Identity Crisis

by Eliza Watson

  She inhaled another deep breath. Citrus had been Annie’s favorite scent and pink her favorite color. The color of her junior prom dress. Bella tried to envision Annie in the dress. It had been a long…no, a cocktail length… The memory failed her. She slid a lazy glance over to the closet. She’d dig it out later.

  She eyed the sleeping pill bottle on the nightstand. She wanted to sleep until at least ten. She really wanted to sleep forever. She grabbed the bottle off the nightstand and shook two pills in her hand, then two more, another two, and…

  She just wanted to sleep.

  * * *

  Ethan and Olivia’s conversation with her grandma over breakfast had helped break the awkward tension between them. Now they were alone in the car, and it was more suffocating than the eighty percent humidity. She was popping gummy bears like there was no tomorrow. Good thing she’d dumped a handful in her purse before leaving the inn.

  Ethan’s phone rang, and he answered it. “Can you hold a sec?” He pulled to the side of the road. He looked over at Olivia. “I’ll be right back.” He stepped out of the SUV.

  What was up with that? He was using the same tone he’d used with Gwen, who he’d talked to in front of Olivia several times. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what was going on. He paced outside the vehicle, anger radiating from him. He kicked a stone, and it went flying. She wanted to roll down the window so she could hear what was wrong. After a few minutes, he got back inside.

  “Was that Gwen?” she asked.

  “I can’t discuss Gwen. I never should have told you about her situation yesterday. So please don’t ask me about her.”

  “Sorry. I just hope she’s okay.”

  “Well, she’s not. But I can’t talk about witnesses or my job. Ever.” He started the SUV and pulled back onto the road.

  “Can you at least tell me if she’s okay physically?”

  “Yes. Now don’t mention her name again.”

  She understood why Ethan couldn’t discuss Gwen, but she didn’t like it. Especially after he’d confided in her about Gwen’s situation yesterday. She eyed Ethan’s hands on the steering wheel, recalling his gentle touch, longing for him to hold her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze, promising her everything would be fine. It scared her how easily he’d pushed her away after nearly making love and opening up about his mother’s death. How he could control his emotions, turning them off at the flip of a switch. She wanted a relationship with open communication. The only reason she hadn’t told him about the provenances was because she feared if Mike learned about them, their safety would be in jeopardy. She trusted Ethan to do everything he could to protect her and her family, he’d proven he would, but beyond that she wasn’t so sure he could ever commit to anything other than his job.

  They pulled into Bella’s driveway. Their visit was under the premise that Olivia wanted to take another look at the sunflower painting. Truth was, Olivia had woken up feeling something was wrong with Bella. They got out of the SUV and walked past the garage, verifying Bella’s car was there before continuing on to the house. After knocking on the door several times, Olivia peeked through the lace curtains in the living room, but there was no sign of the woman.

  “Maybe she rode to church with someone,” Ethan said.

  A foreboding feeling caused Olivia’s adrenaline to kick in. “I don’t think so.” She pounded on the door. “Bella!” She put her ear to the door but heard nothing on the other side. She gave Ethan a desperate look. “Break it down or something.”

  He turned the knob, and the door creaked open. “Small-town folks are awfully trusting.”

  “Not anymore. Starting today she’s locking her doors.”

  Olivia flew inside. After sweeping through the downstairs calling out Bella’s name, she and Ethan raced upstairs. She zipped down to the end of the hallway where she assumed Bella’s bedroom was located, while Ethan poked his head in her mom’s old room.

  “She’s in here,” he said.

  The citrusy scent of her mom’s perfume permeated the room. Olivia dropped onto the bed where Bella lay sleeping in a green seersucker robe. She looked so fragile with her pale skin and white hair splayed against the pink pillowcase, yellowed with age.

  “Bella,” she said, giving her a gentle shake, but her grandma’s eyes remained closed.

  Olivia spotted a bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand with four pills lying next to it. She checked the bottle to find it empty. Her heart raced, and she shook Bella more firmly. “Wake up,” she pleaded. She couldn’t lose her after having just found her.

  Bella’s head jerked, and her eyes slowly blinked open. It took a moment for recognition to register on her face. “Land’s sake. Oriana?” She glanced over at Ethan, and concern replaced the groggy haze in her eyes. “What’s going on? Why are you two here?” She pushed herself up, supporting her back against the headboard.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sunflower painting and wanted to see it again. Your car is here, so I got worried when you didn’t answer the door.”

  Bella smiled, and for the first time, it included her eyes, which sparkled with gratitude and warmth. “That’s sweet of you, dear. My sleeping meds knock me out. I don’t hear a thing.”

  Just how many had she taken?

  Olivia glanced over at Ethan, who was peering around the room, which stood still in time.

  “Would you like some breakfast?” Bella checked the clock on the nightstand. “Mercy. It’s almost eleven. Time for brunch or lunch.”

  “We don’t want to inconvenience you,” Ethan said.

  “Don’t be silly.” Bella smiled, perking up a bit. “Always nice to have company for a meal. Not sure what I have, except eggs. Always have eggs.”

  Bella likely ate most meals alone. Thoughts of her sitting in a buffet restaurant by herself on holidays, like Gracie had, made Olivia’s throat close up and her eyes instantly water.

  “Do you have a saw?” Ethan asked. “I’ll go cut up that tree limb in the yard.”

  “That’d be awfully kind of you. Stan’s tools are still in the garage.”

  Olivia gave him an appreciative smile.

  Ethan nodded. “No problem.” He stepped out of the room.

  Bella slid her legs over the side of the bed. “Took a bath last night so just need to get dressed.”

  “I’ll be downstairs,” Olivia said.

  Ethan stood waiting in the foyer. He placed a hand on her arm, then slowly removed it, as if realizing he shouldn’t be touching her after their discussion last night. She willed him to place it back on her arm. She needed his comforting touch and strength, now more than ever.

  “I’m worried about her,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’ve had a lot of witnesses suffer from severe depression. Have talked more than one off a bridge. Literally. She has all the classic symptoms. Excessive sleeping. Too thin. Lacks motivation. Her house is a mess. There’s at least two weeks of unopened mail there.” He gestured toward a basket of envelopes on the entryway table. “And that bedroom was your mother’s, wasn’t it?”

  Olivia nodded.

  “Looks like she hasn’t touched it in twenty-four years except to clean it, unlike the rest of the house.”

  “I’m glad we came to check on her.”

  “So am I. We need to talk her into seeing a doctor or a therapist.”

  “Maybe I should tell her who I am. Give her a reason to live.” Olivia glanced up at the bedroom door. Ethan grasped hold of her arm and didn’t let go this time, as if she might make a run for the stairs.

  “Better she doesn’t know anything yet.”

  “This guy bombed the café and hurt innocent people. He likely killed my dad. What if he shows up here and hurts my family to get to me? What if that drunk kid was right last night and he’s already here?”

  “He didn’t hurt Rachel to get to you. He’s not going to hurt anyone until he gets what he wants, whatever it is. And once he gets it, he has no reason to hurt someone.
”

  Between the conviction in his voice and his determined expression, it was hard for her to not feel safe. It was also hard for her to remember that he was doing this because it was his job, not because he cared about her personally. At least not as much as she cared about him.

  “But we don’t know what he wants,” she said softly.

  “It’s obvious he’s after paintings.”

  “Which ones?” The ones that went with the provenances under her mattress, she assumed.

  “If he shows up here, we’ll set a trap for him. Make him think we have the paintings he wants.” He glanced upstairs. “We’ll talk about it later. Promise me you won’t say anything to Bella.”

  She nibbled at her lower lip, wanting to come clean with Bella. Wanting to help her get out of the funk she was in.

  “It’s for her own safety. The less she knows the better.”

  She nodded. He was right, of course.

  He gave her arm a gentle squeeze before releasing it, then turned and headed outside. Touching her arm where his hand had rested, she peered through the door’s lead glass window, watching him walk down the steps, dreading the day he’d walk out of her life forever. She swallowed the lump in her throat, shoving the thought aside. Her dad had always told her not to dwell on things she couldn’t change, and she couldn’t change Ethan and who he was. Ethan himself probably wasn’t even capable of that.

  She walked into the living room. The sunflower painting mesmerized her. The song “Pop Goes the Weasel” suddenly ran through her head. Had she and her mom been singing it while dancing around the field? She closed her eyes, muttering the lyrics, envisioning them dancing in a circle, the scent of grass and sunflowers filling her head.

  “Have lots more paintings I could show you if you’d like,” Bella said, transporting Olivia from the daydream back to the living room.

  Olivia opened her eyes. “That’d be nice.”

  “They’re above the garage.”

  They walked outside, and Olivia winced as the chainsaw roared to life. Ethan peered over at them through a pair of safety glasses, always on alert. Visions of him working around the house, mowing the lawn and doing repairs, filled her head. A stable home life would never be a priority for him like it was for her.

  Bella bent down and plucked a few dried-up petunias from the flower bed in front of the house. “Petunias are hearty flowers. It’s no wonder they’ve won so many ribbons at the county fair,” she said, almost randomly.

  They walked over to the garage and up a set of stairs along the outside. When they reached the top, Bella pulled a key from her lime green skirt pocket and unlocked the door. Interesting that she left her house door open while locking the door to a room above the garage. They entered a space filled with sunshine and paintings, mainly family portraits. An easel displayed a work in progress starting to resemble a photo of Olivia and her parents in front of a Christmas tree. The only dust in the place appeared to be stuck in the globs of dried paint on the palette.

  Olivia walked over to a painting of the three of them sitting on the porch swing.

  “I painted that for Annie’s twenty-fifth birthday. Did it from a photo. Livvy wouldn’t sit still to be painted. Used to call her a squirm worm.”

  Bella painted? Just because she’d been an art history professor hadn’t meant she had artistic abilities. Many didn’t.

  “Do you still paint?” Olivia asked.

  “Not for years. We moved to Five Lakes when Annie was in high school. Andrew took painting lessons from me. Used this as his studio. That’s how they really got to know each other.”

  “You’re very good. You should give lessons.” Bella desperately needed an interest, a purpose for living. “In fact, I could use some help. I used to dabble in painting but haven’t done much since college.”

  Bella’s gaze narrowed as she appeared to consider the idea. “Suppose I could think about it. Right now, I should probably go start lunch.”

  “Do you mind if I stay and look at the paintings?”

  “Not at all, dear. You can easily distinguish mine from Andrew’s by our signatures.”

  And by the quality of the paintings. When it came to creating original works, Bella was a much more talented painter than Olivia’s dad had been.

  After Bella left, Olivia’s gaze strolled across paintings of her family, Bella, and who she recognized as her Grandpa Stan from photos in the house. Her gaze eventually stopped on a door at the end of the sloped wall. Painted yellow like the walls, the door blended right in, except for a small handle. It looked like it led to a crawl space, possibly filled with more paintings. She hunched over and walked through the doorway into a room that wasn’t nearly as clean and tidy as the other one. Paintings filled the walls.

  Rather than family portraits, they were lesser-known works by the masters, including Pissarro and Cezanne. She walked over to a still life painting, studying its authentic appearance. She couldn’t recall ever seeing the painting, so why did it feel so familiar?

  It suddenly hit her like a punch to the chest, and she gasped, sucking in some serious air.

  Poires and Peches. Pears and Peaches by Cezanne.

  The painting’s provenance was under Olivia’s mattress at the cottage.

  Her gaze darted to a landscape painting with Pissarro’s signature. She wasn’t familiar with the work but assumed it was one of the two for which she had provenances. Bella probably had no clue that for the past twenty-four years she’d been sitting on what was now worth in the vicinity of fifty million in art forgeries.

  Her dad had painted forgeries in his studio here. Right under Bella’s nose, and she hadn’t even known it at the time.

  The door in the other room opened, and moments later Bella appeared, crouching over as she walked through the doorway. She straightened, hand on her back. “Just remembered I have to open the museum in a little over an hour. And I have to drop something off at Hilda’s first.” She shook her head. “Can’t believe I forgot that.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop.”

  Bella waved away her concern. “I’d have shown you these but haven’t showed my work in years. Haven’t actually been in this room in years.”

  “You painted these?”

  Olivia’s stomach dropped.

  Bella had been the forger in her dad’s scam.

  “They remind me of the ones at the museum. Very high quality.”

  “Andrew Donovan was my student. Suppose I rubbed off on him.” Bella massaged a nervous hand over her throat. She was a crappy liar.

  “I think you painted the ones at the museum, also,” Olivia blurted out.

  Bella looked ready to deny it, then let out a defeated sigh, her shoulders sagging as she wilted onto a stool. “You’re right. I did.” She placed a hand to her cheek. “Land’s sake. Been keeping the secret for years. Andrew made me promise never to say anything. Said it would kill Annie if we both went to prison. FBI never knew where Andrew got the paintings from. All they cared about was putting away Vinnie Carlucci.”

  This was way worse than Bella running a forgery museum. It put everything in perspective, yet the room was spinning, and Olivia felt disoriented, afraid she was about to pass out.

  Her grandma had been her dad’s partner in crime.

  She wanted to demand how Bella could have done such an awful thing. She was no better than Olivia’s dad.

  “I’ve kept you too long. I should go.”

  Olivia bolted out of the studio and down the stairs, her trembling legs nearly causing her to stumble several times. She headed across the yard toward Ethan stacking pieces of split wood against the house.

  She couldn’t tell him about Bella.

  When she’d gone online yesterday, she’d discovered Illinois had no statute of limitations on forgery. Even though Ethan had claimed he was concerned with the present, not the past, what if he couldn’t look past Bella being the forger and she was brought up on charges? And since he felt responsible for his p
revious witness’s death, he wasn’t about to do anything that would jeopardize his job. He had to play things by the book. He couldn’t afford to keep information like this a secret and become an accessory. She didn’t want to put him in that position.

  Even if the authorities didn’t pursue charges, what if the forgeries’ buyers caught wind of the story and pressed charges, wanting restitution they’d been unable to get when her dad had vanished twenty-four years ago? Her dad had gotten off the hook by giving the authorities Vinnie Carlucci. Bella didn’t have any bargaining power. Even if she wasn’t prosecuted, Olivia didn’t want her to go through the ordeal of this becoming public knowledge. She was much too fragile emotionally and physically. Olivia was horrified over what Bella had done, yet that didn’t mean she wanted her to die of a heart attack or end up in prison. No one could know Bella had been the forger.

  Or did Roger and Kate already know?

  Olivia approached Ethan, and he powered off the saw.

  “Come on, let’s go,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Bella just remembered she has to be to work at the museum.”

  “Fine, just let me finish stacking—”

  “I wanna go now,” she snapped.

  He cocked his head to the side, studying her. “What’s going on?”

  “Fine. I’ll walk to Kate and Roger’s.” She marched off.

  “Just let me put away the saw,” he called after her.

  She detoured over to the SUV and hopped in. She eyed the room above the garage, praying Bella didn’t come out. Luckily, Ethan returned before she did.

  Backing down the driveway, he peered over at her. “Spill. Why you in such a hurry to leave?”

  “Why don’t you stop playing therapist and play detective? Figure out who this bomber guy is.”

  They didn’t speak the entire way into town. She felt like a total bitch for going off on Ethan like that. And she couldn’t stand keeping secrets from him any longer, even when it was for her family’s own good. She wanted an open relationship with him, yet look at her. She was being anything but open. So, although she couldn’t tell him about Bella being the forger, she could be honest about other things. And Ethan needed to know what this guy was after if he was going to protect her family.