The piece he’s working on is a boy and girl, startlingly similar, yet each unique. The conflict between them comes only from their eyes locked on each others’ as their hands are joined in a white-knuckled grasp. They appear to be moving forward as though the frame is a doorway, and behind them in the room they are leaving is a mirror where they are reflected in reverse, moving in the opposite direction. My heart skips a beat. It’s us.

The picture isn’t complete, but it’s his white wolf, the one that appears in so many of his paintings, tethered to a chain and being dragged from the foreground back into the drawing. A girl deep in the center holds the other end of the tether, and the wolf’s head is pivoted outward and raised in a howl of indignation. Half-completed and only in pencil, it’s still breathtaking in detail and emotion. It fills me with guilt.

As I get closer, I can see that in the cool center is a woman's face. She looks like Elena, but older. Her eyes are full of terror and a million other emotions. She is looking and reaching directly out of the painting and she's surrounded by flames. Somehow I know that the woman is his mother and perhaps this is the last time he saw her.