13. Colin
Colin
Ithought Chloe was fucking with me when she’d navigated us straight to the shelter that Lily and her children had been staying at while her husband was dying.
Was someone helping her tap into my phone like I’ve done to hers? Was she listening in on my conversations?
The look on her face when I asked her if she was joking, however, told me that she was not.
She was caught off guard, offended even, by the suggestion. But I was caught off guard, too, by another curious connection between Chloe Stark and the dead man.
And not only that, but the woman behind the desk at Hope House is Wanda Sterling, Richard’s co-worker that Alex interviewed, who told him Richard had last been known to be going out for a hike before he fell to his death.
Here everyone is, mysteriously intertwined in Chloe’s web.
Chloe leads me back out of the office and across the courtyard to what appears to be an art room.
Little plastic chairs sit facing blank canvases on easels, cups of brushes and tubes of paint littering a desk on one side of the room.
There’s a single chair at the front of the room facing a canvas, where the teacher likely sits and watches over everyone.
“You ever taught a painting class?” Chloe asks me, breezing toward the front of the room and reaching for a paint-splattered apron. She pulls the apron over her head and ties it behind her back, protecting her grey sweater and jeans from colorful spills.
“Do I look like I’ve ever taught a painting class?”
She eyes my outfit, the outfit I’ve been wearing for over twenty-four hours now because I never ended up leaving her house after I got her settled in bed.
I couldn’t bring myself to, too worried about the man who drugged her following us home or someone taking advantage of her in her delirious state.
She reaches for another paint-stained apron on the wall, extending it in my direction with a smile. “Put this on.” Our fingers graze when I take it from her, the inextinguishable fire between our skin burning me, even with the new knowledge of how far her web is weaved.
“And lighten up,” she demands. “You might be hot shit out on the street, but you’re an outcast here. The kids need to trust you.”
I swallow as I lift the apron over my head and tie it behind my back.
I feel so incredibly out of my element. I don’t spend time with kids. I don’t paint. I haven’t spent time in a domestic violence shelter aside from the few times when I was a beat cop and was called here to take statements.
The women were wary of us, and we were mostly limited in our capabilities. I always left feeling like I’d failed them, and their children.
“Miss Chloe!” A gaggle of tiny children swarm through the doors, rushing across the room with flailing arms as they pile around Chloe’s waist.
“Oh my gosh,” Chloe exclaims, her hand lain across their backs. “I missed you guys! Are you ready to paint?”
A song of yays and yesses sweeps through the air as the kids jump in excitement. They disperse throughout the room to find chairs and pull on their own aprons that are draped over the backs.
A few women slowly stream into the room, sending suspicious glances in my direction as I stand awkwardly off to the side.
Most of them look absolutely drained, dark circles under their eyes and their bodies covered from wrist to ankle by their sweaters and leggings.
I consider the likelihood that this shelter might be their first opportunity for a full night’s comfortable sleep in a long while.
“This is my friend, Colin,” Chloe says to the room, emphasizing the word friend for the benefit of the women in the back, probably.
“He’s a detective,” she sings to the kids, which results in a lot of oohs and ahhs throughout the little crowd, making my lips tilt into a smile.
I wave to the group and give my friendliest, most docile nod to the mothers stationed at the back of the room.
“Today we’re going to paint two things.” Chloe crosses the room to the table with the brushes and paints on it, encouraging me to follow. She shoves some items into my arms before pushing me toward the group as she explains what they’ll be painting today.
“Colin,” she says from the front of the room, “what’s your favorite animal?”
I freeze, feeling put on the spot. “Uhm, a panda bear.”
Chloe’s head falls back as she lets out a laugh, and the kids in the room giggle, everyone clearly surprised by my answer.
“And your favorite flower?”
“My favorite flower,” I repeat. The kids stare up at me in awe, on the edge of their seats for whatever I’m going to say next. “A dandelion.”
She doesn’t laugh this time, but I can tell she wants to as her honey eyes sparkle with amusement.
“A panda bear and a dandelion. That will make a very cute combination, don’t you think?” she asks the kids, and they all exclaim in agreement.
She turns her attention to the room next. “Laney, what’s your favorite animal?”
A little girl with a mop of brown curls shoots out of her seat at the front of the class. “A toad!”
I can’t help the smile that stretches across my face when the room explodes in giggles, and a few ews.
“And my favorite flower is a rose!” Laney shouts.
“Brilliant!” Chloe squeals back. “What about you, Noah?”
I follow Chloe’s gaze to a boy near the back of the class, his choices shared much more quietly than Laney’s. “A lion,” he says. “But I don’t really like flowers.” He scrunches his nose up. “My mom has a really pokey cactus in the kitchen, and that’s my favorite plant.”
“That’s perfect,” Chloe assures him. And that’s how the next five minutes of painting class carries on. Chloe calls on each child in the crowd by name, and lets them share their favorite things before she tells everyone to get to painting.
“You too, detective,” she whispers, nudging me with her elbow and urging me to a canvas near hers at the front of the room.
I settle into my adult-sized chair in front of a blank canvas. The paintbrushes beckon me to grab them, but I fumble with where to start. I glance around the room, seeing Chloe kneeling near a kid and helping him squeeze the colors he’ll need onto a paper plate.
She does it with each one. She whispers and giggles with them, tickling their sides every now and then. She looks up when she gets to the fourth kid, and finds me staring. Smiling, she nods at my canvas, encouraging me to get started.
I reach for the paints on the small desk between me and Laney, squeezing some black, white, grey, and green onto my plate.
I am not an artist. Everyone took art class in elementary school, and I chose it as an elective in high school, too, because I thought it would be an easy elective. It was not. I was so out of my depth it was embarrassing, and that’s exactly how I feel now, even in a room full of children.
Pressing the end of my brush into the black paint, I smear a large circle into the middle of the canvas that will become my attempt at a panda bear.
If I had known this is what was going to happen, I probably would have lied and said my favorite animal was a seal.
Slapped a grey blob onto the canvas, gave it some whiskers, and called it good.
I glance back at Noah, jealous that he announced his favorite plant as a cactus. That sounds easy as fuck to paint.
Chloe eventually settles into her chair in front of me, partially obscured by her own canvas. I force myself to stay focused on my own, and not get distracted by this soft, jovial side of her I’ve never seen. Not even when she was cleaning the possum skull in her basement.
My gaze carries to her every now and then. The way she bends her neck as she takes a break from whatever she’s painting to study what she’s done so far. She takes the edge of her bottom lip between her teeth, and then runs the end of her paintbrush along her lip line.
She doesn’t notice me watching her as she turns her gaze away from her canvas to survey the room, the kids with crinkled brows and their tongues sticking out in concentration as they focus on their paintings, just as immersed in their art as I am in her.
I return my attention to my canvas.
Silence engulfs the room as we all give our undivided attention to our masterpieces.
Eventually, Chloe lets out a stretch, rising from her chair and meandering around the room to check on everyone’s progress.
I can sense the moment she zeroes in on me, the energy in the air shifting as she approaches me from behind and settles her forearms on my shoulders, her chin resting on her wrist. Her face is so close to mine, I can feel the tickle of her skin against my ear.
I turn my head toward her, putting us cheek to cheek.
“What do you think?”
She lets out a soft laugh, the warm air and her perpetual scent of berries fanning across my lips.
“It’s perfect,” she murmurs. She’s just being nice, because it’s most definitely not perfect.
Every body part on the poor panda is misshapen.
I couldn’t even get his eyes to look in the same direction, and all I had to do was stick a little dot right in the middle of each circle.
The dandelion in his paw doesn’t look too bad, though.
But this moment, it feels perfect. Which feels…odd.
In this place, with all these kids around, I can’t be curt with Chloe. I can’t back her against a wall or put my hand around her throat. I can’t threaten her. I certainly can’t accuse her of being an evil psychopath, especially not after the way I’ve seen her treat these women and children.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her in a good light, and I have a sinking feeling it’s not the only opportunity I’ve had—I’ve just missed them all, or refused to see them.
I stiffen under the pressure of Chloe’s body on mine, feeling no better than the men these families are running from.
Chloe lifts herself off me, not seeming to sense the sudden tension in my body. “Come see mine.”
Laney looks up at my canvas from her chair.
“That’s so cute,” she says, and it sounds so fucking honest and innocent I could die from her praise.
I eye her canvas back. She doesn’t look older than six or seven, but she’s a much better artist than I am.
Her green and brown bumpy toad sits atop a large blooming rose.
His pupils are bored slits, his lanky toes disappear between the pink petals of the flower, and his tongue stretches across the canvas to catch a fly.
“Thanks, Laney. Yours is really good, too.” She smiles in appreciation, returning to her picture.
I rise from my chair, nervous for some reason about what I’m going to see painted on Chloe’s canvas. She stands in front of her painting with her hands folded over the back of her chair, and I stand behind her, taking in her favorite animal and flower, and how she’s depicted them.
A white swan floats on a layer of turquoise, the shimmer of movement realistically reflected in its surface. The bird has a prominent black bump on her orange bill, her eyes gently closed as her neck bends toward the water where she meets her reflection.
“What are those?” I ask, my fingers reaching out to touch the flimsy, pink and orange petals of the flower crown painted on the swan’s head.
“Peonies. They’re my mother’s favorite.”
My hand falls to my side, any words I had prepared to give her catching in my throat.
None of them do the painting justice.
Beautiful is too bland a word to describe the bird Chloe has painted with such elegance.
I can practically feel the emotion flowing off the canvas, feel the stutter of Chloe’s heart as I stand with my chest to her back.
I can practically taste the trepidation rippling from her body as she stares silently ahead while I explore every inch of color and detail and depth in front of us.
“Do you like it?” she finally asks, bending her neck to look back at me.
I tear my eyes from the painting to meet hers. Her pupils dilate and her lips part as she waits for my response. For my approval.
“I have no words, Chloe.”