Silver Linings

Toward the end of our relationship, he just could not handle my success at all.”
    “Did you understand him? What he was going through as he saw himself slipping slowly into obscurity?”
    “It was hardly my fault he couldn't write anymore,” Ariel retorted.
    “I know, I know. Forget I said that.”
    Ariel nodded willingly enough. “Hugh, of course, never did understand me. Not at all. He was really just a sort of wild fling for me. I don't know how on earth I managed to get myself engaged to him.”
    “Probably the same way I did,” Mattie observed. “By fiat. Hugh has a way of taking command.”
    “Yes, I know. It's very annoying, isn't it? However do you tolerate it, Mattie?”
    “Sometimes I don't,” Mattie said, thinking with a sense of pride of how she had won the battle over Flynn's sleeping arrangements last night. And she had won it, by God. She had actually made Hugh Abbott back down. Even better, she had dumped cold water on him this morning. She was definitely showing signs of genuine spirit, Mattie decided.
    “Well, you're certainly welcome to him, although I still think you're making a big mistake.”
    “Thank you,” Mattie murmured.
    “Damn. I've gone and offended you again, haven't I? And the truth is, I came here to apologize, Mattie. I made an absolute fool out of myself this morning on the phone, and I want to tell you how sorry I am for screaming at you.”
    Mattie felt her brows climb. Apologies for an outburst from Ariel or any other member of the family were rarer than hen's teeth. In the Sharpe clan temperamental explosions were considered normal. Nobody except Mattie ever got upset over one.
    “Don't worry about it, Ariel,” she said gently. “It was perfectly understandable. I'd have made the same kind of fool out of myself if I'd quarreled with Hugh and then discovered he'd spent the night at your place.”
    “Thank you, Mattie. That's very generous of you.”
    “All right, you've apologized and I've told you to forget it. You knew I would. So what do you really want from me this morning, Ariel?”
    Ariel sniffed into the tissue again. “You think you know me so well, don't you?”
    “Well, I have known you all my life,” Mattie reminded her, smiling.
    “You've really had to put up with a lot from me over the years, haven't you?”
    “It wasn't that bad,” Mattie said, feeling a little wary now.
    “Sometimes when we were growing up I'd feel guilty about it, even though I knew I had no reason to feel that way, of course. I mean, it wasn't my fault I inherited talent and you didn't was it?”
    “Of course not.”
    “I used to wish you'd find something you could really excel at so I wouldn't have to feel so damned sorry for you. You worked so hard trying to prove yourself at so many things, and they were all disasters. Remember the year you determined to become a ballerina like Grandmother?”
    “Don't remind me. I limped around for weeks from all that work at the barre.”
    Ariel smiled. “And then there was the time you were so sure you could become a great artist like Mother. You used to sit up until three in the morning practicing your drawing. You never could do a proper nude, could you?”
    “Never got much past fruit,” Mattie admitted. “And then there was that year in college when I was certain I was going to write, just like Dad. You don't have to remind me of that, either. Ariel, what's the point of all this?”
    Ariel heaved a dramatic sigh. “It's hard to put into words. It's just that, maybe because you tried so many things and failed before you started this gallery, you learned something the rest of us never had to learn.”
    Mattie studied her, remembering all the depressing years of failure. “Just what is it you think I learned?”
    “I don't know.” Ariel waved the hand with the damp tissue in it. “How to cope with normal life or something. How to take risks, maybe. How to try and fail and then be able to accept the failure and go on to something else. None of the rest of us ever had to do that, you see. We always knew we had talent. It might have made us a bit neurotic at times; we might have had to struggle to master it or sell it, but we always knew deep down we had it. You've never had that kind of inner certainty.”
    “Well, I definitely floundered around for years getting my act together, I'll admit that much.”
    Ariel blew into the tissue. “But all that floundering made you more adaptable or something. More understanding