Chapter 102
I crossed the room in an instant.
Up close, I recognized it immediately—it was a canvas used for painting. And not just any canvas…
I hope you’ll lift your brush before us one day. Your wife, Laurea.
I carefully ran my hand over the back of the canvas. On the sturdy wooden panel, a note I had written was still there—a short message I had left when I gifted Danel the easel.
‘Now that I think about it, he never actually used the canvas that came with it.’
Had he kept it all this time just because it was a gift from me? It wouldn’t be surprising. He was the kind of man who filled this room with ordinary objects, treating them like treasures simply because they had passed through my hands.
With a light heart, I pulled away the cloth.
But contrary to my expectations, the canvas wasn’t blank. It had a sketch on it—so detailed that it could almost be mistaken for a finished drawing rather than just an outline.
It was a composition I had never seen in Danel’s sketchbooks before. The viewpoint was from above, as if looking down from the third-floor study onto the garden path, surrounded by flowers and greenery.
At the center of the drawing stood me.
In my arms, much smaller than he was now, was Ireneo.
It must have been drawn in early spring, back when he still couldn’t walk.
I traced the sketch with my fingertips. Even though it was just an outline, Danel’s affection for me was unmistakable in every stroke. I could tell he had carefully considered the expression he wanted to capture.
But the child in my arms was different.
Unlike the rest of the sketch, his face was covered in countless eraser marks, the pencil strokes underneath still faintly visible.
It was clear—Danel had struggled to complete this drawing.
‘As expected…’
I wasn’t particularly surprised. I already knew Danel struggled to love the child.
It had been that way even last winter. Back when Ireneo couldn’t even hold up his head properly, Danel and I had a huge fight.
He was still haunted by the memory of nearly losing me to a difficult birth, and he was even more adamant about not releasing inside me. Eventually, he went so far as to try creating a potion to make himself infertile—until I caught him.
‘Even if Janna hadn’t discovered the herb garden back then, I would’ve noticed eventually. If Danel suddenly started finishing inside me without hesitation, it would’ve meant he had done something.’
I could laugh about it now, but at the time, I had been so furious that my vision turned red.
The fact that he had hidden something from me again.
The fact that what he had hidden was something that would harm himself.
It was terrifying.
But Danel was afraid of me getting pregnant again. It wasn’t something I could brush off with excuses like “It was only because it was your first birth.” In the end, I could do nothing but watch as he emptied himself outside of me every time.
A man who had struggled that much could hardly be expected to suddenly love the child born from that painful experience.
Besides, he was never the kind of person who could easily share my love and affection with someone else.
Even so, I was never worried that Danel wouldn’t come to love Ireneo.
I thought of the drawing he had finished just the other day—
Ireneo standing in front of a small easel, waving a piece of charcoal, while I sat behind him. The afternoon was suffused with the almost suffocating scent of summer greenery.
I wasn’t sure if I had a good eye for paintings, but I could see the clumsy affection in the brushstrokes on Ireneo’s chubby cheeks.
Perhaps it was Danel’s way of trying to love everything that I loved.
Just as he had once struggled to love summer.
Or maybe, as he had once said, he was beginning to see more and more of me in Ireneo.
Though honestly, I had no idea what part of me he could possibly see in that tiny frowning face as he squinted at picture books.
What truly worried me was something else entirely.
Danel was never in his own paintings.
Not in the ones he painted when he couldn’t love Ireneo.
Not in the ones he painted when he began to accept him into his heart.
Not even in the sketches he made while lying beside me in bed.
I was curious.
What would a Danel, painted by Danel, look like?
That night, when he had poured all his desires into me.
The man who had held me exactly as he wanted—only to wear a devastated expression the moment he realized what he had done.
How did he see himself?
Thud, thud, thud.
In the distance, I heard the sound of carriage wheels.
It was probably Danel’s carriage.
I covered the painstakingly completed sketch with a cloth. Then, rising to my feet, I shut the door behind me—leaving behind countless traces of myself, some of which even I had forgotten.
At the mess of overturned bookshelves, I scooped up Ireneo in my arms. The library was a disaster, the floor littered with every picture book he had pulled down. Normally, I would have made him clean up his own mess.
But today, I was planning to go greet Danel with him.
I wanted to be there, waiting at the front entrance even before the carriage doors opened—so that the moment they did, I could place Ireneo into Danel’s arms.
And as we walked up the stairs together, I would pester him to paint a new picture.
The one he had been working on in the garden was finished, so it was time for a new one.
A family portrait would be best.
After all, Ireneo would be turning one soon.
Danel never refused my requests, so I was certain he would agree.
And I was equally certain that it would end up being another difficult painting for him.
Especially his own face—he would erase it, repaint it, erase it again, over and over, until he had to layer on the paint thickly just to cover it up.
But still, I hoped that in the end, he would fill the painting with love.
That he would love himself—just as I loved him.
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