Free Summer Breeze by Nancy Thayer Page A

Natalie was working something through. It had been a long time since Morgan had shared such a moment with a friend. Life was full of decisions, and exposing such personal conflicts was risky.
    “What about landscapes?” Morgan asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Have you ever thought of painting landscapes? Of painting”—she held her hand out, indicating the glowing blue lake—“all this?”
    Natalie shook her head. “I don’t know why, but landscape painting has never appealed to me.”
    “That’s interesting. Why not?”
    Natalie shrugged. She relaxed a bit, considering her reply. After a moment, she smiled at Morgan. “Why biosafety?”
    “Hmm. Touché.” Now it was Morgan’s turn to sit in contemplation. She actually knew the answer, but the full truth required personal revelation. “I’ve always been interested in safety. I love science, but it can be dangerous. When I took chemistry in high school, something lit up inside me at all the safety measures and rules we were taught. One day a girl in my lab was in a hurry and her hair caught on fire from her Bunsen burner.” Morgan shuddered. “She was all right—someone dragged her to a sink and stuck her head underwater. Her face wasn’t burned, only a bit of her scalp. But I couldn’t forget that moment. When I was in college and realized there was such a field as biosafety, I went right for it. And the more I learned about hazardous waste management, the more I wanted to work in that field. Protecting the world as well as people.”
    “Wow,” Natalie said. “That’s impressive. You must feel a huge sense of responsibility.”
    Morgan laughed. “Actually, I do, but my responsibility now is all about taking care of that little guy, which means saving for a collegeeducation and all that raising a child requires.” She gestured toward Petey, who was carefully adding sand, spoonful by spoonful, into a bowl of water Morgan had carried up from the lake. “I love my work. I miss my work.” She sighed. “But I’ll get back to it someday.” She didn’t want to stay focused on herself, and she certainly didn’t want to get into her growing dissatisfaction with her husband and his job. “So. Now you tell me. Why not landscapes?”
    Natalie tugged at the hem of her cargo shorts. “I think I’ve been a kind of gypsy artist, wandering from genre to genre. I’ve been told I can be good. Unfortunately, some of the positive appraisal has come with strings attached, so I don’t really know if it’s been the truth.”
    “You’re talking about male art instructors wanting to sleep with you?”
    “Well, you summed it up very euphemistically, thank you.” Natalie’s mouth quirked downward.
    “You’re a babe,” Morgan reminded her.
    “So are you. So are lots of women. We shouldn’t have to have sex with our teachers to get the truth.” She ran her hand through her cropped black hair, ruffling it so it stood up like a raven’s plume. “That’s not all of it, though. I mean, I haven’t been able to spend more than nine months at a time working on my art, and that’s just not sufficient. I’ve gotten scholarships at art schools over the past fifteen years, but they didn’t cover living expenses so I never could stay long.”
    Morgan said sympathetically, “That’s tough.”
    “It is. That’s why I’m determined to be disciplined in my work now that Aunt Eleanor has provided me with this amazing opportunity. No men in my life, no dating, no flirting. That always leads to trouble. Just work .”
    “You’re painting a still life now, right?”
    “Right.” Natalie exhaled. “And I don’t like it.”
    Morgan laughed. “Okay, then. What would you like to paint?”
    Natalie stared toward the lake, and Morgan watched the strain ease from her face, replaced by a dawning hope. “ That . I’d rather paint that.”
    “What?”
    “Petey. A little boy in blue shorts and a red-and-white striped shirt, pouring water into bowls, his face so