Safe In His Arms. Kay David
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She didn’t have the emotional strength to fight with her friend and that’s how the conversation would turn out because Anise didn’t want her or Madelyn to come back. She wanted to be by herself and went straight to bed after talking to Donna even though she didn’t expect to sleep. She dozed restlessly when things were going well. Tonight she’d do nothing but stare at the ceiling and replay the events of the day.
She closed her eyes and pretended regardless. Sometimes she could fool herself into a short nap.
It took less than a minute to realize that wasn’t going to happen.
Behind her eyelids, the images came fast and furious, a slide show running amok. Everything that had happened from Kenneth easing into their booth on time to his final, dying gasp replayed itself behind her shuttered gaze. She tried to stop the visions from coming, but realized her efforts were pointless.
She got up, threw on her robe and went into her studio.
In the streetlight filtering through the windows everything looked just as it had earlier when she’d left to go meet Kenneth. The worktable was strewn with pieces of broken glass and lengths of wood. At her painting station by the window, brushes soaked in glass jars while tubes of paint littered the tabletop. Beside another window, her drawing easel stood ready. She’d half expected a tornado-like path of destruction to greet her.
She tightened her belt and walked slowly to her stool and the pad of paper propped up before it. Before she started a project she always sketched it out, the concept flowing from her brain to her fingertips without much conscious thought. She picked up the pencil and looked at it, her mind drifting back to her childhood. There had only been the two of them. Anise had no idea who her father was, and her mother hadn’t had contact with her family for years. Mother and daughter had been incredibly close. Her mother had seen her talent early. When she’d hardly been able to feed them, she’d encouraged Anise with sets of colored pens and bordered papers. “Someday you’ll be a famous artist,” she’d predicted. “Your pretty pictures will hang everywhere—in fancy houses and important museums. You’ll be legendary.”
Anise hadn’t known what legendary meant but from the shine in her mother’s eyes when she made the pronouncement, Anise had known it was a good thing. Too bad her mother hadn’t lived long enough to see part of her prediction come true. Anise was well-known in the art world and her pieces were displayed in “fancy houses.” She wasn’t legendary, though, and she didn’t do “pretty pictures.”
Any desire she might have had to do that had vanished the night her mother died. After she’d been pulled from the closet where she’d hidden, Anise had begun to see the universe differently than she had before. It had changed, just like the skin on her palms. It was full of danger and scary things and situations that could go wrong. If you weren’t careful enough, you could die. People died every day. They left and you had to cope all by yourself.
From that point on, she’d been another person and no one, except Sarah, had even known she changed because no one else had known her that well before. She looked three times before she crossed the street. She wore a cross and the Star of David. She guarded her emotions and her body and most of all her heart. That’s why she’d married Kenneth. She hadn’t loved him so she’d thought it might be safe. Her plan had worked for a while, but then she’d come to care for him. In return, he’d wanted more of her and she hadn’t been able to give it to him. Now he was gone, too.
She sat down on the stool, with only the streetlight for illumination. A pattern of leaves from the pin oak danced across the tablet before her and her pencil drifted over the paper trying to catch the design.
When the sun came up, she was still drawing. The doorbell brought her out of the trance and her eyes shot to the clock that hung between the windows on her right. It was seven.
BISHOP STARTED TO CURSE. He’d told her he would call first but he hadn’t had the time; now he was standing on Anise’s front porch with ten dollars’ worth of fancy coffee and she wasn’t answering her door. He’d left last night with the impression she wanted to be by herself but maybe she’d changed her mind—or her friends had changed it for her—and she’d gone to spend the night with them after all. He wouldn’t have wanted to be alone if he had gone through what she had. But a moment later, the door swung open.
She wore the same thick robe she’d had on before, her hair pulled back from her face, no makeup on her skin. Nothing was different about her but she looked smaller in the morning light, less in control. Her expression was startled—she’d clearly forgotten he was coming over.
“I’m sorry I didn’t phone first,” he said. “I got busy. But I did bring coffee….”
“No…no, it’s fine.” She looked at the Starbucks cups in his hand and held her door open wider. He stepped inside the house he’d left only a few hours earlier and handed her one of the coffees.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “But thank you anyway.”
“I thought you could use the extra caffeine.”
“I never went to sleep,” she said. “So I didn’t have to wake up.”
He understood now. “I can come back later if you’re not ready.”
“No, that’s not necessary.” She smoothed her free hand down her ponytail. “If you don’t mind waiting, I can be ready in ten minutes. I know you need to get into Kenneth’s office.”
Once again, she managed to surprise him. He would have taken her for a woman who needed hours to get dressed. It took his ex ten minutes to even prepare her face to put on her makeup.
“That would really be great,” he said.
“I can’t be gone all day,” she warned. “I have a lot to do.”
“Ms. Estes can drive you back. I want us to ride together so I can tell you on the way about the headway we’ve made.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Did you cat—”
“No, nothing like that,” he said. “But we’ve gotten a few leads.”
She spoke over her shoulder as she left the room. “I won’t be long. Make yourself at home.”
He’d been hoping she’d say something like that.
Sipping his coffee, he looked around the living room he’d only passed through the night before. The area was nicely decorated but it could have been a hotel lobby. It didn’t seem lived-in. There were no personal photos or travel mementoes or knickknacks of the sort people usually picked up during a lifetime. Hoping to learn more about who Anise really was, he made quick work of the kitchen and dining room, then headed down the hallway that went the opposite direction from her bedroom. From outside he’d guessed it was her studio and when he stepped inside, he saw he’d been right.
He realized something else as well. The rest of the house served its purpose but here was where she really existed.
Windows lined every wall. In the past this had been someone’s sunroom, a place to retreat and view the garden and sip iced tea. The comfortable couches and hooked rugs he imagined were long gone, though. Brick pavers lined the floor and worktables filled the space. He took another sip of coffee and walked to the nearest one. It was covered with scraps of wood and fabric. A tiny plastic doll was propped up at one end, a miniature snake lying beside her. He stared at the bits and pieces and wondered how it all went together. Then something on one of the other tables caught his eye. He put down his cup and crossed the space to look.
It was a shallow glass box, about ten inches wide and twelve long. The lid, also made of glass and framed in wood, was smeared with something that obscured the contents.
He lifted the top and peered inside. Lined in red velvet, the box held a collection of tiny objects, none bigger than his thumb, dividers creating three distinct areas. One part held a diminutive bed with a tiny painted chest beside it, one held a small black table, and in the third sat a piece of paper cut like a heart with a ragged