Tilda sniffed the carton. “Dump it. Is his sense of humor yours?”

“Not really.” Nadine poured the milk down the sink and rinsed out the carton. “But I’m keeping him anyway so don’t preach. When did you know you wanted to be a painter?”

“I didn’t.” Tilda reached over her head to get the peanut butter down. “I was told I was going to be one. Don’t change the subject. If you’re not laughing with him-”

“But you’re really good at it,” Nadine said.

“Yeah.” Tilda shoved the silverware around in the drawer but could only find a butter knife. She held it up. It looked like a palette knife. Bleah. What the hell, it would spread peanut butter. “That was just a lucky break,” she said, slamming the drawer shut.

“But you like it,” Nadine prompted.

Tilda picked up the peanut butter and began to unscrew the lid. She was starving. A little lousy sex the night before could really lower a woman’s blood sugar.

“You do like it, right?” Nadine said.

“I used to,” Tilda said. “Yeah, I like it.”

“You used to.” Nadine leaned against the cabinet. “But not anymore.”

Tilda shrugged. “It used to be fun. Learning to paint. And then painting the furniture.” And the Scarlets. She unscrewed the jar lid the rest of the way, slowly. “I think the murals are getting to me. Like the one in Kentucky?” She shook her head. “Have you any idea how awful van Gogh’s sunflowers look blown up ten times their real size behind a reproduction Louis Quinze dining room table? It was a crime against art.”

“So are you going to quit?”

“No.” Tilda’s toast popped, and she picked it out with the tips of her fingers, trying not to get singed. “We have a mortgage to pay off and the murals are doing it.”

“But you don’t like it,” Nadine said. “So how long before you can quit and be happy?”

“If I keep doing one every two weeks?” Tilda stabbed her knife into the peanut butter. “Oh, fifteen years or so. When your mom gets her teaching certificate next year, that’ll speed things up. And the Double Take’s doing better.”

“Fifteen years. You’ll be forty-nine,” Nadine said.

Tilda frowned at her. “How did we end up on murals instead of Burton?”

“I have to choose the right career,” Nadine said. “I don’t want to get stuck doing something I don’t want to because the family has to eat.” She looked at the peanut butter jar. “I don’t mind supporting them, but it has to be something I like.”

“You don’t have to support them.” Tilda handed her the first piece of peanut butter toast. “I’ve got it covered.”

“Well, you can’t do it forever,” Nadine said. “Let’s face it, I’m up next.”

“No.” Tilda stopped in the middle of spreading the second piece of toast. “No you are not. You do not have to-”

“Keep Mom and Dad and Grandma from the poor-house?” Nadine said. “If not me, who? The Double Take barely pays for itself. Teachers don’t make that much. Grandma hasn’t done anything but Double-Crostics since Grandpa died, and the Finsters aren’t selling. You’re going to be nuts from doing murals by the time I’m out of high school. It’s me.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Tilda said seriously. “Nadine, really. You are not going to-”

“It’s okay,” Nadine said. “I want to. But it has to be something I like. I don’t want…”

“What?” Tilda said, knowing she wasn’t going to like what was coming next.

“I don’t want to be as unhappy as you are,” Nadine said. “I want to still be laughing when I’m thirty-four.”

“I laugh,” Tilda said.

“When?” Nadine said.

Tilda turned back to her toast. “I laughed at Buffy the Vampire Slayer last Tuesday. I distinctly remember chortling.”

“I like singing,” Nadine said. “And Burton ’s band is good, even Dad thinks so and he doesn’t like Burton. And Burton ’s good to me. So I’m thinking that might be the way I can support us.”

“You picked Burton because you want to make money as a singer?” Tilda shook her head and picked up her juice glass and toast plate. “I’d think about that some more. Listen, I have to go downstairs and get ready for next week’s mural. Can you take Steve?”

“Sure,” Nadine said, looking down at Steve’s furry little head. “He can watch me get dressed.”

“Close your eyes, Steve,” Tilda said. “Oh, and if you see Davy, will you tell him that the notes about the rest of the paintings are in the top desk drawer there?”

“Sure,” Nadine said. “Rest of the paintings?”

“You don’t want to know,” Tilda said and headed for the basement, balancing her glass on her plate. She stopped in the doorway. “Nadine, I’m not unhappy.”

“Yeah,” Nadine said, clearly humoring her.

“Right,” Tilda said and went to work.

DOWN IN THE BASEMENT, Tilda flipped on the light in her father’s studio and noticed for the first time how the white walls and cabinets gleamed back at her, glossy and sterile. “This place looks like a meat locker,” Davy had said when he’d walked into her white bedroom, and now, looking around the spotless studio, she could see his point. Monochromatic white was a great look for a studio full of paintings, not so good for empty rooms. Maybe she’d take a week off and paint a jungle in the attic, thick green leaves that covered her walls and headboard, only this time, no Adam and Eve, they were too hokey, she’d paint a jungle for Steve to hide in.

Then she shook herself out of it. She wasn’t going to have a week off for years, and when she did, she wasn’t going to paint a jungle, that was for kids, Nadine would paint a jungle. No, she’d paint the walls a nice light blue, maybe some stars on the ceiling, maybe some clouds on the walls, too, so she could sleep in the sky…

That was ridiculous, too. Time to get practical. She put her breakfast on the drawing table, went to the drawers along the side of the room, and pulled open the one marked “19th Century.” Flipping through the prints stacked there, she found one of Monet’s water lilies, coming soon to a bathroom wall in New Albany. At least the Impressionists didn’t take nearly as long to forge as the Renaissance painters, so maybe she would have time to paint her room week after next. Maybe yellow. With her kind of sunflowers lining the walls, only with real suns for heads…

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said out loud. She was not going to paint sunflowers in her room. She laid the print on the table, put Melissa Etheridge on the stereo, and turned on the lamp clamped to the edge. It cast a clean white light, nothing to taint the colors in the print, and Tilda began to eat with one hand and make color notations with the other, concentrating on the job at hand, the one that made the money, while Melissa sang “I’m the Only One.” It was a good job. She was her own boss, and she got to paint, she liked to paint, she’d spent fifteen years building a rep as a great painter. Of mural-sized forgeries.

Life could be a lot worse. She could be dependent on somebody else, she could be answerable to a boss, she could have to pretend she liked somebody in order to eat, that would be hell. She was lucky.

She looked at the print in front of her and thought, I hate Monet. And then she went back to work.

THREE BLOCKS AWAY, Clea sat at the breakfast table, tapping her fingernail against her coffee cup. It was the closest she could come to throwing the damn thing at Mason and still project loving warmth, the kind of woman he’d want to face over the breakfast table for the rest of his life.

“Could you stop doing that?” Mason said over his paper.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Clea said, pulling her fingers back. “I was thinking.”

“Don’t,” Mason said and went back to his paper.

Not good. Not good at all. First she’d had to spend the entire evening sitting in that ratty little art gallery watching Mason get all excited about old papers with Gwen Goodnight. Then Davy Dempsey had shown up, and worst of all, when they got home, Mason had said he was too tired for sex. Something had to be done.