After I Threw Away My Sketchbook, I Became the Gallery Star Chapter 08

After I Threw Away My Sketchbook, I Became the Gallery Star Chapter 08

Mam shut her eyes tight and drew a deep, shuddering breath.

The cold logical reasoning drilled into her over decades as an academic finally kicked in—yet this time, it sliced straight back to tear her own heart apart.

She and Dad dissected every detail with clinical clarity: Rachel’s years of quiet suffering and hopelessness, Catherine’s unending greed and manufactured innocence, and their own blinding stupidity and selfishness

spanning a full decade.

“It was no accident.” Mom opened her eyes, her gaze sharp as a blade. “You acted intentionally. You grew

used to trampling her dignity to win our favor-and we blindly let you use us as accomplices.”

“Mom-”

“From today forward, no art supplies outside absolute basics will be purchased for you. You will coordinate every detail of your upcoming exhibition with curators entirely on your own.”

Mom turned toward her home study.

“Every logistical task Rachel once handled for you, you will learn to complete yourself. If you cannot manage the work, there will be no more painting for you.”

Catherine crumpled to the hardwood floor and wailed at the top of her lungs, her tantrum echoing through the empty house. For the first time in her life, no one rushed over to soothe her tears.

Life without endless special treatment became a drawn-out torment for Catherine.

In the home art studio, she stood frozen before an unfinished oil painting, brush suspended mid-air. The base coat she should have pre-mixed hours earlier sat muddy and unusable on her palette.

Rachel had always finished all tedious prep work long before Catherine even rolled out of bed each morning.

Mom pushed open the studio door, clutching two new tubes of paint.

“Mom.” Catherine glanced up, voice thick with hurt. “You bought the wrong shade. I needed cobalt blue-

this is ultramarine.”

Mom stared down at the paint tubes in her palm, brows drawn tight with confusion. “The labels look nearly

identical to me.”

“They’re worlds apart! The starry sky background will never glow bright enough with this!” Catherine

hurled her paintbrush onto the table in frustration. “I can’t paint anything at all without Rachel around to help me!”

Mom’s body went rigid.

Over the past month, she’d attempted to take over all the “menial labor” she’d once dismissed as meaningless busywork for Rachel: cross-checking paint stock numbers, scrubbing stained palettes, coordinating with custom framing shops.

Every tiny, overlooked task drained hours of her energy. She’d once dismissed Rachel’s endless behind-the-scenes labor as unskilled, trivial busywork.

Now she understood: those overlooked logistics formed an unbreakable safety net. It had propped up Catherine’s fraudulent reputation as a child art prodigy-and sustained the perfect, polished image the Wright household presented to the world.

“Then go purchase the correct shade yourself.” Mom set the paint tubes on the worktable. “Learn how to

source supplies accurately the way Rachel always did. Stop relying on others to fix every small mistake for

you.”

She turned and exited the studio, weighed down by bone-deep exhaustion.

Inside the study, Dad sat hunched over his laptop, staring at a comprehensive expense spreadsheet he’d compiled by transcribing every entry from Rachel’s journals.

Numbers didn’t lie. Over ten years, the family had poured a total of 3.2 million dollars into Catherine’s art

lessons, travel, supplies, and luxuries. While Rachel’s household expenses, beyond basic food and shelter during her childhood, tallied to nearly zero for the decade after she turned ten.

Every impulsive expensive craving Catherine voiced had been covered by Rachel’s freelance earnings.

Even the imported painkillers Mom needed after her minor surgery had been paid for with money Rachel

earned selling original design commissions.

Dad locked his eyes on the glaring zero closing out Rachel’s expense column and slapped his own face hard.

“What have we done?” He buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking, voice cracking with sobs.

Mom pushed open the study door. Seeing Dad’s broken state, her own eyes flooded with hot tears.

“I reached out to every contact I have on the art association board,” she rasped. “I found out where Rachel’s working now-curatorial assistant at an independent gallery in New York.”

“We’re going to get her back.” Dad shot to his feet abruptly. “We’ll drive there right now and bring her home.”