Page 1 of His Vow

ONE

SOLEIL

“Hmmm…”

I took a step back and studied the painting. Something was wrong with it. I couldn't put my finger on what, exactly. It wasn't quite…right.

I kicked off my heels, climbed onto the bench, and pressed the leveler against the frame with one hand while the other steadied the corner.

"Left," Margaux called from across the gallery.

I nudged the frame.

"More left."

I nudged again.

"That's right. I said left."

I frowned. "That was left."

"Soleil, I'm looking at it. That was right. My right. Your left. The other left."

I adjusted. The bubble in the leveler drifted and settled. I hopped down, feet bare on the cool concrete, and stepped back.

Rafael Souza had captured on canvas his grandmother’s hands deep in dough on a wooden table. A clay pot held three limes and a knife with a handle worn smooth from decades of grip. The light fell from the left, warm and golden, catching flour dust suspended in the air above her knuckles.

I found this painting eight months ago at a community art fair in Bushwick. A folding table, a plastic chair, a painter from Guarulhos with cadmium yellow under his fingernails, and a stack of canvases leaning against a chain-link fence. I stopped walking and stood there for some time while the foot traffic moved around me.

Nobody else stopped.

I offered him the walls that afternoon. Tonight was his first solo exhibition.

"The caterer sent Gruyère."

I turned. Margaux stood behind me with her phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, one hand holding a cracker aloft like a piece of damning evidence.

Her dark bob was pin-straight, sharp at the jaw, not a strand out of place despite the fact that she'd been rearranging the hors d'oeuvres display for the past twenty minutes. A smear of something — brie, probably — marked the cuff of her black blouse.

"I specifically said aged cheddar and fig compote," she continued, biting into the cracker. "This is Gruyère."

"Is it good Gruyère?"

"That's not the point."

"If it's good Gruyère, nobody will care."

"I'll care deeply, vocally, and at length." She chewed, swallowed, and pointed the remaining half at me. "Also, the Riesling is wrong. They sent Pinot Grigio."

"Can you fix it?"

"I already fixed it. I'm telling you so you appreciate me."

I grinned. "I appreciate you enormously."

"Good. Now put your shoes on before someone important shows up and thinks we're running a meditation retreat."

I shook my head, but ignored her and walked to the back room to check on things. My gaze drifted toward the supply shelf, where I’d hidden something out of sheer cowardice.