“Oh no!”
“Yep. My parents were furious with me. Rightfully so. She was only six, barely older than Hannah.”
“What did they do?”
“Took the guitar. Wouldn’t give it back for three months.”
She grimaced. “Ouch.”
I nodded. “Yeah, and you’d think I would have learned my lesson, but it repeated itself several more times before I realized I couldn’t even pick up an instrument if I was supposed to be looking after her.”
“You’re quite a few years older than her?”
“Six. Which isn’t really all that much now, but when you’re a kid, it’s like being in a different area code.”
I inched over to her painting, staring at the brush strokes that were so smooth they were almost invisible, as if you were looking at a photograph instead of a painting.
“You’re as talented as your daughter,” I told her.
She flushed, looking away.
“What do you do with the pieces?” I asked.
“Dani set up a website and some social media accounts for me. I sell a lot of it through there.”
“Have you ever had a gallery showing?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I haven’t even tried to go that route, to be honest.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just a commitment I couldn’t really ever keep. Most galleries would want more pieces than I ever have at one time.” I read between the lines that she’d been busy losing a husband, taking care of a little girl, and helping Elana.
“What are you doing with this piece?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s ridiculous because I have six of them. They’re a mural, really,” she said, referring to a cloth-draped stack on the far wall. From the hidden shape, I could tell they were all as tall as the canvas in front of her.
“May I?” I asked.
She shrugged.
I took off the covering to find myself looking through that same keyhole but in the dead of winter. The lake on display, the apple trees bare, a bright-red cardinal soaring by the opening with its wings spread out across the snowy, gray background. The one behind it was the same keyhole again but a night view. Stars sparkling as if they’d actually pulse against my hand if I touched them. Another was the same scene but with the fiery display of fall leaves. One was the bright greens and blues of a summer you could almost smell and feel with the leaves rustling in an unseen breeze. The final one was the view during a thunderstorm. Lightning crackling, the electricity emerging from the painting to dance in the air. They were each and every one of them gorgeous.
“They’re really beautiful. What’s the meaning of the keyhole?” I asked.
“Our limited view obscures us from seeing the full picture. We only see a snapshot of what’s in front of us. No matter how much the scene changes, we still don’t get it all,” she said, emotion flowing from her.
“Elana,” I breathed out.
She jerked her eyes to me. “What?”
“She was so many things to so many people, but we all only saw her for what she was to us. We didn’t see the whole picture.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she moved to the paintbrush and the palette, fiddling with the colors there, mixing and blending them. “She had all these lives… Did you know she started as acantaora,like her father?”
“She liked to rub it in whenever I got in a rut. She was like, ‘If I can singcante, jazz, and rock and roll, you can sing more than country music,’” I said with a smile, remembering her fury at me limiting myself to one style.
Tristan’s face lit up, going from sad reflection to a warm memory. “She was a little opinionated.”
