Return by Karen Kingsbury Page B

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 gallery? You still have time to add a more practical minor, you know. Business or education, something like that.”
    Then there’d been the nightmare in Paris.
    Her mother had fought the trip from the beginning. Ashley’s father finally swayed her to allow it. When Ashley came back a year later, pregnant and ready to throw out her easel, her mother never said a word about being right. She didn’t have to. Ashley’s life made the truth painfully obvious.
    Cole tugged on her again. “Mommy, did you hear me? Don’t you wanna know what Grandma said about your pictures?”
    Ashley dropped her gaze to her son and managed a weak smile. “Sure, honey.” She held her breath. “What did Grandma say?”
    “She said—” Cole’s smile reached from cheek to cheek—“they should be in a usee’um.”
    “A museum , you mean?” Her mother wouldn’t have said that, would she?
    “That’s what I said, Mommy.” Cole skipped toward the back door. “A usee’ um.” He raised his eyebrows. “Can I play in the back till dinner?”
    Ashley gripped the countertop and sucked in a quick breath. “Sure, I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
    When Cole left, Ashley turned off the burner beneath the eggs and wandered into her living room, the place where her paintings were piled three deep along the walls. Her easel stood in the far corner, a testimony to the truth that had plagued her all day.
    Her dream was still alive.
    As long as she was painting, it lived and breathed and sometimes—on days like today—it sang within her.
    Her mother thought her artwork belonged in a museum? Why hadn’t she ever told Ashley she felt that way? Ashley couldn’t remember once when her mother went out of her way to see one of her paintings. Now she was raving about them to Cole?
    A voice pierced Ashley’s soul, one from a lifetime ago. Jean-Claude Pierre, sneering at the best piece she’d painted up until that point: “It is trash, Ashley. Nothing more than American trash.”
    She clenched her fists and gave a strong shake of her head. No, that wasn’t true. It isn’t true. Take away the doubts, Lord. Make me believe in this…this gift you’ve given me.
    A Bible verse flashed in her mind like the whisper of springtime wind through the elm trees lining the street out front: “Work hard and cheerfully at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”
    The words were a verse Ryan Taylor had talked about once when the Baxter family was gathered for dinner. It was the Scripture he used to motivate his players, even though technically God wasn’t supposed to be mentioned at a public school.
    But here…now…God brought the words to life for her and her alone.
    Whatever she did, she must work at it with all her heart. Parenting Cole, tending to the residents at Sunset Hills Adult Care Home, earning a living for herself and her son.
    And yes, even painting. Maybe especially painting.
    She moved across the room to the painting of Landon and Cole, the one