Paige wrote the time in the margin of her book.

“I’ll call the hotel group right now and confirm.”

By two o’clock in the afternoon, the bright June heat had settled over the studio floorboards, bringing the smell of damp pine and watercolor paint from the back worktables.

Rowan sat on a tall swivel chair near the south window, her small digital wristwatch chirping once on the hour as she lined up a clear plastic T-square against a sheet of heavy grid paper.

Beside her, June dipped a fine horsehair brush into a small glass jar of water and washed a soft sea-green tone across a cardboard material board for the library reading nook.