She stared at the painting in front of her. Hanging there on the wall of her kitchen, it reminded her of the last time she picked up her paintbrush. The last time she felt the freedom of releasing the lively colours. She looked at the interpretive painting, accentuated with smears of red stretching across the canvas. The last time she saw Beau. In his little red fire truck rain boots.
The painting is dated. December 10.
She sat there, trying to feel something, anything except the numbness that had so easily welcomed itself. She should’ve known something was wrong when she dropped him off in kindergarten that day. Mother’s intuition. She gripped her hair, pulling as if the pressure might release the tears from her aching face, worn with the fatigue of several restless nights. It was no one else’s fault but her own. But getting angry had only brought her to the brink of insanity. Listlessly, she released the strands. Her heavy-lidded eyes roamed the small yellow kitchen, still unused to the bare walls that once held her gallery. December 10.
Her attention was redirected by the ringing of the phone.
“Jo?” JoAnne remained silent at the sound of her husband’s voice.  Despite that, since the shooting, he was used to her silence, he pressed on apprehensively. “Have you eaten since I left?”
Her lack of acknowledgment elicited a sigh. The disconnection that she felt from him now was a constant reminder of her failure. She couldn’t help but hear his voice and wish it was her baby’s instead. The echoes of the gunshots heard that day replayed in her head as her mind attempted to revisit the events of that afternoon. She put the phone down in exasperation, not caring enough to hang up. Tears clouded her vision as she moved forward, giving in to her impulsive movements. She inhaled, as if the air would help lift her to the balls of her feet like Beau had done so many times before, trying to reach this wall. She took hold of it. The painting’s heavy weight shifted onto her shoulders as it separated from the wall where it had hung for six months. December 10.
Selling her paintings had been one of her greatest joys. Beau by her side, they would walk down the path of their community and deliver her paintings door to door to their neighbors who adored them. Beau was her little delivery man. He loved surprising their friends with the lively pieces of art, making sure to point out that he was a painter as well. They were a package deal. His little six year old hand in hers, both splattered with the shades they had worked with an hour before.
Now, walking down that same path, JoAnne carried the large red painting towards her neighbors house alone. As the door opened, the air began to grow thick. Mrs. Jones disregarding the painting, embraced JoAnne.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” JoAnne’s face remained motionless, her eyes not leaving the ground next to her.
She managed to pass the large painting through the doorway.
Mrs. Jones cautiously held on to the painting, her eyes surveying JoAnne’s for any sense of an explanation. The wrinkles set beneath her features creased as she noticed that for the first time, JoAnne’s hands were not decorated with paint.  
“Oh no, hun, you can’t stop” she pleaded.
JoAnne turned, slowly walking down the path to her house, leaving a saddened Mrs. Jones in the doorway, gripping the last painting she’d ever receive.
Disappointed, JoAnne spotted her husband’s car in the driveway. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want therapy, she didn’t want to be told that everything was okay. It wasn’t. She couldn’t paint this away. Nothing could make her paint but her little boy.
Walking into the house, her eye was drawn to a small box on the cluttered countertop that wasn’t there before. Her heart hammered against her chest as she saw the corner of a page sticking out of the small brown box. A date, December 10. With shaking hands JoAnne pulled it out, careful not to rip the fragile paper. It was his, a painting.
The painting. Her mind brought her back to the afternoon he had hid it from her eyes.
“ It’s not finished, mum, don’t look!” Beau had said, running off to his room in excitement, paint still dripping off of his page.
And now here it was.  A painting of a family, but not just theirs. A small child with his mom, arms outstretched, holding a piece of art? JoAnne’s heart swelled as much as the tears in her eyes. It was them giving their paintings to the neighbors. She looked up at the bare yellow wall where the red painting had been. Looking down once more at the large scribbled caption on her son’s painting, she whispered his words: “ my mommy makes people happy”, she picked up her paintbrush and began.