We all go mad, in one way or another. The true misfortune that befell Calvin was that the witness to his bout of insanity was his mother. It could have been worse. He hadn’t cut off his ear, or torn the wallpaper away in a frenzy. However, paint is a rather eye catching medium, so the streaks of colors painted across his face, his desk, the floor and the walls created a vivid tableau that would stick with his mother for years to come.

He could have lived another life in the time the two of them stared at each other. Maybe one where he made different choices and had ended up in a happier place. He was the first to break that silence.

“I’ll fix it. I promise.”

“Calvin, what—what’s happened?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll—I’ll clean it up.” There was nothing more he could say, and so he slowly closed the door, leaving her stunned behind it.

With mounting dread, he turned to face the room behind him. It was an ugly sight. The paint had been flooded with water, and it looked as if he had made violent brush strokes in the air, leaving faded lines across his desk and his wall. The canvases had been ripped apart; no piece left behind larger than a postage stamp. He thought that it was probably for the best. He wouldn’t want whatever he had painted, or failed to paint to set him off again.

On his hands and knees, he worked his way around the room. After he’d picked up several torn pieces, he discovered the true tragedy of what he had done. There on the floor, next to the bottom right leg of his bed was a single shred that he recognized. It was the slight angle of the cottage roof, still covered in snow, but forever separated from the rest of the structure and the skier.

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His breath caught in his throat, and he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from vomiting on the floor. It was one thing to destroy his most recent mistakes, but what about something that his younger self had treasured enough to save? His pace slowed down. Now, he lifted each scrap with a melancholic reverence. Examining each one, he braced himself for the twist in his stomach upon discovering another piece of his past torn apart by his blind rage.

It took over an hour for him to collect all the pieces. Like an archaeologist excavating his own shattered past, carefully laying each piece into tapestries on the floor. There were pieces missing, some had been stained different colors, the ghosts of his past work blotted out by the present. After all of his searching, he came to three realizations.

* The painting of the snowy cottage, the painting of the hill down the road, and the painting of the rocky shore had been destroyed.

* There was one tattered remain that was worth saving, miraculously, the section of the rocky shore that Clara had painted.

* There was no evidence of the painting Clara had done for him. No pieces of it had been found. It had simply vanished.

He spent the rest of the day cleaning the walls and his desk. The whole time, he was waiting for his mother or his father to knock on the door. It would be awkward, and as he ran a damp rag over his mess, he tried to come up with a suitable explanation. But that knock never came. When he finally finished cleaning, he saw that it was almost one in the morning.

Relief was only half of what he was feeling. The other half of him felt a type of betrayal, but it did have a clearing effect on his mind. He packed his bag, and then carried the remains of his paintings out in their corresponding box. He slipped out the back door, and dropped the whole box in the trash can outside. Then with no idea of where he was going, he started to walk.