Free Wishful Thinking by Alexandra Bullen Page A

what she was happier about: the prospect of spending time with Rosanna, or the idea of an entire day without Jaime.
    “She needs you to price some pieces for the show,” Jaime added, leaning over a low, mahogany table by the door and shuffling through a tall pile of papers.
    “The show?” Hazel repeated, as Jaime lifted a heavy black binder and plopped it into her hands.
    “Tomorrow night,” Jaime said, already halfway back out the door. “Rosanna’s having an art show in town. Last year tons of people came, though I’m pretty sure it was mostly for the free food.”
    Hazel nodded and opened up the binder. Pages and pages of spreadsheets and numbers were separated by colored folders and tabs. She felt her smile fading as the tiny print blurred in her vision. More paperwork. How fun.
    “There are stickers in the pocket,” Jaime directed. “Match the numbers on the price list with the ones on the back of the canvases. It’s not rocket science.”
    Jaime swung through the screen door and started off toward the woods. Hazel watched until the girl had disappeared before dropping the binder heavily back onto the table. It was her first time alone in the studio and she wasn’t going to waste it staring at spreadsheets. At least, not yet.
    Hazel crouched on her knees by the table and flipped through a pile of Rosanna’s paintings, some finished and framed, and some on stretched canvases waiting to be mounted. There were landscapes, many featuring the farm and nearby ponds, as well as intimate portraits. But even the paintings wider in scope seemed to focus somehow on a person, a face.
    Hazel held out a smallish portrait of an older man fishing off a dock. The lines in his face were deep, and they faded into the shadow of the horizon behind his head. Hazel couldn’t believe how much expression Rosanna had captured in his dark, thoughtful eyes.
    For the first time since she’d woken up on the boat, Hazel thought of her camera. She never took pictures of people, ever. It wasn’t like she’d spent a lot of time thinking about that fact; the opportunity just never came up. Who would she ask? She certainly wasn’t going to go up to a stranger on the street. And she never thought about photography as having anything to do with the people in the pictures. She took pictures because it was the only way she knew she existed.
I was here.
It was about anchoring herself in a moment, when everything else seemed to be floating off in the distance. It was a strange, personal connection, and she couldn’t imagine anybody else ever being involved.
    But as her eyes examined the fisherman’s leathery face, Hazel couldn’t help but feel inspired. The portraits were so powerful. Maybe she should try branching out.
    Hazel leaned the fisherman back up against the wall and stood, her foot accidentally knocking a framed canvas onto its side. She lifted it up, and gasped when she realized it was a painting of Luke. He was crouching over the front end of a small sailboat, hooking a rope around a metal cleat, his jaw set in concentration. Even from the side, Rosanna had managed to highlight his dimples and the mischievous gleam in his eyes.
    Hazel quickly flipped the frame facedown and grabbed the binder off of the table. It was time to get to work. She didn’t want to be bothering with things like stickers and price lists when Rosanna came back.
    Two hours later, when all of the paintings had been priced and Rosanna was still nowhere to be found, Hazel grew tired of waiting. Jaime hadn’t told her what to do next, and Hazelwas sick of spending so much time alone. She hadn’t needed a dressmaking fairy godmother—or to go back in time and across the country, for that matter—to do any more of that.
    Hazel left the binder on the table and made her way across the lawn to the main house. She slid open the glass door to the kitchen, secretly hoping to find Emmett armed with more breakfast treats. But the house was quiet. The only sound was