Jaguar (Painter Place Saga, #3)

After Gran Vanna said the blessing for the meal, Caroline spread an embroidered napkin in her lap and asked if the table was new. Her grandmother confirmed that it was a find from her recent treasure hunt with friends in a coastal antique shop. “Your Poppy Noble never tired of stargazing over the ocean, remember? This design, with the waves on the shoreline and the sprinkling of stars above, it reminded me of him. He’d like this table. As I stood there in the shop considering how it would look after cleaning it up, it occurred to me that life is like a mosaic. It’s beautiful from a distance, but when you get close, you see that everything in it is broken and mended back together. Those dark shapes had sharp edges, and on their own, they’re ugly, like our problems, or bad things that happen to us. But the artist saw them as a background that sets off the pretty pieces. We appreciate the picture, but we accept that the dark ones are part of the whole effect.”

Caroline chewed a mouthful of her dumplings, recognizing this familiar tactic. Gran Vanna was painting a word picture to communicate a life truth. It was her subtle way of comfort or counsel. Caroline sipped sweet tea with lemon before she took the bait. “Are you sayin’ that even the good things in life are broken?”

Gran Vanna swallowed her dainty bite. “Everything in this world is broken, child. This is not our real home. The original creation was cursed because the God-given gift of independence was abused, and people still haven’t figured out that choices are never made in anonymity. The ripple effect of a bad choice breaks a lot of things, including hearts. But the ensuing darkness reveals that goodness is still at work in the world, carried out by broken people. We want time to stand still so we can hang on to those pretty tiles. But then we’d be stuck there, unable to become whole, to experience the richness that makes the pretty tiles matter, to tell the story anyone finds worthwhile. The pretty pieces get whisked away with the tick of a second-hand, don’t they? God’s taking the entire mix and creating somethin’ wonderful from them—the light and the dark, the pain and the joy, the agony and the ecstasy. It all counts for somethin’ in the mosaic of life.”