She appears in my dreams. My nightmares too, and sometimes I even see her where there isn’t anyone at all. I couldn’t tell anyone, that was the worst part. What would they do when they found out I was crazy? Would I be locked up with rats and the sickly smell of sewage waste?

Momma told me that’s where my crazy cousin went. I couldn’t be locked away, no matter what. To contain what was left of my sanity, I took up painting. So a year and a half later, I sat in the studio, still perfecting details on the one thing I could paint well. Her.

I was in the studio, resisting the urge to throw a solid punch at the canvas. All that time painting the woman who would always haunt me, and I still couldn’t get the nose right.

Ella walks in, her apron splattered with dry paint. “Hey, someone is here for you.” She disappears from the doorway, and a woman walks in.

I almost drop my palette in shock. It’s her. She was here, neither in a dream, nor hallucination. She was real flesh and blood standing in front of me. The closer I looked, I realized that it wasn’t the right person. She was almost the same as the old lady haunting me, but her hair was a lighter shade of brown, and she was younger, with less wrinkles. She didn’t look like a raisin as much as the old lady did.

“Hello, can I help you?” I ask shakily. Even if it wasn’t the same person, she still freaked me out. It was her eyes. They were similar to the old lady’s, a blue so pale they almost looked white.

“Yes, I came to ask if you could paint a picture of my mother. She died about a year and a half ago.” She reaches into her purse to grab a photo. When she shows it to me, my heart skips a beat. This is the old lady’s daughter, and I could tell there was something more that she wanted from me.