Chapter 5 - The Opportunity They Buried
“Reconsider what?”
Karen looked down at the blue folder.
“Your place in the program.”
I felt as though someone had opened a door in a house I'd lived in for years and revealed an entire room I hadn't known existed.
“Was I actually accepted?”
“Yes.”
“Not just nominated?”
“No, Rebecca. Accepted.”
I stared at the list again.
My name was printed between two students who had gone on to become working artists.
I recognized one of them.
She'd recently completed a public installation in Denver.
For years, I'd assumed she had been more talented, more connected, or simply luckier than I was.
Now I was learning that we'd once been offered the same opportunity.
“How much did it cost?” I asked.
Karen shook her head.
“Nothing. The fellowship covered instruction, materials, housing, and meals. Families only needed to arrange transportation.”
My stomach dropped.
My father owned two trucks.
He regularly drove farther than Taos to inspect construction projects.
Transportation had never been a problem.
I gripped the edge of the desk.
“Then why didn't I go?”
Karen opened the folder to a faded copy of a program information sheet.
“Because your parents declined the place.”
I could hear a student laughing somewhere down the hall.
The sound seemed impossibly normal.
“Did they say why?”
Karen hesitated.
“Your father said you needed to concentrate on practical subjects. He believed an intensive art program would encourage unrealistic expectations.”
I remembered that summer.
I'd spent most of June working at a local grocery store.
Dad had told me it was time to learn responsibility.
I'd saved nearly every paycheck toward art supplies.
The whole time, a place had been waiting for me in Taos.
“And Mom?”
“She supported his decision.”
I stared at the floor.
There was something especially painful about learning that the opportunity hadn't disappeared.
It had been taken from me.
I hadn't failed to earn it.
I hadn't missed a deadline.
I hadn't lost a competition.
Two people had simply decided that my future should look different.
Karen took off her glasses.
“I owe you an apology.”
I looked up.
“For what?”
“I assumed they had discussed it with you.”
“They hadn't.”
“I should have asked you directly.”
I thought about the adults I'd trusted when I was sixteen.
My parents.
My teachers.
The counselors who encouraged me to apply for college.
Karen had been one of the few people who truly believed I could become an artist.
Yet even she had accepted my parents' version of what I wanted.
“Did you ever wonder why I stopped talking about Taos?” I asked.
She nodded slowly.
“I did. But you were still painting. You were applying to art schools. I convinced myself the disappointment hadn't changed your direction.”
“It did.”
I hadn't realized how much until I said it.
After being told the program was canceled, I'd stopped applying for several other opportunities.
I told myself not to get excited about things I couldn't control.
When I was accepted to art school, I worked evenings and weekends because Dad refused to help pay tuition.
I still became an artist.
But I had spent years learning to expect disappointment before it arrived.
Karen reached for the photograph of my mountain painting.
“You were exceptionally talented,” she said. “But what impressed me most wasn't your ability. It was your patience. You would work on one tiny piece of sky for an entire afternoon.”
I smiled despite myself.
“Sometimes I still do.”
“Good. Don't let anybody make you ashamed of that.”
I took photographs of the program records with Karen's permission.
Not because I intended to punish my parents.
I needed evidence for myself.
For twenty-one years, every painful memory had eventually been softened by somebody else's explanation.
They didn't mean it.
You're too sensitive.
It was just a joke.
This time, I wanted to remember exactly what had happened.
When I left the school, Ethan was waiting near my car.
He'd finished teaching his morning music classes and driven over during his lunch break.
He handed me a paper cup of coffee.
“How bad?” he asked.
I told him everything.
The fellowship.
The free tuition and housing.
The transportation.
The three weeks Karen had spent trying to persuade my parents to change their minds.
Ethan listened without interrupting.
Finally, he said, “They took away your chance to decide.”
That was it.
He understood without needing a lengthy explanation.
“I keep thinking about who I might have become,” I admitted.
He leaned against the car.
“You became someone remarkable. But that doesn't make what they did acceptable.”
I watched two teenagers carrying sketchbooks through the school entrance.
“They always told me I was choosing to be different.”
“Maybe they needed to believe that,” Ethan said.
“Why?”
“Because then they didn't have to admit they were the ones pushing you away.”
I drove to my studio afterward.
My tribute painting stood against the wall, still wrapped loosely in the white cloth from the anniversary.
I removed the covering.
The little girl in the dark window seemed younger than I remembered painting her.
I thought about the sixteen-year-old version of myself, standing beside her competition painting in a borrowed dress.
I remembered Dad taking a photograph of me near the award ribbon.
For years, I'd held onto that memory as evidence that he had been proud.
He'd even told me the painting deserved a proper frame.
But I hadn't seen the original since the statewide exhibition ended.
I'd assumed the organizers kept winning entries in their permanent collection.
I sent Karen one more message, asking whether she remembered what happened to it.
Her reply came while I was cleaning my brushes.
She said the exhibition had returned the paintings to their families.
Then she added something I hadn't expected.
My father had personally driven to collect mine before the exhibition's closing reception.
I stared at the screen.
May you like
The last sentence read:
“Rebecca, I assumed your father gave it to you.”
