Canvas for Love

by Charlotte Greene

  After a couple of songs, I glanced down at my watch and had to stifle a yawn. I hadn’t been up this late in weeks, and I hadn’t had such a busy day in a long time. The last couple of days had started to make me feel human again, but I was still weak and easily tired. Though I wanted to stay and have a drink with Meghan, I knew I couldn’t last that long, and I still had to walk home. The thought of my bed made me yawn again, and I decided to leave after the next song. I got to my feet right as people started clapping. I grabbed my purse and started making my way toward the stairs, and then someone touched my arm. I turned and saw Emma in the crowd behind me.

  Like the last time I’d seen her, she looked sickly and worn. Her hair and clothes, normally neat and styled, were mussed and wrinkled. She looked as if she’d been sleeping in her jacket. Her eyes were red and sunken, and her face, normally open and guileless, was closed and pinched and almost shockingly pale.

  She took a step closer in order to be heard. “Can we talk?”

  I hesitated. I wanted very much to turn and leave, but Emma, like her brother Michael, had always been extremely sweet and kind to me, open and welcoming from the moment we met. She didn’t deserve to be ignored, but neither did I want to hear what she had to say.

  She sighed. “Look. I know you’ve been avoiding my calls, and I can’t blame you. And I’m sorry about last week. I shouldn’t have just shown up like that.” She gestured at Meghan on the stage. “I didn’t know who she was, but I should have known better than to assume you were sleeping around with someone.” She shook her head. “I was just so hurt…I wasn’t thinking straight.” She paused again, meeting my eyes. “But things are really bad, Chloé. I mean really, really bad.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “So can we talk? Please?”

  It took all of my resolve to nod, and even afterward, as we made our way downstairs and outside of the noisy bar, I debated about whether to renege. I just didn’t want to hear what she wanted to tell me.

  We walked down the block a little, away from the noise and the smokers. Emma took a deep breath and rubbed her face. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.

  “Do you want to come back to my place?” I asked.

  “That would be better than standing around here. Should I meet you there?”

  “I walked over, so it might take me a little while.”

  “That’s okay. I have to go tell Michael that I’m leaving anyway. I’ll see you there soon.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the brighter light of my living room, Emma looked even worse than she had at the bar. She also had a distinct odor—unwashed clothes and dirty hair. She glanced around the room as if surprised to find it unchanged. I gestured at the couch, and she walked over and sat down, her body stiff and closed in on itself. As I bustled around my kitchen making tea, I was reminded of the last time she was here with a sharp twist of pain. I had to stop and breathe deeply and evenly for a few breaths before coming out into the living room and sitting down across from her. She stared at me for a long time, her face hard and troubled.

  “Do you know anything?” she finally asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, do you know what’s happened recently? Anything at all?”

  I shook my head. “I’m still not sure what you’re talking about. If you mean Amelia, then no. I don’t know a thing about her. I haven’t seen or heard from her in over two weeks.”

  She stared at me intently, as if weighing my words, and then finally nodded. Her whole body seemed to relax a little. “I believe you. I don’t know how you could have just let her go like that, but I guess that’s what happened.”

  “She broke up with me, Emma. What should I have done? Begged her to come back?” I couldn’t keep a note of anger out of my voice.

  She looked surprised for a moment and then shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. But it does make me feel a little better. I think if you’d known about everything that was going on and not done something…” She shook her head. “But you clearly aren’t aware, so that’s better.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She opened her mouth as if to reply and then closed it, her brow furrowed. Then she shook her head again. “I’ll tell you, but first I need some answers.”

  “Need I remind you that you have been the one calling me all week? You’re the one that wanted to talk—not me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Touché.” She paused and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her legs. “But the fact is, Chloé, the things I have to say are personal, private. They should remain in the family, or at least between people who care about us. And I’m not sure about you. I don’t know if you care or if you ever cared.”

  I couldn’t stop a flash of deep anger, and I snapped at her. “Goddamn it, Emma, you probably know better than anyone in your family how I felt about her. My aunt, my friend Meghan, just about everyone I know warned me to stay away from her. But I couldn’t! I couldn’t because I loved her! You know I did.”

  “Did,” Emma said, emphasizing the word. “But you don’t anymore.”

  “Christ, Emma, what do you want me to say? She abandoned me! She said horrible things, and she accused me of terrible things—things that weren’t true at all.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “She told me I was a liar and manipulator. She said I was after her money.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  I stood up, my fury a fire in my chest. “Get out of here right now,” I said, pointing at the door. “How dare you accuse me of things you know nothing about! You don’t know a fucking thing about me!”

  She held up her hands. “Back up a minute. Maybe you’re right, Chloé. Maybe I’ve misjudged you. But can you blame me?”

  “I still don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  She stared up at me for a long time, her face a kaleidoscope of feelings, changing moment by moment. Finally, I saw tears in her eyes.

  “Please, Chloé, sit down. Just answer a couple of questions, and then let me have my say. After that, if you still want me to, I’ll leave. Okay?”

  It took me a long moment to collect myself, but I finally nodded and sat down.

  She blinked her tears away and rubbed her face again, her weariness so deep that for a moment I was moved with incredible pity for her. It was obvious she hadn’t slept well in a long time, and whatever was bothering her was clearly destroying her health.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked.

  “First of all, I want to hear your side of the story. I’ve barely gotten anything out of Amelia. She’s…well, more about that later. I want to hear it from you. Please.”

  I shared with her the version I’d told Meghan and my aunt. I described how upset Amelia had been when I’d neglected to tell her about my interview, and how worried she’d seemed to be that I was going to leave her. I told her about my meeting with Sara and admitted that, while I’d promised to wait a day or two, I should have told Amelia about the meeting long before she found out about it on her own. I went into detail about Daphne’s phone call and Amelia’s response. When I finished, Emma was looking at me with a deep frown.

  “That’s it? That’s the whole story?”

  I nodded.

  “But it doesn’t make any sense. Why would she break up with you over that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “And you didn’t think to ask?”

  “You weren’t there, Emma. You didn’t see the look in her eyes. I was afraid she was going to hit me. Or worse.” I swallowed, the memory of that expression almost too much to bear. “I knew there wouldn’t be any point in arguing with her.”

  “So you just let it go? Just like that?”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t ‘just like that,’ Emma. I was a wreck. I had something like a nervous breakdown. I don’t know what would have happened if Meghan and my aunt hadn’t been here to help me. I don’t think I would have kille
d myself, but I might have died or hurt myself out of neglect.”

  She looked at me, still uncertain, but her eyes moved up and down my diminished body. I think, for perhaps the first time, she understood how truly awful the experience had been for me. It was written on my body and spirit like a sign. Some of the distrust died from her eyes.

  “I-I think I believe you,” she finally said.

  I shrugged. “Good. It’s the truth.”

  “Still, I need to know one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Why did you believe Sara’s story? Why did you trust her?”

  I opened my mouth to respond and then snapped it shut. In that split second, the weight of my mistake crashed over me. Sara’s story, after all, made absolutely no sense, especially considering what I’d learned since. Never once had she told me that she and Amelia had been engaged, and never once had she mentioned that Amelia had sued her. If she’d left those major elements out, what else had she neglected to tell me? Had any of it been true?

  “I don’t know,” I finally said. “I don’t know why I believed her. You’re right. There’s no reason I should.”

  She nodded. “Every word out of that woman’s mouth is a lie, always has been. And what I don’t get is why you would trust her more than Amelia. Why didn’t you ask Amelia about her right away? And not just when you talked with Sara, but before? When she attacked you last fall?”

  I shook my head. There was no easy answer. “I don’t know. I was scared, I guess, to push her. Amelia doesn’t like to talk about the past.”

  Emma sighed and shook her head. “The two of you are hopeless. All of this could have been avoided if you both weren’t so goddamn scared of each other, of your feelings, that you made room for doubt and mistrust. A simple conversation would have straightened this all out.”

  I couldn’t help but doubt that it was that simple, but my own guilt now felt much heavier. For the last two weeks, I’d been baffled by Amelia’s reaction. I’d assumed that Amelia had broken off her engagement with Sara like she’d broken off her relationship with me—with no clear reason or explanation. I’d also assumed that she’d sued Sara out of some kind of petty revenge. Even Meghan and Aunt Kate had seemed to think there was more to the story, but I couldn’t see it.

  “What happened between them?” I finally asked. “Between Sara and Amelia? What’s the real story?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll answer all of your questions in a minute. I just need to be sure of something first.” She paused, eyeing me warily. “I think I know the answer to this, Chloé, so please don’t get too upset, but I have to ask, okay? I can’t trust you until I know for sure, until I hear you say it.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She fixed me with a level stare. “Did you steal money from Amelia’s company?”

  The question was so unexpected and so ridiculous, I actually couldn’t help but laugh. “What? Are you serious?”

  She nodded.

  “Of course I didn’t. Why on earth would I do that?”

  The last bit of tension eased out of Emma, and she collapsed into herself, covering her eyes with her hands. She started crying, and I got up and moved over onto the couch with her, pulling her into my arms. After a while, she moved back, wiping her eyes.

  “I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew Amelia was wrong.”

  “She thought I was stealing from her?” I couldn’t help but feel disappointed, but on the other hand, it explained a lot about what had happened. Some of the uncertainty I’d felt about the breakup was starting to clear.

  Emma nodded. “A few weeks ago, right after the birthday gala, one of Amelia’s accountants reported a significant withdrawal from one of the company’s accounts.”

  “How much money?”

  “About five million dollars.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Emma nodded. “The money was impossible to trace. Amelia hired an IT security consultant to figure it out, and then things got worse. The consultant discovered that the money had been originally moved from one of the computers at the office. Apparently the thief, whoever it was, didn’t even bother to try to hide the initial transaction. The money was sent to an offshore account and then rerouted thousands of times after that and disappeared, and, because there was no way to prove that it wasn’t Amelia herself who moved the money, she’s been forced to write it off as a complete loss.”

  I shook my head, disgusted. “That’s terrible. Why didn’t Amelia tell me about this? Where was I this whole time?”

  Emma shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “And Amelia thought it was me? That I did it? That I stole the money?”

  “Not at first. She started a covert investigation of everyone at the warehouse on the day the money was moved. She told me later she didn’t even ask the investigators to look into you. Not then, anyway.”

  “But that’s what she thinks now? That I stole it?”

  Emma nodded.

  My rage was instant and red-hot. “How could she believe that? Why would she? She knows I don’t give a damn about money.”

  Emma shook her head. “She thinks that’s all been a ruse, Chloé. She’s convinced herself that you’ve been lying to her since the beginning, and that you were only after her money all along.”

  “But it’s ridiculous!”

  “You know that. And I know that now, too. I mean, I think I always knew that, but Amelia is totally convinced.”

  “Does she have any proof?”

  She shook her head. “She only has proof by default. Everyone at the office has been cleared. No one else could have done it but you.”

  “But it wasn’t me!”

  She nodded. “Again, I believe you. But that doesn’t help matters right now.”

  “But why wouldn’t she just ask me? Why assume it was me?”

  Emma sighed. “Well, that’s the other part of this situation, and for that, we have to go back two years.” She met my eyes. “Did you know she and Sara were engaged?”

  My stomach dropped with dread again. Though it had been a week since I first heard the news, I still wasn’t used to the idea of it. I nodded.

  Emma relaxed a little. “That’s good. I didn’t want to be the one to break it to you. She swore me to secrecy when the two of you were first dating.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head. “I have my suspicions, but you’d have to ask her about that to know for sure. Anyway, I promised I wouldn’t tell. Billy told me he almost let it slip at the birthday gala, and I about killed him.”

  I remembered his troubled expression when we’d talked about Sara. I’d wanted to ask him more about her, but we’d both been distracted soon after. How different things might have been if I’d known about the engagement sooner.

  “My parents weren’t happy about the engagement,” Emma went on. “They thought Sara was a money-grubbing gold digger, and they were right. I didn’t much like her either, but Amelia seemed happy, so I went along with it. I tried to be supportive. Amelia wasn’t really talking to anyone in the family but me at the time. No one liked Sara, but I hid it better. And you know about her family—they disowned her when she came out. That much of her story was true, anyway. So she and Amelia were going to have a small wedding and not invite any parents or friends or anybody, and then things fell apart.”

  “What happened? Why did they break it off?”

  “For a whole bunch of reasons, all at once. First, some money went missing from the accounts at work.”

  My heart started pounding, and I suddenly knew where this was all going.

  “It was Sara?” I asked.

  Emma nodded. “And it wasn’t just money. She’d also been going behind Amelia’s back and selling some of the artwork on her own. She wasn’t paying the artists or the company, either—just pocketing it all. She rerouted several sales through a shell company she created in New York. She was flying up there all the time, but she told Amelia she was interviewing for
some kind of big job. When she told Amelia that she planned to move there for work, the whole thing collapsed, all at once. Amelia discovered the theft of the money and the artwork. She broke up with Sara, and then she sued her.”

  I could barely believe the depth of Sara’s betrayal. The story did, however, explain a lot.

  “Why didn’t Amelia call the police? Have her arrested for fraud?”

  Emma shook her head and grinned wryly. “She didn’t want to ruin her life. She wanted the money back, but I guess she wanted to help Sara out, too. She did love her, after all, even if it was over by then. Anyway, that’s why they settled out of court.”

  “Jesus,” I said. It was all clear to me now. I’d been doing almost precisely the same thing as Sara. I’d found a new job right when the money had gone missing from the accounts at work. Amelia had become a little distant, but she still seemed to want to believe better in me than Sara. Then, when she found out I’d been talking to Sara, her suspicions got the better of her. She thought I’d done the same thing.

  I looked at Emma. “I have to prove it wasn’t me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how you could. She had some of the best people in the field looking for that money, and they can’t find who did it or trace where it went.”

  “But if I had done it, would I still be here? In this little apartment?”

  Emma shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on in Amelia’s head. The more I think about it, the stupider it seems. But no one can convince her otherwise. She’s sure it was you.”

  We sat in silence for a little while, ruminating on the dilemma. Emma was staring straight ahead, her eyes dark and somber. I touched her hand, and she jumped a little, clearly overwrought from fatigue and worry.