to ensure the drafts of our home didn’t seize the door and slam it shut. She retrieved her pad and returned to the bed. “Do you consider me a fine artist?”
“You know I do.” This was no embellishment. From the time she was three or four years of age, it was obvious she possessed a skill unmatched by other children her age. In recent years, her drawings and paintings proved to be on par with many adults held in high regard. To prove it, Ma had commissioned a friend to show one of Matilda’s paintings to a wealthy art lover in Dublin. She had not told the friend it was the product of a child; she had simply said the painting was a prized family possession she wished to have appraised. The man had offered ten shillings for the piece, but Ma had declined, saying the painting was simply too treasured, one which they could not part with.
Shortly after, Matilda was accepted into an art school in Dublin.
* * *
? ? ?
I COULD TELL by the expression on her face, though, she needed fresh praise. “You are a fine artist. Truly!”
Matilda narrowed her eyes, then patted her sketchbook. “What I am about to show you must remain between you and me. You must promise you won’t discuss this with anyone else.”
Before I could answer, a coughing fit came upon me, burning within my chest with each husky gasp. Matilda quickly poured a glass of water and held it up to my lips. I drank eagerly, the cold liquid quenching my raw throat. When the fit finally ended, I simply said I was sorry. Matilda ignored this, as was her way when it came to me being sick; I don’t recall a single time she actually acknowledged my illness. She again tapped her pad, this time with impatience. “Promise me?”
I nodded my head. “I will not tell a soul.”
This appeared to be enough, for she flipped open the cover of the pad and thumbed through a number of pages before settling on one in particular. She held the picture up to me. “Who is this?”
“William Cyr.” He was a farmer over the hill in Puckstown, and the sketch showed him tending his fields.
She flipped to the next page. “And this?”
“Surely that is Robert Pugsley,” I replied. He was riding atop his mobile butcher wagon.
“How about this one?”
“Ma.”
“And this?”
“Thornley tending the chickens.”
“This?”
I studied the image for a moment—a woman of seventeen or eighteen, but not one I recognized. “I don’t believe I know her.”
Matilda stared at me for a second, then flipped to the next page. “How about her?”
Another girl, a little older than the last. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I could not place her face. I shook my head.
Matilda showed me pictures of three other women, the oldest no more than twenty. This last had been painted with watercolors; the image was vibrant, a living being captured with such detail it seemed I could reach out and touch the paper and feel the warmth of her skin. I did not recognize these women, though, which seemed odd; I knew most of the residents living near our home, and Matilda wasn’t permitted to venture far from our door unless in the company of an adult.
“You don’t know any of these women?”
I turned back through the pictures, taking the time to study each more closely. I could not place a name with the faces. “I don’t. Perhaps you met them at the market or in town with Ma, someplace without me?”
Matilda shook her head slowly. She leaned in close and whispered at my ear. “They’re all sketches of Nanna Ellen.”
I frowned and returned to the sketchbook. “But they look . . . they look nothing like her.”
“They all look nothing like her and yet they all look exactly like her. I could show you a dozen others, but none would be familiar to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t, either.” She lowered her voice again. “It seems whenever I draw Nanna Ellen, the