“Really? Why?” Stella thought back over the many signs she has painted for her mom’s flea market sale, trying to remember if she’d painted that phrase on a sign already. It seemed very familiar.
“It gives people the idea that all pain has a purpose. Or worse yet, that all pain and suffering has a happy ending waiting just on the other side of it. But I experienced pain and heartache. I went through the rain and came out on the other side, but—” Georgia looked around sarcastically, lips pressed into a thin line. “Does it look like it’s stopped raining to you?
“I run a business I love, and I have family and friends many people would kill for, but I still haven’t seen my husband once since he left months ago.”
Stella gasped. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. But you know what? I’m also relieved.”
“You are?”
Georgia took a deep breath and smiled softly to herself. “Yes, because I’m moving on. I have someone in my life I really, really like. Some days, I still sit on my bed and cry over what I lost, but then I get up, get ready, and go about my day. Pain, recovery, and progress aren’t linear. It’s less of a march and more of a jazz square—a constant reworking and renavigating as you go. Life changes and people change. Not all rain ends in a rainbow, and sometimes the most vibrant rainbows of all happen while it’s still raining. The trick, I think, is that rather than focusing on getting through the rain, we should all learn to dance in it a little bit.”
The phone at the front desk rang at that very moment, and Stella was grateful because she was seconds away from crying.
Jace going off to college wasn’t the same as being left by your husband, not by a long shot. Children were supposed to leave the nest. They were supposed to outgrow you and go into the world on their own. Stella should have been thrilled for Jace, and she was, but she was also devastated for herself.
Maybe that’s what Georgia meant about rainbows sometimes appearing in the middle of the rain. The good and the bad can be complexly intertwined, and right now, Stella needed to figure out how to focus on the good. She needed to figure out how to dance in this rainstorm rather than be swept away in it.
“What are you interested in?”
Georgia’s question was innocent, so Stella answered without much thought: “I like to paint.”
Suddenly, Georgia was pulling canvas, tubes of paint, and bags of brushes out of a storage closet behind the kitchen.
“I bought all of this thinking I could do a painting class with the guests—you know, try and have some more activities—but turns out you need painting experience to teach people to paint.” She laughed and shoved supplies into Stella’s arms. “Now someone can make use of all of this. Please. I should have gotten rid of this stuff two years ago when my experiment promptly failed. Though I’m glad I didn’t because now you can have it.”
Now, Stella sat in front of the canvas on the back porch, a cup of coffee in one hand and a twirling paintbrush in the other.
She hadn’t painted seriously in years. And even then, it wasn’t serious. She’d pulled out a canvas once or twice a week for a few months while working on the painting that now hung above her dining room table. It was an abstract floral piece with bright flowers crawling up the canvas and green vines dripping down from them. She liked it, but she’d only painted it to avoid paying hundreds of dollars for something similarly sized online. No one else would ever want it.
Stella stopped, the paintbrush stilling between her fingers. The question Georgia had asked was what Stella did for fun. Not for profit or purpose—for fun. When did everything start to need a purpose? What did it matter if her painting was terrible, so long as she had fun painting it?
With her newfound energy, Stella put down her coffee, dipped her brush in the glob of yellow paint on the wooden pallet Georgia gave her, and began to paint.
She was only playing at first, trying to remember how paint moved over a canvas and figure out how much water to add to loosen the texture without the paint becoming too thin. Soon, however, the painting began to take shape. Her spot on the back porch was lovely. The green lawn sloped away from the back of the inn, moving toward a rocky path that stretched to the water’s edge. It was nearing midday, so the sky was bright blue and clear, but Stella imagined the view at sunset. She painted cotton-candy clouds and rays of light as soft and bright as a baby duck’s feathers. The grass and trees were turquoise with blue and purple leaves, and even the rocky path was soaked in the imagined sunrise, rocks breaking through pink dirt in shades of blue—cyan, teal, and indigo.
The painting was a practice in disconnecting, in turning everything off for a moment, because Stella didn’t realize time was passing at all until a voice behind her nearly made her jump out of her skin.
“Holy smokes!”
Stella yelped and spun around, splattering drops of paint across the deck when her paintbrush flew out of her hand.
Tasha was standing behind her. She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you; I just had no idea you were a painter. Well, I suppose I don’t know much about you, but if I had this kind of talent, it would be the first thing I told people.”
Stella’s heart was still racing, but she smiled. “I’m just having fun. I
