Three weeks after the gala, Claire accepted a commission.
It was not a large commission. A series of illustrated pieces for a children’s hospital in Brooklyn, murals for three wards, something warm and specific and full of the kind of color that makes a difficult place feel temporarily less difficult. The hospital’s arts coordinator had found her through a friend of Dana’s who had seen Claire’s work at a small gallery showing Dana had insisted on arranging, and the whole chain of it was so quietly accidental that Claire had laughed out loud when she traced it back.
She told Nathaniel over dinner, and his reaction was one of the ones she kept without examination, the pure, unmanaged pleasure in his eyes, the way he set his fork down to give the news his full attention.
“How long will it
