Chapter 5

I couldn't sleep that night.

At 1:00 AM, my phone began buzzing continuously.

Elliott had sent over a dozen texts. The first few were playful:

"Sweetheart~ if you're mad, yell at me, just don't ignore me."

"Freda Freda Freda, at least send a silly emoji."

Then the tone shifted:

"You can't seriously be calling off the wedding over this? The invitations are already printed."

The last message was a voice note, thirty-eight seconds long.

I tapped play.

His voice was low, laced with a mix of exhaustion and genuine confusion.

"Freda, I honestly don't get what you're so angry about. My mom is just like that. She's like that with everyone. I'm not her. I have never once judged where you come from. You're my muse. You're the center of my art. Isn't that enough?"

I stared at the ceiling, leaving it on read.

He had painted me dozens of times. Last year, his piece "The Camellia" had sold for three hundred thousand dollars, and everyone in his circle knew it was a portrait of his girlfriend.

But I remembered a private gallery dinner he'd taken me to. I had worn a dress that cost me two months of savings. He had looked at me, smiled, and gently tucked a stray hair behind my ear. "Next time, let me pick out your outfit, okay? Your taste is a little... too rustic."

And last Christmas, when he drove me back to my hometown. Seeing the cracked asphalt and the run-down bungalows at the edge of town, he had rolled down his window, taking a deep breath. "No wonder you have such grit, Freda. Kids who grow up in places like this have a raw, primal survival instinct. It's beautiful."

He had said it with genuine admiration, the way an art critic might praise the rough, textured brushstrokes of a painting. But my parents weren't brushstrokes. They were human beings.