Chapter 21

Painting a room was a lot harder than it looked.

The project she had so confidently embarked upon the week before now felt like an endless slog.

Pour, roll, paint. What could be so hard about that? Apparently—everything. The paint got everywhere: on the floor, the woodwork, the ceiling, her arms, her T-shirt. And when she did manage to get it onto the wall, it was uneven. The dull, dingy base still peeked through in streaky patches, and the roller left visible marks.

Also? A paint-loaded roller was heavy. Her shoulder throbbed, and her left one was still sore from the fall off the ladder three days ago.

Justin had grown bored hours earlier and was now playing outside with Marshall.

Elise briefly considered giving up—flinging the roller out the window and going to watch Justin—but Marshall had agreed to let her redecorate, and she didn’t want to fail. Painting this room had become symbolic. A metaphor for her life. And she was going to finish it if it killed her—or ruined every piece of clothing she owned.

She set the roller back in the pan and stepped back to assess her progress. Two walls down, two to go. And that was just the first coat. She already knew she’d have to do it all again once it dried. Hooray.

Then she spotted her shorts. “Oh, no!”

A large teal blob had landed on them. She scrubbed at it with a rag—already stained with splashes of the same color—then tossed the towel onto some newspaper in defeat.

“That’s it,” she muttered. The shorts had to go. She couldn’t afford to keep destroying her clothes. First her Adika shirt, then this. She stripped them off and tossed them into the hallway.

Her T-shirt followed. She was basically down to what looked like a bathing suit. She’d just have to make sure to get dressed again before Marshall came home. Neither of them needed more temptation.