Chapter 85: Family Photo

When Martha made that request to him earlier, Matthew was, understandably, caught off-guard.

He had expected her to ask him to paint still-life or landscapes or perhaps a portrait of her, but in the end, she asked him the last thing that was ever in his mind.

“Can you draw the three of us in a photo, looking like a family?” she had asked, in the softest voice he had ever heard her say.

Matthew didn’t know if Martha was aware of this, but he wasn’t very good at painting portraits — rather, people in general.

He liked to watch sceneries in real life and draw inspiration from them, casting them onto the canvas in various shades of color. He liked to stand before a table with a fruit bowl nearly arranged at the center and copy it on a painting. He liked to see a haphazard room with various objects strewn everywhere as though a hurricane had left them that way, and then try to replicate the scene on the canvas.

He did not have the same passion for people. He had tried to paint portraits or