Die Before I Wake (16 page)

Beth had been a painter. A very good one.

I scooched down beside Sadie, tugged the canvases out from behind the boxes, and went through them, one at a time. They were all landscapes, vividly colored, masterful in their use of light and shadow. These works of art would have held their own in any modern art gallery. They were exquisite, Beth’s legacy to the world and to her daughters.

They should have been proudly displayed for the enjoyment of other people. So why had somebody hidden them up here?

“Your mother painted these,” I told Sadie. “Do you remember seeing them before?”

She solemnly shook her head. “They’re pretty,” she said. “My mom was a good artist, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said. “She was.”

“Can I have them in my room?”

There might be some good reason why Beth’s artwork was up here, gathering dust and fading into obscurity. On the other hand, didn’t her daughters deserve to have something of their mother to look at?

Something to inspire them and give them comfort?

“Pick one,” I said. “We’ll dust it off and hang it in your room. The rest will have to stay here for now.” After a great deal of deliberation, Sadie ended up picking the first painting we’d looked at, the one with the cows and the distant barn. We rewrapped the rest in the sheet and carried the painting downstairs to clean it. Under the kitchen sink I found a soft brush. I gently dusted off the canvas and wiped down the frame with a damp cloth. Then we carried it back upstairs and hung it on the wall in the girls’ room.

Sadie and I stood for a long time, drinking it in, before we pronounced it perfect. Then, hand in hand, we headed downstairs for lunch.

We were just finishing our tuna sandwiches when the phone rang. “It’s me,” Claudia said. “I’m calling to extend the proverbial olive branch. I’m hoping you’re not still mad at me. Or if you are, that I can bribe you with chocolate. I just made the most incredible triple fudge layer cake, and I need help eating it. I beg of you, save me from these calories that threaten to destroy me.”

“Chocolate,” I said. “My biggest weakness. I’d love to come over and help you manage those calories. But I have Sadie with me.”

“Bring her. Dylan’s been asking when she was coming over again to play. We’ll pop a movie in and park them in front of it. They’ll be quiet for hours.”

“What about the chocolate you-know-what? Tom doesn’t like her to eat—” I turned away from the kitchen and whispered into the phone,
“S-U-G-A-R.”

“Sugar!” Sadie shouted gleefully.

At the other end of the phone, Claudia laughed.

“Busted,” she said. “Nice try. Give the kid a break.

It won’t be the first time she’s eaten cake at my house. What Tom doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” I hung up the phone and began clearing the table.

“Get your raincoat and your boots, Lady Sadie,” I said. “We’re going visiting.”

Dylan was a robust, handsome child, with rosy cheeks, a thick head of dark, wavy hair, and lively brown eyes. He met us at the door and immediately spirited Sadie off to another area of the house.

Maybe the sugar thing wouldn’t be an issue after all.

“What a cutie,” I told Claudia. “I bet in a year or two or five, the girls will be lined up at his door.”

“Yes,” she said, taking a cake knife from the kitchen drawer and slicing through several layers of dark chocolate. “Unfortunately for everyone involved, my son takes after He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken Aloud In My House. Including the part about the girls. Too bad I didn’t realize that before I married the turkey.” She licked chocolate icing from her finger. “How big?”

“Oh, about half the cake will be just about right.”

“Don’t tell me. You’re one of those alien creatures who can eat anything and not gain weight.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“I hate your guts.”

“I’ve heard that more than once. But you’re not exactly
zaftig
yourself. I doubt one piece of cake is going to hurt you.”

“I’ll take that in the spirit in which it was meant.” She set a dessert plate holding a huge slice of cake in front of me. “Forks are in the drawer to your right.

Thanks for the compliment. But believe me when I say I’ve worked like a stevedore to maintain this body.”

From my stool, I leaned, slid open the drawer, and pulled out two forks. “Nobody would ever guess.”

“I run five miles a day, lift weights, and do Pilates three times a week.”

I handed her a fork and dug into my cake. “You certainly do seem to have plenty of energy. You must burn the weight right off.”

“It’s worth what I have to go through. I used to weigh three hundred pounds.”

I stopped, forkful of cake halfway to my mouth, and gaped. “You’re kidding.”

“I am.” She grinned and popped a bite of cake into her mouth. “But the look on your face was price-less.”

“You really are a bitch.”

“Thank you. Seriously, though, I have to watch my weight. I was chunky as a girl. I’ve been fighting fat my entire life.”

“You’re definitely winning the battle.” I took another bite of cake. “How come you didn’t tell me Beth was a painter?”

Claudia slid onto the stool next to mine. “You never asked.”

“Clever answer. Sadie and I were in the attic this morning, sorting through my junk, and she unearthed some of Beth’s paintings. They’re really good. I can’t imagine why anybody would store them away in a dark corner of the attic.”

“I couldn’t say why. I knew she painted.

Everyone did. She was really prolific, and she’d started getting some recognition for her work. Six months before she died, she had her own one-woman show at a gallery in Portland. If she’d lived, I suspect she’d have made a big splash on the art scene once she got discovered.”

“It just seems a shame that the family would hide her work away, instead of displaying it.” I thought about what Claudia had said. “If she was so prolific,” I said pensively, “then where’s the rest of her work?

Sadie and I only found a half-dozen paintings.”

“Damned if I know. She sold a few, but I don’t know what happened to the rest. There’d probably be a couple hundred of them.” Claudia saw the look in my eye, and lifted a hand as though warding off an evil spirit. “Oh, no,” she said. “We talked about this, right? Repeat after me: I will not obsess about Beth Larkin. I will not obsess about—”

“I’m not obsessing,” I said, taking another bite of cake to prove my point. “I’m just curious. I really like her work, that’s all.”

The kids wandered into the kitchen then, looking for chocolate cake. Claudia talked them into having sugar-free frozen fruit pops instead, and we dropped the subject. But I didn’t forget it. I tried. I focused on everything but Beth. That night at dinner, I kept my mouth shut and listened to what Tom and his mother discussed. After dinner, I played Parcheesi with the girls, letting Taylor claim victory. I super-vised baths, read the girls a bedtime story, listened to their prayers. But all the time, my mind was on Beth Larkin’s artwork.

And the contents of those cardboard boxes.

 

Eight
“You have to see this, Jules. It’s the most amazing security system I’ve ever seen.” Tom had spread the brochure out on the breakfast table, and he was leaning over his plate of egg beaters, devouring the fine print with a fascination I suspected I wouldn’t share. It must have something to do with that Y chromosome; even a man with Tom’s advanced education found gadgets endlessly captivating. I, on the other hand, lacking that crucial chromosomal distinction, had never found hardware or electronic doodads to hold my interest for longer than, oh, say, three or four seconds.

Trying to disguise my utter lack of interest behind a sleepy yawn, I said, “Oh?”

“This little gem,” he said, rapping the brochure with a knuckle, “contains a complex GPS system combined with an alarm so sophisticated that if somebody so much as brushes against your car, it’ll go off.”

“What happens if
I
brush against my car?”

“It comes with a remote control unit that goes on your key chain. You disarm it the same way you lock and unlock your doors. If anybody comes sneaking around the yard in the middle of the night—”

“Vandals, burglars, the neighbor’s cat—” He fixed me with one of those disapproving husband stares. Because I’d been married before, I recognized it immediately. Every husband carries that stare in his arsenal of weapons. Even so, I was impressed by how well Tom carried it off. He was a virtuoso of disdain. “Don’t be that way,” he said.

“This is important. The alarm will keep people away from your Toyota, and the GPS will prevent you from getting lost again. Plus, it includes 24-hour live access to on-call security advisors. You’ll love it, I promise. I’ve made an appointment to have it installed next Tuesday.”

“And how much will that cost?” I skimmed the fine print, saw the price, and whistled. “A little steep, don’t you think?” And a little over the top, but I declined to mention that.

Disdain gave way to righteous indignation. Pointing his index finger at me, my husband said, “You can’t put a price on your safety.” I dug into my bowl of blueberries, which were on the Thomas Larkin, M.D., list of approved breakfast foods. Lifting the spoon, I said, “There is that to be considered.”

“You’ll thank me, Jules. Believe me when I say it.” Tom glanced at his watch and said, with some irritation, “Where the hell are the girls? We have to leave in ten minutes and they haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”

I knew they were up and dressed; I’d witnessed it with my own eyes. Normally, Jeannette would have rounded them up by now, but she had an early shampoo and clip, so she’d already left for work. I set down my spoon. “Should I go up and—”

“No.” He shoved his chair away from the table.

“I’m done anyway. Finish your breakfast. I’ll go.” I picked up the brochure and, in the absence of more stimulating reading material, idly perused it while I ate my blueberries. Why I would need some fancy-shmancy high-tech auto security system, I couldn’t imagine. Tom was becoming, to say the least, overprotective. Another word for it would be fanatical, but I really didn’t want to go there. I was thrilled that he cared; I would have been even more thrilled if he’d cared just a tad less. Did my husband have control issues? I hoped not, because I have a tendency to become claustrophobic without much provocation. I don’t do well with restrictions. Telling me what I should and shouldn’t eat for breakfast was one thing; although he was serious about it, I took his recommendations with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But if Tom started telling me what to do in a more generic fashion—more so than the average husband might try, that is—the result wouldn’t be pretty.

I was taking a bite of English muffin when I heard the commotion. It sounded like the voice of God, accompanied by the furious wailing of a little girl.

“Stay there,” Tom ordered.

“But, Daddy—”

“You heard me,” he said grimly. “Stay put!” I raised my reading glasses, tilted my head as his hard, angry footsteps descended the uncarpeted stairs. They continued down the hallway, growing louder and more pronounced as he approached the kitchen. He reached the doorway and stopped, his breath coming in hard little gasps, his face flushed scarlet from his hairline to the starched white collar of his dress shirt. In his hand was Beth’s painting.

The one I had hung in Sadie and Taylor’s room.

“What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?” he said.

“Eating breakfast?”

“Don’t toy with me, Jules. You know what I’m talking about. How dare you go behind my back and defy me this way?”

“I didn’t
defy
you. I just—”

“I expressly tell you that I don’t want the girls to have any reminders of their mother. And the instant I turn my back, you hang this, this—” So furious he couldn’t find words, so red of face that I feared a stroke was imminent, he brandished the painting as though it were a dead rat. Some vile, disgusting Thing. “If you don’t call that defiance, then I don’t know what is.”

“Who the hell are you,” I said, “and what have you done with my husband?”

“Stop being cute. This isn’t the time or the place for frivolity.”

Frivolity?
My temper, which I’d so far managed to keep under wraps, lit like a roman candle. “You know what?” I said. “Those girls of yours have lost their mother. They have nothing—
nothing
—of hers to remember her by. It’s possible that you mean well, Tom. I really want to give you the benefit of the doubt. But you don’t have the right to take her away from them. I don’t even understand why you’d want to. She’s their mother, for God’s sake.” I ran a hand through my hair, realized that at some point I’d gotten up from the table and was now pacing. “Do you realize that after my mother left, the only comfort I had was the few reminders I had of her? The photos, the books, the—”

“This isn’t about you, Jules.” He’d grown cold, and somehow his silence was worse than the yelling.

“And it isn’t about you telling me how to raise my daughters. I thought we’d already clarified that, but it looks as though you need a reminder.”

“Maybe you’re the one who needs a reminder.

How about a refresher course on being civil to your spouse?”

“You can’t go around undermining my authority!

You’re setting a terrible example for the girls. How are they supposed to understand that I’m the head of this household when my own wife doesn’t even acknowledge it?”

“For the love of God, Tom, what century are you living in? Women stopped being men’s chattel about the same time as we got the vote. And as far as setting a good example, how do you think it looks to the girls, you rushing in here and reprimanding me like some naughty child? Is this what you want them to think marriage is all about? You could at least have the decency to scream at me in private, where the girls can’t hear. Because you can be sure that they’re upstairs right now, listening to every word that’s coming from our mouths!”

He opened his mouth to speak, glanced toward the ceiling, and clamped his jaw shut. “The painting goes back to the attic,” he said in a cold, distant voice.