“Violet, I think I should have hired a professional for this,” I say. The summer I lived here, I found a Garfield comic book in the library and promptly zipped through a comic-drawing phase. Violet and Victor were overly complimentary of my clearly plagiarized comic strip about a lazy rat who loved spaghetti, and made me believe I was a genius. Maybe Violet asked me to paint a mural because she thought I’d grow up to be more talented.

The sky in my mural looks like the sea, and the lagoon looks like . . . someone who doesn’t know how to paint tried to create a lagoon and didn’t take her time with it. I don’t have the patience to nurture the skill required for this.

When I was a kid, this room was the one and only fragment of Falling Stars I privately thought could be improved. When you tell a ten-year-old you have a ballroom, she’s going to picture the one from Beauty and the Beast. And then when she finds out the floor has shaggy peach carpeting, the windows are adorned with heavy floral drapery you’d find in a Best Western, and the piano isn’t even an old-timey-looking piano but rather an upright piano that belongs in a church—well, that child is going to be underwhelmed.

“We’ll get a proper grand piano,” I murmur, dabbing my paintbrush into a blue puddle. “Or a harpsichord. The carpet needs to be ripped out, for sure. You can’t throw a lively masquerade ball in these conditions.”

“A lively what?”

I twist on my stool, paintbrush dribbling cerulean across my skirt. Wesley needs a goddamn bell around his neck.

“Uhh . . .” I cast about for a good lie. You can’t have a ballroom and not throw a holiday masquerade ball—the idea is madness—but he needn’t know this particular event is on his horizon until the day he walks in and gets a load of me and my forty finest guests outfitted in Regency attire. Because yes, costumes are absolutely necessary. “A baseball. I want to throw a baseball.”

He raises his eyebrows. I smile with all my teeth and start estimating how much work it would be to put down a baseball diamond on the property. Everything I know about baseball can be traced back to that scene from Twilight.

Then his gaze skids onto the mural.

Okay, so it doesn’t look like an expert did it. I’m not an artist, except when it comes to flavors, icing, and sprinkles. But he doesn’t have to look at my painting like that, with his lips closed around an unspoken Hmm.

“At you,” I snap. “I’m going to throw a baseball at you, if you don’t change your face.”

Wesley endeavors to change his face. “Are you using watercolors?”

“Yeah.”

He appraises the wall as if in pain.

“Why? Does it matter?” I love watercolors. They’re so dreamy and serene.

Groaning deep in his throat, he throws his head back and walks straight out of the room.

I stare after him. “Does it matter?”

I squint at my painting, straining to view it through someone else’s eyes. It isn’t recommended. I slip back behind my own eyes again and ponder the merits of paint-by-numbers wall hangings. Would that be considered cheating?

Wesley returns with a large, rectangular plastic tub loaded with bottles of craft paint. “Whoa!” I paw through the rainbow of colors, some brand-new, some a quarter full, with rivulets of dried paint encircling the caps. “Where’d you find all this?”

“Upstairs.”

I shake a bottle of sunflower yellow. “These are fresh, though. Do you think Violet—”

“These are acrylics,” he interrupts quietly. “I think you’ll find them easier to work with.”

“Okay, great.” I squeeze some admiral blue onto a paper plate. “Thanks.”

Wesley leaves, and he’s right, the acrylics are a way better medium. The paint stays where I ask it to, thick and vibrant. I begin to hum, swishing my brush, until Wesley reappears and plucks the brush from my grasp. I frown at my empty hand, still in midair, until he prods a new brush between my fingers.

“Use this one,” he tells me, and disappears again.

But not for long.

Every time I turn around, he’s hovering in the doorway. I can’t focus while he’s doing that. “What?”

He looks like he wants to backseat-paint so badly and can barely hold it in, pressing his knuckles to his lips, other hand cupping his elbow.

“Nothing,” he mutters.

I lower my brush, which has smoother bristles than the last one and applies paint more evenly. “Come on, spit it out.”

“It’s just . . .” He begins to point, then tugs his fingers through his hair sheepishly.

“Listen, if you happen to have any tips, I’m all ears. I don’t know why Violet asked me to paint a mural. I haven’t painted since art class in high school.”

Wesley loses his hold on his restraint and drags over a chair, positioning it two feet from mine. He second-guesses the distance between us, then drags it another foot in the opposite direction.

“Are those supposed to be trees?” he asks benignly with a motion toward my green-black blobs, to which I can’t help but laugh.

“If you have to ask, I guess they’re pretty bad.”

“No! Not bad. Not at all.” Lies. “Here, try this.” He plucks two brushes with flat, fanned bristles from the plastic tub, one for him, one for me, and dips them in water. Wipes the excess carefully against a paint-stained rag. “These are perfect for coniferous trees.” He dabs his into hunter-green paint and then creates a realistic fir tree in seconds, like it’s nothing.

“You don’t always need to have your brush loaded with paint,” he says. “If you let it fade out, you end up with softer branches. Then you come back, like this, with a little bit of yellow. These brushes are handy for grass, too.” He demonstrates, barely tapping the bristles against the wall but managing to leave behind feathery strokes of yellow-green grass.