Out of Focus #SYTYCW15 Top10 Finalist! [COMPLETED]

18| Shopping Spree

A date. She'd accepted Marshall's invitation to dinner, ignoring all the logical warning bells cautioning her not to be so stupid. Reckless. So why hadn't she listened?

For the next two nights Eva was tormented with dreams worthy of a clichéd romantic comedy gone awry. An anxious, neurotic mess, Eva did what she did best when pushed to the limits of her emotional tether.

Digging in the dirt, weeding and tending to her vegetables and flowers, always levelled her mood. And her head. Gave her time to think and mull and, if needs be, forget all together. And in the rare cases when that wasn't enough, she baked.

With muffins already in the oven, elbow deep in her vegetable patch, Eva sang under her breath. Enjoying the process of tending and weeding. Of nurturing, and helping things grow. The tomatoes were coming along nicely. The Brussels sprouts were just about ready for harvesting and the rainbow carrots in another week or so.

As she laboured Skittles and Wiggles loped around her, Hailey's girl, Selena, dozing under the dappled shade of an evergreen. By mid-morning the mess in her head was beginning to clear to soft, distant white noise. In fact, Eva was almost certain she'd entirely overreacted.

Garden watered, the teasing smell of sweet chocolate chips and banana drew her back in to the kitchen. Sliding a tray of muffins out of the oven, she tested the batch with a knife and decided they could use perhaps a minute longer.

Returning the tray to the center rack, she turned off the temperature; leaving them to finish up in the residual heat.

She checked in on Payton and Lucy, enjoying cartoons in the living room and could hear Hailey cloistered in her room, anxious about landing a lead role, running through lines for My Fair Lady

She'd shown such dedication, Eva mused. And over the last couple of weeks Eva had seen a change taking place in her eldest daughter. At first she'd agreed to allowing Hailey to join with the hopes that it would give her an emotional outlet. A way to express and vent her pre-teen emotional angst. She'd never expected that Hailey would develop such a...passion and liking of the dramatic arts.

Carting her mug in one hand, a bowl of cereal in the other, Eva tucked herself in her home office. Laptop fired and ready, she dove into the latest cache of images captured over the last few days with Marshall on the mainland. Contrary to what she'd expected, having him around had been...entertaining.

And insightful.

More than once he'd helped draw her notice to an engaging moment or a pleasing angle. For all his faults, he had an intriguing eye. A keen observer. Further illustrated in his recent article.

She'd read it three times and each time it touched her differently. Deeper. The man had a gift. A way with words. Layering emotion with text the way she did with light and subject.

Beautiful. Poignant.

He could probably write a damn computer manual and still turn a reader into a blubbery, emotional mess. And true to his word, he'd cast the light everywhere else but on her. Bringing front and center the limited edition piece she'd crafted specifically for this feature.

Eva had brought him in for his opinion on which image to roll with, and ultimately his reaction had mirrored hers.

It was a black and white of an older gentleman. Shocking white hair and trimmed beard against the swarthy complexion of his south Asian heritage, the darker spotting of age over the curve of his cheeks. But his eyes, red-veined against milky white orbs, were harrowing.

So much life. And so much pain.

They'd sat with him for two whole hours. Riveted by the life this man had lived, the stories he'd shared, travelling all over the world in honour of the wife whom had been the light of his life before her untimely sickness and death.