biscuits. She was still mumbling about chocolate being better. I picked up what was left and followed her to the kitchen.

Upstairs in the cupola, she had not said anything about the partial drawing. When Mr. Price had asked her what she was doing, she didn’t respond. He had looked at me, and I’d changed the subject quickly. I hoped he hadn’t seen the surprise on my face when we had first entered.

In the kitchen, Sylvia was immediately busy putting the leftover biscuits into a plastic container. She was plucking them off the plate as if they were dead insects.

“When did you go back up and start drawing the baby, Sylvia?” I asked.

She ignored me and began washing the cups and the teapot.

I drew closer. “Sylvia, I thought you said you needed to know if it was a boy or a girl before you could start to draw a baby.”

She paused and looked at me like a child who had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I thought if I started, Papa would tell me,” she said. She returned to the cups and the teapot.

“Did he?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.” Her eyes widened with a thought. “Maybe he was waiting for me to learn more art and do better.”

“All right.” Enough of this, I thought. Why am I encouraging her wild imagination? “So you like Mr. Price and want to learn from him?”

“He didn’t say he likes chocolate biscuits.”

“Forget the biscuits, Sylvia. Do you like him enough to want him to give you instruction with your art?”

“He didn’t tell me anything to do.”