Country Roads(100)

Julia crushed the napkin in her fists. “I don’t have seizures anymore. The doctors confirmed it. I’m cured.”

“No, the doctors believe you might be cured because you have not had a seizure. But that is because we keep you safe and away from anything that might provoke one.”

Now he was jabbing at her most vulnerable point. She had been wrapped in a protective cocoon for several years. Did she only appear to be cured? “Do you know what I’ve done in the last six days, Tío? I’ve driven myself three hundred miles in a car that broke down on the side of the interstate three miles from my destination. I’ve ridden on a motorcycle twice. I’ve swum in a river.” That was stretching the truth but she wasn’t going to tell him what she’d really done in the river. “I’ve taken long, hot baths. And”—she tossed her ponytail back over her shoulder—“I’ve ridden a horse.”

He sat silent until her last statement when his eyes widened. “Dios mío, is that true?”

She nodded. “I have another riding lesson scheduled for this afternoon. I thought you might come.”

“I—” Carlos shook his head. “I don’t know whether to be alarmed or joyful.”

“Joyful.” She managed to unclench one hand and reached across the table to lay it over his. “I was nervous, but I never felt as though I was going to have a seizure.”

“Raul will want to know about your riding. He always wanted you to have the same pleasure in horses that he did,” her uncle said, referring to his brother, her stepfather. “Perhaps he will feel joyful. As for me, I am concerned.”

Julia realized that seeing her on Darkside wouldn’t ease his concern. Maybe taking him to the stable was a mistake.

“Ma’am?” The waitress hovered beside her with the plate of crab cakes, blocked by Julia’s arm from putting it down in front of her.

“Oh, sorry.” Julia squeezed her uncle’s hand before she removed hers. As she sat silent while the waitress fussed around the table, all the pieces of her conversation with her uncle rearranged themselves into a revelation.

If he hadn’t driven her out of her comfortable bubble, she wouldn’t have done any of the things she’d just listed for him.

“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress asked.

Carlos shook his head with a smile, and she went on to another table.

“It had to happen,” Julia said, almost light-headed at the insight.

“What do you mean?” Her uncle looked up from his plate.

“I needed to grow, but not just in my art. In my life. My Night Mares are all about fear. No wonder you hated them. But my fear was holding me back, and I had to pull it out of me and trap it on the canvas.” She knew she sounded delirious. “You did me a huge favor, Tío. You forced me out into the world.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The last thing I wanted was for you to take off in an untrustworthy car without any word of where you were going.”

She locked her gaze with his, willing him to understand. “When I started to change the style of my work, you told me you didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure I liked it, either, but I knew I couldn’t go back to what I had been doing. I had to keep going in the direction I had started. As the paintings got darker, you liked them less and less, but to me, they were becoming better, stronger.” She waved her arms around, trying to pluck the right word from the air. “They came from a place inside me that I’d never visited before, a place I needed to explore.”

“A place of nightmares,” her uncle said. “Not a place art patrons want to visit.”

Julia shook her head. “I was wrong to call them Night Mares. They’re about taking risks, about facing the unknown. That’s not a bad dream. That’s real life.”

“They are not beautiful like your other work.”

“They have a different kind of beauty, one that comes from power.” Her eyes burned with tears as she remembered the days of despair when she had to force herself to go to her studio. The times when the thought of painting another pretty pastoral landscape made it impossible for her to even pick up a paintbrush. “It was a terrible time for me, Tío, when you didn’t believe in my work. I nearly stopped painting.”

Carlos’s fork clattered onto his plate. “You have a brilliant talent. It would be a terrible crime to stop using it.”

“I think it would have killed me,” Julia said simply.

Her uncle rubbed at his chest. “I never intended…you should have told me.”