Page 138 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls

The Vale house would no longer be a bastion of nostalgia. It’d be herhome.

Skye wouldn’t sequester herself in a secret studio. She’d have the freedom to reserve a room and expand her own inventory.

Most importantly, she didn’t wish to completely take over. Celene shouldn’t feel like a visitor anymore; she deserved to decompress outside of the primary room’s walls and the hammock.

She contemplated how to use this information when Luce shook her hand to break the time in her head. Except Luce didn’t look perturbed—her eyes creased in a smile. “Skye.”

“Mm?” Skye responded, heart rate rising.

“I won’t tell you what to do with your beautiful art. It’s yours, and I know I don’t like it when people try to push me in a corner. That’s kept me authentic.”

Wooden chair scraping, Skye shuffled for their legs to touch. Connection. “Thank you.”

“What you’ve done to the reliefs forChromatique Flair…” Luce turned to smile at her son, then Aisha. “I can’t get past claiming those photos and the concept as my own. They’re not mine anymore.”

In Skye’s peripheral, her parents exchanged glances.

She held her tongue, already missing the tenderness from before.

“Regardless.” Luce freed one hand to touch the witch hazel branch Skye let her keep. “It’s a disservice to Walter to delay a spread in a magazine he loved so much. Reach back out to Mahdi and clear this up—that’s a collaborative piece. Luce and—” Pausing in a silent, anticipatory breath, she raised her nonexistent eyebrows.

Skye hadn’t considered who she’d be toothersin this new field. Well within her rights to go the mysterious route, a pseudonym would be ideal. Yet, looking around the table at herparents, her grandmother, the picture of Cosmo and his family, Swindle and Phish darting around their tank, she also couldn’t imagine that distance from her heritage. Not at all.

Shaking bangs into place, she answered, “Skye Florentine is fine.”

Good news for Celene, who’d been obstinate about her retaining that surname. They’d double-barrel it for her legal title; Skye didn’t mind the order.

“Luce and Skye Florentine, a collaboration,” Gael vocalized, leaping from his seat. “Ma, where do you keep the sparkling wine?”

“Skye and I drank it all.” Luce batted to him, laughing. “We accomplish a lot in this house!”

“Explain each piece to me,” Aisha urged, concentrating on the sugar leaf statue, a line forming between her eyes. “Luce may be cool letting you leave these unfinished, but I’m not. I must see them fully fleshed out.”

Somewhere in the background, Skye’s father banged through cabinet drawers in the vain hope he’d find a bottle they’d missed. Skye and Luce shared smiles born of a new level of cohesion. Moving would take adapting—no procedurals playing, not as many egg sandwiches before work. Family didn’t depend on location, but it was so satisfying to assure her, “I won’t be far. Eight streets away.”

Luce tutted loudly. “Oh, I won’t forget. You’re in the family business, artist or not. I have a box of new inventory with your name, all stone-based. That means a sturdier display and—you know what, I already told Zander, and he could...”

Skye’s mind trailed from the shop talk in a pleasant sigh.

Owning her own life. Different life.

New life.

Before long, she took laps around the table, detailing her process and opening the floor for suggestions from Luce andAisha as the savory-sweet aroma of dinner fed the air. A part of Skye hurt for Celene’s situation, but it ebbed just as quickly, because sharing this family with her would stand as a present on its own.

Skye Florentine, the debut mosaicist, demonstrated the bending parts of her white Trillium, so glad she’d locked her keys out of the SUV.

Skye beatout the sun today.

In the pleasant yellow glow of her now unsecretive studio, she’d wrapped her art pieces in paper and towels, giving them the extra fragile treatment, regardless of the short trip from there to Celene’s house.

Actually, no.Skyeand Celene’s house.

Hours earlier, Skye had gotten sidetracked. She’d hooked the living, swaying fuchsia above her work desk and spent half an hour sketching into the notebook gifted by her girlfriend. A wonder, how it’d slipped her mind to use a true source for the Forever Fuchsia, she’d considered again, dabbing a damp paintbrush tip to blend a brilliant magenta onto her drawing.

Closing the book upon a robin feather, she committed a minute to a wistful perusal of the angled, intimate space. She’d miss this. Though that wouldn’t stop her from moving on—creativity sprang from anywhere, and if the setting had ample ventilation, she’d utilize it. The extraordinarily window-forward blue room in her new home topped all the other choices.

“I won’t paint over the blue, either,” she whispered to herself, securing items within cabinets so they wouldn’t rattle around. The moving process wouldn’t be the most organized, but Skye loved the thought of transporting what she cared about mostfirst: anything in her trap door space, mosaics by Luce on her wall, Zinnia’s signed magazine, the ‘Bready for Love’ photo, and the seasonal resin bowls.