Free Lost & Found Love by Laura Browning Page B

seen so far of my painting of you?” she whispered.
    “The sketches are incredible,” he acknowledged.
    Tabby shifted and worried her lower lip. “You saw the other painting, right?”
    “The one that looked like Dante’s vision of hell.” Joe stared at her intently in the waning light. “The one you tore up.”
    “Yes. Joseph, I don’t paint pretty pictures. Every artist has an eye—I guess you’d call it. For writers, it would be their voice. What you saw on the easel that first day? That’s my voice. It’s been my voice my entire life, and my father made me pay the price for that every day I lived there. “
    Joe took her hand in his again. She couldn’t mask its trembling. “Tabby, I believe we are all given gifts, like your art and my singing, and it’s up to each of us to choose how we use those gifts. What I believe is wrong is to deny what God gives us. If your muse inspires those paintings, then there must be a reason for it.”
    Tabby felt like a door had opened in front of her, but it was so hard to take that first step. She stared into the warmth of his blue, blue eyes and wondered if she was about to lose something precious before she’d even held it in her hand. “I can’t change my art,” she whispered. “It’s part of me, and I have to get it out on canvas.”
    “Is that why I heard you crying that one night?” Joe asked.
    She nodded, realizing now she hadn’t fooled him. “Yes,” she replied, then rushed on. “As long as I can remember, I’ve had the most fantastic images in my head and the overpowering urge to get them on paper. What I didn’t understand then was how regimented everybody seemed to be about what was appropriate for children to draw.”
    “This sounds a little like that Harry Chapin song.”
    Tabby tilted her head. “What song is that?”
    “‘Flowers are Red.’” Joseph hummed the tune, but Tabby had never heard it and shook her head. He sang the refrain. “Flowers are red young man/ Green leaves are green/ There's no need to see flowers any other way/ Than the way they always have been seen….”
    He stopped and laughed a little self-consciously. “It’s a story of a little boy who goes to school. He draws with all sorts of colors all over his paper, but because his colors don’t fit everyone’s expectations, he’s punished and forced to conform. Eventually, he stops seeing things in his own unique way.”
    He reached over and took her hand. “Is that what everyone tried to do to you?”
    She nodded. He understood. For the first time in her life, she felt like someone actually got what it was that drove her.
    But the fact remained. He was a minister. People had expectations of him.
    “It’s okay, Tabby,” he reassured her.
    “I didn’t understand what was wrong to begin with. Between the school thinking I was some sort of psychotic mess and my father believing I must be in league with the devil to draw such dark images, I began to feel I was defective.” She took a deep breath. “My father thought I was evil. He brought the preacher and all the deacons to pray the demons from me. It started when I was six.”
    His arm tightened around her shoulders. “When did it stop?”
    She ducked her head. “When I was twelve. When I hit puberty. I think they just decided I belonged to the devil, or maybe I finally convinced them they’d succeeded in purging my demons. I had become adept at hiding what I considered to be my ‘real’ art. I did the standard landscapes and pottery projects at school, like everybody else.”
    “Just like that little boy?” Joseph turned his head, a slight, understanding smile on his face as he gazed at her.
    “Pretty much. So the minister and the deacons quit coming by each week, but that didn’t stop my father from dragging me to church. No one would sit near me. None of the other children were allowed to play with me or even talk to me. I guess their parents thought I would corrupt them or contaminate them in