“Here, sit down. I’ll show you. It’s there. I promise!” Veronica stood swiftly and pointed to the chair. When he settled in, she quickly rewound one last time and pressed “Play.”
The image staring back at them was the same as it had been for the past twenty minutes, but off to the right side of the screen, coming from where the door would be, a brief but bright flash of light. Her hand darted out and stopped the video again.
“See! In the hallway. Someone was there. I’m sure of it.” She placed both palms on the paper-covered desk, staring at the side of Officer Burdick’s face. He turned the swivel chair slowly until he faced her, frowning.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Shelton. I think it is time for me to go. If you notice anything unusual, give me a call.” He fished a crisp white card out from behind his overused notebook and held it out to her between two fingers. “Obviously, if it’s an emergency, you should call 911.”
He stood and brushed past Veronica with an air of finality and authority that seemed official. But she wasn’t having it.
“What do you mean if I notice anything? I just showed you something. That flash of light on the screen. Someone was there.” She pointed an accusatory finger at the computer. “You can’t just walk away. You’ve gotta—dust for prints or something.”
The officer shrugged, put the card back in his pocket, and then kept walking. Veronica followed him out of the room, the papers lining the walls lifting, reaching out as if they wanted to touch her, their angry whispers following her into the hallway. He didn’t stop. Instead he bypassed Sophie’s room and headed down the stairs, his boots shaking the pictures on the walls. Small and light on her feet, Veronica followed him, nearly slipping on the polished wood at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’ll call your supervisor. I’ll bring in the video. You . . . you’re gonna be in big trouble if you don’t help me . . .”
Officer Burdick stopped by the door and turned to face Veronica. She nearly slammed into his chest, the momentum that had carried her down the stairs still driving her on full-steam ahead.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t see anything in the video. Not the first time, not the second time, and definitely not the last time you went through it.” He retrieved his business card and held it out again, shaking it this time. “Take it. You can email me those video files if it makes you feel better. You can even copy it to my supervisor. His name is Captain Dan Carpenter. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Ms. Shelton. I really am a big fan.”
She started to protest again, but Burdick’s eyes had a soft, pitying quality that made the fire inside Veronica dim to a low simmer. He wasn’t going to do anything. Even if she emailed the captain—they’d probably all laugh at the quirky artistic lady and make fun of her in the break room. She took the card.
“Thanks,” she said generically. “And tell Gloria I said hello,” she added, hoping that this whole story wouldn’t end up on Twitter somewhere. He put his hand on the doorknob.
“Will do. She’s gonna be so excited to know you live in our town. She’s gonna be Mia for Halloween this year, you know.”
A warmth spread through Veronica’s chest that felt something like pride. Sometimes, working in her studio alone, she forgot that actual children loved Mia and thought of her as a real person.
“Please bring her by for trick-or-treating. I’d love it.”
“Yeah, I think she’d like that. Thanks.” Officer Burdick opened the door, and a moist rush of hot air washed over her and filled the still coolness of the foyer. He took one step out the door and then turned around so quickly Veronica took a step back out of shock. “Hey, quick question. I know I probably shouldn’t ask, since you weren’t even supposed to show me those illustrations, but—Is there a new character in this next book? I mean, I didn’t see Mia in any of the paintings, just that other little girl.”
Her forehead rippled, and she looked at the officer out of the corner of her eye. “Other girl? I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Those are all paintings for Mia’s Travels. Same characters as always. They’re unfinished, though, so maybe that’s why they feel a little different.” She wanted to add that they were due a month ago and she had at least a month’s work left, but she kept that anxiety-raising detail to herself.
“Oh, yup, that’s probably it.” He nodded and pointed at Veronica as if he’d just figured it all out. “You probably didn’t color her hair yet, ’cause all I saw was that little blond girl. Guess I’ll have to wait till the book comes out, eh?” He gave her shoulder a friendly tap and then wished her a good afternoon one last time before heading down the front steps.
Little blond girl? Veronica shook her head as she shut the front door and locked it, first on the doorknob, then the dead bolt. She was starting to wonder if Officer Burdick was even fit for duty. He must be messing with her, a quick revenge for “wasting” his time with this extended call. Preoccupied with the strange comment, she typed in the code to rearm the alarm system and headed back upstairs, suddenly wondering why Gillian hadn’t followed them down.
With slight but swift steps, she rushed up the staircase, passed Sophie’s room without a second glance, and then returned to the sanctuary of her studio. Gillian was still there but not sitting on Nick’s old chair anymore. No, now she sat on the floor, legs crossed in what had to be an uncomfortable pretzel, her purple shirt gathering up at her sides, making it look more like a tent or a blanket than a wearable garment. All around her were full-color paintings on stiff cotton sheets. She seemed lost in the magical world on those pages.
“Thanks for your concern, Gillian, but I’m going to call my mom and tell her the coast is clear. I think it’s time to make dinner and pump for Sophie and . . .”
Gillian lifted her gaze from the page in her hand to meet Veronica’s stare. “You have a real talent, you know that, right? I mean, I wish I could do anything in my life half as well as you draw.”
“Everyone has something they do well.” She brushed the compliment aside, adding silently, Like you could probably hug your baby or change his diaper.
“No, no, this is special. Everyone has small talents. This is something . . . spectacular.”
“Oh, Gillian,” she sighed, not sure how to communicate with someone so eager to be kind but also so slow to pick up social cues.
Veronica stooped down, her runner’s knee crackling, and started to gather papers. They were out of order; she could tell that right away, even without looking closely. The page numbers were added later, but she used a coding system that kept them in order and gave an official date and signature on each original. She tapped them gently with the palm of her hand and then held out the pile to Gillian so she could place the last page on the top.
“Thank you, but these are for my job, so I would feel better if we put them away for now,” Veronica said, determined to be patient with at least one person in her life. Gillian, her sweat fully dry and face cool, was returning to what must be her normal, pale coloring. She carefully placed the painting on the top of the pile.
“I’m sorry, did I overstep?” Gillian got up on her knees with a grunt after two pushes off the floor. “I sometimes do that. I’m working on it. It used to drive Carl, my ex, crazy. ‘Quit while you’re ahead,’ he’d always say.” She gave an odd chuckle as if the asshole statement from her ex were actually funny. “I’m not just saying it, though . . . I really do like your artwork, especially those. I’m going to have to look up your books at the library.” She grasped the edge of the desk and pulled herself to her feet.
“I’m glad you liked them, but these are unfinished.” Veronica finally looked down at the pages in her hands. Each stroke brought back a memory from the past six months that she had pushed and struggled through while creating these pieces.
Well, maybe she didn’t remember every stroke. In the middle of the happy woodland scene, with Paco the trusty dog sitting silently and staring at what should be her master, she saw it. Not Mia, the bright, brown-eyed ei
ght-year-old with long dark hair and a russet skin tone that Veronica had perfected after mixing and layering paints for weeks with her first book. Instead in the middle of those fantasy woods stood a small blond girl, perfectly painted and shaded, her back to the reader, hair and skirt trailing behind her, one sparkly boot lifted as if she were running.
“What the hell?” she whispered to herself and held the picture up as though more light might remove the confused panic from her chest. “Who touched my painting?”
Gillian started to say something in the background about never meaning to hurt the pictures and just wanting to see them closer because Veronica had let Officer Burdick look at them . . . but her desperate explanations trailed off in the background as Veronica took the top page off the pile and placed it in the back of the stack, revealing the next scene, a nighttime road in Paris, lined with yellow streetlights and the Eiffel Tower peeking out in the distance.
Once again, the scene was right, the dog was right, even the empty space where the words would one day go was right, but running down the road with her back to Veronica was the little blond girl, caught in a game of tag or late for her bus. The image frightened Veronica, and she wanted to make the girl stop before she fell down or got hurt.
Any sound from the room sucked out and the papers on the walls and Gillian’s near-panicked presence faded away. For only half a second, there was a flash of a memory. Her favorite rounded sable paintbrush in her hand, dipping into a mixture of yellow and brown with a touch of white to get the honey color just right. When it touched the page, the cotton fibers drank in the watery colors like the desert sand when it rained. She shook her head. That wasn’t this picture and this little girl. That memory was from when she’d been commissioned by one of her old college friends to paint a portrait of her niece for a Christmas gift. Wasn’t it?
Veronica’s pulse raced even harder than when she thought there was an intruder in her house. She pulled the Paris portrait off the top of her pile and let it fall to the ground. If she didn’t paint it, then who did? On the next page, the setting carefully constructed and painstakingly painted, blurred, and all she could see was the girl, the one the officer had been talking about.
“What in the world?” she whispered, a high-pitched whine in her ears causing her to wobble on her feet and reach for the desk to steady herself. Confused, scared, and suddenly weak at the knees, she let the pages slip from her fingertips and cascade to the floor in a fanlike pattern. Each page was beautifully painted, visually accurate, and appealing, but they had something else in common.
On every page there was a little girl running for her life.
CHAPTER 9
Veronica flipped her hair back, the blow dryer sending the nearly dry strands across her face as though she were on a photo shoot. After her Friday fifteen-miler, she’d spent an extra ten minutes in the shower, buffing and shaving all the neglected areas that might show in the dress she’d laid out for the night. It was a simple maroon shift dress made of a T-shirt material that was comfortable but wouldn’t be too out of place in Marco’s, the nicest restaurant in town and the only bar on the west side of the city that wasn’t a dive.
When her mother came home with Sophie safely in her car seat after the alarm fiasco, Veronica had decided to at least bring up the idea of going out with the waiting-room lady, especially since Gillian had sworn that she’d never tell a soul about the strange figure in all of Veronica’s paintings. The rest of the week was spent secretly painting over the little girl in her illustrations. It was going to take some time to get them all taken care of, but even more daunting than the work was figuring out a way to ignore the insanity of not remembering painting the child to begin with.
There was a part of her that said she’d tell Lisa about it, but deep down she knew she never would, because just like waking up in the car with it running or the dreams of her wandering through an endless maze of hospital hallways, screaming, all of this made her look crazy. Her last appointment with Lisa had ended with an emotional breakdown. Next appointment she had to go in with some sort of explanation for escaping that sounded strong and not as weak as she felt. And all this drama was not the way. When she was trying to convince her mom that therapy was useless, she’d come upon a study that said 80 percent of people in therapy lie to their therapist, little white lies to make themselves look better. At the time, Veronica thought it was ridiculous to lie to the one person who was paid not to judge you, but now she got it. She wanted Lisa to like her and be proud of her, and more than anything, she wanted her therapist to think she was normal.
And tonight “normal” was what Veronica was going for. Her shoulder-length bob was easy to style, and after a few turns with the round, metal brush in the heat of the dryer, she was almost ready. A light coat of foundation, the broad swipe of shimmering eyeshadow, a quick dash of eyeliner and mascara, and she was ready.
The dress slipped on in a wave, smooth and comforting against her moisturized skin. She stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, which hung on the back of her bathroom door, and the woman who looked back at her was almost pretty. No, to be fair, she was pretty. The last time she wore this dress, Nick had put his hands around her waist and let the palms of his hands trace the swell of her hips. He had kissed her neck and whispered, “You are so beautiful.” Back then she believed it.
Tonight she didn’t feel beautiful, but she could believe that the petite blond woman in the mirror was pretty, and once she added a long silver necklace and pair of nude heels, she almost felt guilty at how amazingly new she felt. It was a lot like when she’d bought the formula: she knew she had to do it, she knew it would make Lisa and her mother proud, she knew anyone looking in from the outside would say it was “healthy” and “good,” but deep down it still felt like a betrayal. The only way she was going to get out of the house today was to keep moving and try not to think about it.
On her way downstairs, she stopped and listened at Sophie’s closed door, afraid to open it and ruin her chances of leaving the house tonight. The whoosh of her sound machine penetrated the wood, and Veronica put her hand against one of the panels and closed her eyes. Would she ever touch her baby again, carry her in her arms, kiss her flushed cheeks while she cried? She imagined walking into the nursery and running her hand over Sophie’s wispy baby hair, dreamed of how it would tickle her palm and comfort her sleeping baby.
Veronica’s eyes opened slowly as an idea sank in—maybe that was the answer. On Tuesday, she’d talk to Lisa about attempting to touch Sophie while she was sleeping. It was the first time in a long time that she had some sort of plan for making progress with Sophie. Until this point she’d focused on the few things she felt comfortable doing for her, like providing milk and buying supplies and watching to make sure she was safe while she was sleeping, but today she had a goal for actual interaction with her baby, and it wasn’t her mom’s idea or even Lisa’s; it was Veronica’s.
She’d keep the thought to herself for now; in fact, she’d probably wait a while to tell her mom, even if she was successful. The less pressure the better. Besides, Barb could live off the high of getting her daughter to leave the house after 6:00 p.m. for at least a month. That would give Veronica plenty of time to test out “Project Sleeping Baby.”
Veronica pushed off the door silently and held on to the railing as she descended the stairs, still finding the raised shoes awkward after months of gym shoes and slip-ons. The clack of her heels against the wood floor brought her mother out of the kitchen. In her pj’s already—a pair of cutoff sweatpants and a shrunken tank top—Barb put a hand over her mouth and made a choking sound.
“Oh, sweetie, you are so beautiful.” Tears gathered in her mother’s eyes, and Veronica tried to push away the flash of enjoyment at having her mom be proud of her for once.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, wishing she’d worn flats or a little less lip gloss. She didn’t want to look as though she was trying too hard. Even if it was
taking all her energy to hold it together, she didn’t want anyone to pick up on that. When her mom sniffed and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye, Veronica had to turn away, getting embarrassed. If she didn’t leave soon, she might lose her nerve.
“I have an extra bottle in the fridge so you don’t have to touch the ones for tomorrow, but if you need more . . .” She paused, remembering what Lisa said about taking a deep breath if she felt panic starting to build inside her. “You can always use the formula if you feel like you need to.” She distracted herself by collecting her phone and the tinted ChapStick on the counter and tossing them into a small handbag she’d kept stored in the hall closet for far too long.
Her mother tried not to smile in the background, as if she were going to pretend this was just a normal night out on the town and she was the babysitter. But Veronica knew her too well. Barb was holding back tears again, just like when Veronica had brought home the formula.
“I’m not going to stay out too late, but don’t worry about waiting up for me.” She tossed the thin strap on her shoulder and dared another look at her mother, who was leaning against the counter. She had no more tears but was still unable to remove the silly grin from her face.
“You stay out as late as you want. I’ll hold down the fort.”
“It’s only one drink, Mom, and I don’t think Gillian is exactly the party-animal type. I’ll be back before midnight, I’m sure.”
She nodded silently, raising her eyebrows. “You do know how to call an Uber, right?”
“Ma!” Veronica snagged her keys off the counter and tried to keep her own growing smile hidden. “How do you even know what an Uber is?”
“How out of touch do you think I am?” Barb waved at her daughter. “I’ll call you an Uber if you can’t figure it out.”
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