Chapter Twenty Six

Kaya.

I was dreaming. At least, I thought I was. I was back in Texas, standing in the center of my art studio, staring at a huge canvas that was larger than anything I had ever worked on before. There were flowers everywhere, I hate flowers! everywhere. Red roses. Yellow roses. Irises. Carnations. Daisies and mums. So many flowers that they were even in the painting, hidden in the lines of a woman’s dress, the angles of a man’s jaw. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen.

Why were there so many flowers in my art studio. Everyone knew I hated them, but somehow they were all I could see and smell.

And then it changed, the room itself becoming larger, brighter. There were skylights, the kind I had always wanted in my studio, and gorgeous built ins that were big enough to hold all the paints I could ever use. My studio had metal shelves that had come in a box from the local WalMart.

I didn’t understand where I was or why I felt heaviness in my chest when I looked around. It was all