The scratches of his stiff brush against the crisp canvas were the only things reminding Page where he was, what he was doing, and why he was out on the porch on a blustery summer day. Life has never been this good, but a lingering doubt in his mind nipped at the back of his head. Maybe it wasn't as good as he believed. Maybe...there was something out there. Something that might bring to light the deeper reason why a woman with a kindly face stared back at him from the canvas.

He had no idea who she was, but for some reason, he woke up earlier with the undying will to get her face into a board of white. What did he feel during breakfast? Yes, as if the face was going to vanish if he stopped thinking about it.

But, all was fair, with a painting in front of him. A painting...bearing a woman in a frilly summer dress, standing in a field of lilies. She loved lilies, judging from the animated smile on her face. Such happiness Page had never really seen in a lot of people around him. The butcher downtown resembled the emotion as much as an apple resembled a butterfly. All the housewives looked at him with glints in their eyes that Page had never really understood. Were they looking to buy his paintings? If so, he had a catalog of them in the shed.

The house attached to the porch was quiet. Empty. Page liked it that way. The wide space helped with his large-canvas projects or his action paintings. It also warded the inexplicable feeling of being trapped in a place he couldn't escape or a situation he couldn't run away from. Was he running from something? He didn't know. Lots and lots of things were that way.

He dipped his brush into the hue of light blue he mixed earlier. The sky only needed a few strokes. Then, he could do away with this painting and the woman in it as he wished. Maybe it would look a good centerpiece in Mrs. Allison's dining room. She had been hounding Page for a painting since forever. While the requests dwindled over the months, it would be shameful for Page to not indulge the woman, especially since she and her estate were part of the reason why he was able to live in a secluded hut in the prairie as he wanted.

The paint bled off the bristles and into the canvas. He made the final scratching sound before retrieving the soiled rag by his feet. To finish it...

He stood and pattered towards the drawer where he kept his art supplies. When the drawer burst out in response to his yank, a frown pulled his lips down. Wasn't this where the supplies normally were? What did he come here for again? Ah, the varnish. Finish the painting. That.

His feet thumped against the floorboards, muffled by the patterned rug he didn't remember putting there. It seemingly showed up in the living room one day, and he didn't have the heart to remove it nor, honestly, the muscle mass for it. He was a painter, not a bull herder.

Page reached the lowest drawer in the shelf. Relief flooded his gut when he saw the squeezed tube of varnish. When had it become so wrung out, though? Didn't he buy one from old Harold a few days ago? He shrugged, stalking across the living room on the way to the porch. The creaky couch pushed to the opposite wall flitted by his periphery. Something told him it wasn't supposed to be next to a potted plant on the corner. The shadows casted by the grails of the windows, the legs of the easel situated outside, and the wavy edges of the awning crept across the floorboards as if eager to latch on to his feet.

He shook his head again and made his way past the double doors thrown wide open. He raised his gaze towards the back of the canvas then paused. Really paused.

Because standing on a porch was a woman with the fairest skin, the most luscious hair, and the kindest smile Page has ever seen. Her frilly summer dress—all pinks and greens—swirled around her shins, fluttering with the loud gusts of wind blowing across the porch, the prairie, and the sky of rolling cottony clouds. She turned to him, her lips parting into a smile that was eerily familiar.

"Hello, Page," the woman said.

The tube of varnish clattered with a dull thud on the wooden floor.