Chapter 9 - THE RESIDENCY
Six months later, the yellow farmhouse outside Milwaukee looked different.
The sagging front porch had been repaired with solid oak beams. The kitchen cabinets had been refinished, retaining their vintage charm while featuring clean, modern hardware. Down in the orchard, the apple trees were in full bloom, white and pink blossoms drifting like fragrant snow across the green grass.
Grandma had fully recovered from her surgery. She walked without a cane now, her blue eyes as bright as ever as she tended to her lavender beds near the sunroom.
The Mercer Foundation for the Creative Arts was officially inaugurated in May.
We converted Grandpa’s old studio and the adjacent barn into four bright, fully equipped workspace units for emerging illustrators, writers, and painters. Every summer, four artists from around the country were awarded fully funded three-month residencies, complete with living stipends provided by the foundation's endowment—an endowment funded partly by my own book royalties and grants secured through Richard Vance’s firm.
My sister Paige visited on a Saturday morning in June.
She walked through the renovated barn, looking at the large canvases resting on easels, the smell of oil paint and fresh pine wood filling the air. She was dressed casually in jeans and a sweater—a stark contrast to the sharp corporate suits she always wore to holiday dinners.
“It’s incredible, Jonah,” she said, standing beside me near the open barn doors. “Derek told me last week that he still can’t believe you turned down a developer’s two-million-dollar offer for the land.”
“Two million dollars would have built a few cookie-cutter suburban houses that would look outdated in twenty years,” I said, watching a hawk soar high above the orchard. “This place will create art for the next hundred years.”
Paige smiled—a genuine, warm smile that I hadn't seen since we were children.
“You know,” she said, looking down at her shoes, “I was jealous of you for a long time.”
I turned to her, surprised. “Jealous of me?”
“You knew what you loved,” she said quietly. “You didn't care if people laughed or thought you were weird. You just kept drawing. I spent ten years chasing corporate promotions because I thought that’s what made a person important. But half the time, I hate my job, Jonah. I sit in meetings all day wondering why I’m working eighty hours a week for a company that doesn't even know my middle name.”
“It’s never too late to change what you’re chasing, Paige,” I told her.
May you like
She looked out toward the farmhouse where Grandma was sitting on the newly repaired porch, drinking coffee from a classic ceramic mug—no plastic capsules in sight—with my mother sitting beside her, laughing as they snapped green beans into a bowl.
“Maybe not,” Paige said softly. “Maybe not.”
