Dreams of painting. Regrets about choices she made. Loneliness she never confessed. Longing for Paris she never saw. Love letters to Lucas, the man she let go.
In one journal, a photo of a watercolor she had painted: a woman standing alone in a garden. On the back, she had written: “Me, before I disappeared.”
She had been an artist. A dreamer. A woman who lost herself to duty, to appearances, to bitterness.
I spent hours reading, tears dripping onto the pages. I finally saw the woman behind the cold exterior. She hadn’t hated me. She had hated the reflection of what she once was, staring back at her.
A New Beginning from Her Legacy
Weeks later, inspired, I submitted one of her paintings to a local art show under a pseudonym. To my astonishment, it was accepted. People called it “quietly heartbreaking.”
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