Return by Karen Kingsbury Page B

come halfway, hadn’t she? Gotten over Paris and found a faith she’d run from most of her life. She’d even figured out how to be a mother to the wonderful child who was her son. But deep within her a knowing existed-one that she’d been running from ever since she boarded the plane at the Paris airport. For three years she’d run from it, denied it, pretended it was only a hobby. But nothing made her desire go away.
    She still needed to paint the same way she needed to breathe. Desperately, undeniably.
    Up-and-coming artists were often featured on-line, and Ashley checked their Web sites to see what was being heralded as the next great body of work. She always left those moments with the same conviction: Her work was right there, as good as theirs. The colors subtle, striking; the subjects bathed in a kind of passion and emotion and light that sometimes took her own breath away. So what was she afraid of?
    And why hadn’t Landon called more?
    “Okay, baby, we’re here. Get your backpack.” She parked the car in the garage and helped Cole into the house. He sat on a bar stool opposite her while she prepared to make scrambled eggs and toast for dinner. His little-boy conversation was the first thing that had cleared her mind all day.
    “I did a good thing at Grandma’s. Know what?” “You picked up your toys?”
    Cole giggled, and the sound settled Ashley’s nerves. “No, Mommy, I haffa do that every day.”
    “Okay, then.” Ashley set her whisk down and anchored her elbows on the counter between them. “What good thing did you do?”
    “I prayed for my friend Landon.”
    Ashley felt her heart catch and stumble. “That was a good thing, Cole.” She straightened and worked the whisk into the bowl of eggs.
    k i n g s b u r y s m a l l e y
    “He told me to pray for him, remember, Mommy?” Cole flopped his forearms onto the counter and cocked his head at her. “So today I prayed lots and lots.”
    Ashley dumped the eggs into the heated frying pan on the stove. “Okay, Coley, I have a question for you.” She looked at her son. “What made you think about praying for him today?”
    “I saw the picture you made of me and him’euz it was in the living room and that’s where 1 left my backpack.”
    “And the painting made you think of him?”
    “No, Mommy, ‘course not.” Cole’s giggle was pure delight. “I think about him all the time, ‘cuz he’s my bestest friend.”
    “He is, huh?” Ashley hated the way her heart got fidgety whenever she heard Landon’s name, whenever she thought of the relationship he shared with her son.
    What if he didn’t come back? What if she and Cole weren’t part of his long-term plans? It was wrong to let her son fantasize about Landon this way. But nothing short of God could make her stop him.
    “Yep.” Cole made a little shrug. “But sometimes I forget to pray.” His eyes lit up again. “That’s why it was a good thing I saw your picture, Mommy. ‘Cuz it made me’member.”
    Ashley stirred the eggs for a moment. “Cole, do you think Mommy’s paintings are good?”
    “‘Course I do.” He hopped down from the stool, skittered around the kitchen island, and grabbed hold of her legs. “Know what Grandma says about your pictures, Mommy?”
    Ashley stiffened. She and her mother had covered miles of ground in the past year, but her parents had never seemed to think much of her artwork. When she was in high school, she’d show them a piece and they’d smile and nod. Then her mother would say, “Have you given much thought to what you want to study in college, dear? Those years are just around the corner.”
    When she chose art as her major, the comments changed. “Do you see yourself teaching art, Ashley, or maybe working at a gal lery? You still have time to add a more practical minor, you know. Business or education, something like that.”
    47
    Then there’d been the nightmare in Paris.
    Her mother had fought the trip from the beginning.