up within her; his words were perhaps the best gift she could have wished for. “You are so kind to give me hope, Richard.” She addressed him by his first name, worrying as she did so that she might be overstepping the boundary of doctor and patient. She was immediately abashed. “Come. Let’s rejoin the others and put our best foot forward, shall we,” she said, her tone sharper than normal.
Chapter Thirty
Little Embers, Spring 2018
Rachel crept up the stairs. It was the third day since she had been shipwrecked on Little Embers, and, as with every other day, Leah had gone out early to see to Margaret and tend her vegetable patch. Rachel was running out of things to keep herself busy, and walking on the island gave her an eerie feeling, making her realize the extent of her isolation. She preferred, now, to keep to the house, planning to only venture once or twice to the jetty to scan for passing boats.
She hadn’t believed Leah when she had said her work was no longer any good and, curiosity getting the better of judgment, wanted to see for herself. She conveniently ignored the fact that Leah had specifically forbidden her from entering the studio.
As she reached the landing at the top of the house, she was faced with a narrow corridor, along which five doors were spaced. She turned the handle of the nearest, feeling a twinge of misgiving as the latch lifted, but nevertheless peered around the door. A dusty room, the curtains faded and drawn against the light. A single bed, a dresser, and a small rag rug on the wooden floor. She ran her finger along the top of the dresser, seeing the line it made in the dust. It clearly had not been occupied for some time. She retreated, closed the door gently, and approached the next door.
This room was large and light, with windows that looked out over the front of the house, offering a view to the sea. It must have once been the main bedroom, though it contained little furniture now. Unlike the rest of the house, it was neat and orderly, with a large easel set up in front of one of the two rectangular windows.
Canvases were stacked in a corner, and along one wall a long cabinet housed tubes of paint, trowels, and brushes.
She walked over to the canvases. “Oh!” Rachel let out an involuntary gasp as she saw the first of them. It was a landscape, all clouds and water and light. Completely unlike the paintings in the catalog in terms of subject and composition, but Rachel could see there was a similar style in the way the paint had been applied.
She looked through the others—there were at least thirty of them in varying sizes and all eloquently captured the milky light of a wintry islandscape. Melancholy and lucid, they spoke to Rachel of loneliness, a solitary existence that she recognized immediately. She knew without a doubt that Leah had been wrong about her talent having deserted her.
She didn’t linger. Instead she hurried back downstairs, for a thought had occurred to her. She found her camera where she had left it in the living room and hastened up the stairs, back to Leah’s studio. She was interfering, but ignored the voice of reason, snapping a few shots of the larger canvases. Art this good deserved an audience, one way or another. As she was about to leave, she went over to the window to see what Leah was currently working on. Her mouth fell open when she saw what it was.
A portrait.
It was her, unmistakably her. Lying on the green sofa in the borrowed twinset, her dark hair swirled about her, her eyes closed. The vintage clothes made her seem like a woman from a different time, but Leah had captured Rachel’s likeness exactly. Rachel stood and stared at the painting, didn’t know what to think.
Eventually, she took another quick snap of the half-finished portrait and hurried out of the room, not wanting to risk being caught. Did she dare confront Leah about the paintings? She wasn’t supposed to have been in the studio in the first place, but really, now that she knew, she had to do something about it, even if it meant interfering . . . work like this shouldn’t be hidden away.
* * *
After she had left the studio, Rachel threw on the black-collared coat and went outside to try and give herself time to think.