Read Online Return by Karen Kingsbury - Free Book Online

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 he 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. JeanClaude 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, 46
    s m a I I e y
    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 with Landon in his uniform and Cole looking like he’d found the greatest treasure in the world. It did belong in a museum, didn’t it? On a wall between the works of other great artists.
    Landon had followed his heart to New York City to fight fires, to the place where his best friend, Jalen, had begged him to come. After September 11, Landon knew Jalen was among the missing. But it took him nearly ninety days to find Jalen’s body in the pile of rubble at Ground Zero. After that, Landon’s dream changed.
    “One year in New York,” she could hear him telling her. “I’ll do what Jalen would’ve wanted me to do and put in a year.” What was it she’d spent a lifetime saying? That she wanted to
    be a famous artist, have people line up to see her paintings and barter over who would pay thousands of dollars to take one home. She shifted her gaze and took in one painting after another….
    She’d taken digital photographs of each and catalogued them on a computer file.
    It was all there, wasn’t it? If she wanted to make it as an artist, why was she hiding her artwork in her living
    49 room? Was that what God meant by working at it with all