Chapter Four
Gemma
I trudged home, my emotions shot. But I’d been through worse. When I’d left Evander it’d been the end of my world. Watching my mom escape overseas with a man who swore to protect her had almost undone me all over again, not to mention...
I shook my head. I would not go there. I couldn’t.
At least I knew my mom was safe now.
I took a seat at the bus shelter, waiting for my usual bus home. I glanced left, then right, looking for the man who still filled my mind and, all too often, my dreams. Not that I wanted to see him. He was the last man I wanted in my life right now.
I sighed heavily. I would not think about him now.
I needed to focus on my present issues. As much as I’d loved my job, it was probably past time to move on anyway. I’d find someplace else to live and work. I might have put all of my heart into the gallery, but at least my experience would hold me in good stead for my next job.
I stepped onto the bus, its doors hissing closed behind me. The doors reopened ten minutes later, and I stepped off at my usual stop. I walked a couple of hundred meters toward the modern apartment complex ahead, where I’d lived for almost three years after I’d ran from Evander. My mother had stayed with me for the first eight months before she’d given up on a life in New York and had hedged her bets with another man in another part of the world.
My stomach compressed a little as my mind wandered. My mother had lived an extraordinary life. She’d been a runaway teen who’d survived by becoming an exotic dancer, then the mistress of a mafia boss who’d seen her dance and had wanted her all to himself.
She’d been smart enough to squirrel away any cash he’d gifted her, then afterward had sold every piece of expensive jewelry he’d bought her. It’d been enough to buy this apartment outright, under another name, another persona.
My mother had been pregnant when she’d disappeared from my sperm donor’s life. She’d given birth to me nine months later, a home birth aided by a trainee midwife who’d been more than happy with a bundle of cash for her trouble.
I pushed aside nostalgia and a prickling of heat in my eyes as I turned left, between two garden beds filled with petunias and dahlias, the rusty-red cobbled path making me feel welcome every time I traversed it.
I took the railed stairs, climbing to the third level, then walked along the covered walkway before stopping at my apartment. Pushing in my key, I swung open the door. I sighed, smiling as I stepped into the sanctuary my mother and I had created together.
Lavender walls were offset by soft gray furniture, including the sofa and armchairs with their deep, padded cushions, and the white marble dining table with its dove gray seats. A large, gold-framed landscape I’d painted featuring a sage green mountain and the setting sun in various shades of orange and pink hung above the flat screen television in the lounge room.
A charcoal-gray fluff-ball padded toward me with a pitiful meow and I bent and scratched under his chin. “Did you miss me, Rembrandt?”
He purred and I laughed as I picked him up and snuggled him. “You’re precious, but I bet you know that already.”
He purred louder and I put him back down, opening a can of wet food for him. While he ate it like he hadn’t eaten in a week, I poured a glass of red wine, then stepped back out onto the balcony that faced a park.
I took a seat at the small square table and raised the glass to my lips, taking a deep, appreciative sip. This was my favorite time of the day, with the sun going down and glittering through the leaves, turning them a burnished gold.
I sighed and leaned back, my eyes taking in the landscape as I imagined it would look on a canvas.
Most nights I didn’t bother with dinner, my spare time was taken up doing what I loved. If I was happy, I painted. If I was sad or stressed, I painted.
Today would be no different.
But first I’d savor my wine and enjoy what was left of the day.
Rembrandt padded outside, then standing on his hind legs, his front paws on my closest thigh, he checked to see if my lap was free before he jumped and plonked himself down, then began purring.
I laughed as I ran my hand over his silky soft head and back. “You’re just what I need right now.” I sighed softly. “Are you going to be happy in another apartment in the city?” I chewed my bottom lip. “Or perhaps we’ll move far away from here, someplace random in the country, and start again?”
I lifted my glass and took another sip of my red wine just as movement caught my eyes.
My heart jerked.
I’d seen something...someone as they’d stepped behind a tree. I was certain of it.
I should leave now while I still could, but it was nearly dark outside and I didn’t fancy my chances of staying in a motel with a cat squawking in his carrier cage.
Rembrandt meowed, as though sensing my anxiety, then jumped off me with his fluffy tail swishing. I pushed to my feet and hurried inside, rinsing out my glass then changing into black-faded-to-gray leggings and an old, paint-splattered T-shirt that had once been white.
Making my way barefooted into what had been my old bedroom, and which I’d converted into my art room after my mom had gone, I was soon lost in my own creative world, brushing a silvery misty sky that was atmospheric and somehow chilling. I added olive-colored leafy trees that overhung a pathway that drew the eye to a distant figure in black.
I gasped, realizing I’d painted the figure I’d seen earlier. A figure who’d materialized in my work just as he had in my reality. I unlocked my fingers and my paintbrush clattered onto the floor even as I backed away. The landscape was beautiful, haunting and magical. But that figure really was all too familiar.
A tread sound behind me, yet I couldn’t move a muscle. I could barely breathe.
“Hello, Gemma.”