Sometime Yesterday by Yvonne Heidt

night’s dream several hours behind her, she didn’t feel the same urgency that she did this morning. She was reluctant to bother her since she had done so much for her in the last month. She looked over at the painting. Sarah hadn’t moved again. Natalie had almost convinced herself that she perceived the painting incorrectly the first night she was here. Now, after what her mother told her, she knew that wasn’t the case. Her thoughts drifted to the beautiful woman smiling shyly at her. That was some fantasy. She could not stop thinking about how incredibly turned on she was by the whole dream. Well, until the end of it, anyway. In all her life, she had never thought of women that way until she moved into this house. Liar.
    A thick black wall of denial crumbled. A myriad of images and feelings swirled in her mind. Her artwork rushed to the front of her mind. Her paintings were always of women. There was Cleopatra, stretching like a cat on her chaise couch, sultry, yet aloof. Lady Godiva, naked and fiercely glorious on her horse. Helen of Troy, on the balcony watching a thousand ships in the distance. Each one of the women portrayed as strong and seemingly untouchable by mere mortals. Natalie felt truly alive when she was painting.
    Why did she paint only women? Why not the elusive Prince Charming on his unattainable white horse? The answer was so obvious: she loved everything about women. The graceful curve of a neck, the slope of a shoulder, and the curve of a waist giving way to round hips.
    Scores of Goddesses were held locked in her imagination until she made them real on canvas. Natalie recalled the passion that consumed her when she was painting. The women belonged to her and she knew that she made love to them with every stroke of her paintbrush.
    Small guilty teeth nipped at her conscious. In doing what was thought was expected from her when she married, it appeared she had completely denied who she was.
    Natalie put her hands over her face and groaned. A couple of years ago, for her nude Angel in Paradise painting, she’d hired a new model. Natalie had been mesmerized by the long, silky hair that rained down the woman’s back. As Natalie posed her, she remembered sliding her hand along the sides of the girl’s luscious breasts, caressing her waist and lightly touching her buttocks to position her the way she wanted her, just so. She tried to tell herself it was the artist in her, but if she wanted to be consistent at being completely honest, and it seemed at this point that she must, she felt that girl up.
    Oh God, I’m a letch too.

    *

    “Nat? Your paintings are here.” Her mother called her from the foyer.
    “Finally! I’ve felt naked without them.” Natalie tried to hide the fact she’d been crying by keeping her face turned away. “There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen if you want some. I’ll just go out and meet them.”
    “Okay. Then we’ll talk about why you are so upset and why you’ve been crying.”
    Busted. “How do you do that?” Natalie spun from the door to look at her mother.
    “Natalie, I’ve read your mind your whole life. Why are you still surprised?”
    “I keep thinking it’s going to wear off with age or something,” Natalie answered under her breath.
    She let the movers in and directed them to the turret room where her paintings would be stored. She blatantly ignored the supervisor, Josh, an overweight, sweaty, rude man who didn’t even try to hide the leer on his face while he checked her out. She watched them for a moment to make sure they were showing proper reverence to her paintings then left them to it.
    She found her mother in the kitchen looking out the window over the sink with her head cocked to the side as if she were studying something. “Did you see something unusual out here?”
    “That’s one of the first strange things that happened to me here, Mom. I was standing where you were, and when I looked outside, the garden was immaculate. It looked like