Chapter 55
I’m struggling with my necklace when I hear Wyatt’s footsteps on the stairs.
“Shoot,” I mumble, the arm of the petite spring-clasp slipping from my fingernail yet again. The bathroom door is closed, and Wyatt stops outside it.
“You almost ready?”
“I’ll be out in a sec.” My hands are at the back of my neck, fumbling with the spring mechanism. The skin on my ever-expanding belly pulls tight, and I round my upper back to take some of the strain off. Finally, the clasp opens and I remove the necklace.
“Do you want me to send Clem and Mom on ahead? I can wait for you.”
It’s the third Saturday of the month, which means it’s the neighborhood Rise and Dine day.
This once-monthly community event, a potluck breakfast, started about a year ago.
This month the Crewson clan is on granola duty, and we’ve been making nightly batches for the past few days.
Clementine especially loves Rise and Dine because of Eunice Beer, our across-the-street neighbor who is in her eighties and bakes mini muffins with sugar sprinkles.
She calls them “pixie puffs,” and they are the first things to go.
“You go ahead,” I reply. “I’ll be right behind you.”
I slide the new ring off the chain and place it back in its silicone pouch, the MotherWise logo emblazoned in a shiny golden font. My watch alerts me to the front door’s opening and then closing, and I know my family has left.
Finally alone, I briefly consider going to my studio, even though I’m supposed to be off work at the moment. I could call Wyatt, saying I’ve decided to laze about this morning instead. But that will lead to too many questions. I reclasp the necklace with Clementine’s ring only.
As promised, I don’t step foot in my studio for the rest of the week. My blood pressure stabilizes enough that everyone is happy—MotherWise, Dr. Rice, Ana, and Wyatt.
But the painting is restless—it is not happy with the break. How do I know?
The heartbeat. The fucking relentless beating heart.
—
It’s dinnertime, Sunday night. We’ve had a busy day preparing for the upcoming week: laundry; homework; meal planning; a playdate with Briar for Clementine.
When the heartbeat starts, I’m chopping a cucumber and some fresh parsley from our garden.
The parsley’s peppery-green fragrance is strong, and my nose tickles.
At first, I think it’s my own heart beating. Maybe my watch switched accidentally to speaker mode, my rate now being broadcast. But my watch is on silent when I check. It’s not my heartbeat.
Shelby’s making a marinade for the steaks, Clementine sets the table, and Wyatt’s still not back from his FatherWise meetup, which is meant to bolster dads’ confidence and offer support during the pregnancy and beyond.
He’s plenty confident about parenting—perhaps even more so than I am—but he’s enjoying meeting with neighborhood dads and finding new pickleball partners.
Plus, Wyatt and Nick attend the meetups together, with Kat and me on the same schedule.
“Can you hear that?” I ask Shelby. She’s beside me in the kitchen whisking the marinade.
She pauses, tilts her head as she listens. “I don’t think so,” she replies, back to whisking. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure.” I look at Clementine. “Clem, did you leave your tablet on?”
“No, Momma.” She’s focused on folding a linen napkin into a sharp-peaked triangle, the tip of her tongue sticking out with the concentration.
“Can you still hear it?” Shelby casts me a sideways glance. I know what she’s thinking—that I’m having another auditory hallucination. Which might be true? But my forced rest week is up tomorrow morning, and I need to get back to work.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub…
“No, it’s gone now. Maybe it was the wind.” We’re having blustery weather this evening, and I hope Wyatt gets home before the rain starts. “Or maybe it’s Stanley. Where is he, by the way?”
I know where he is, but I need to distract Shelby so she stops looking at me like that. Stanley is asleep on Shelby’s bed. I saw him there when I set her freshly laundered towels in her bathroom about a half hour ago.
“Hmm. Good question.” She wipes her hands, calls for the dog. A moment later there’s a light thud from Shelby’s room, and Stanley comes trotting out. He stretches—downward, then upward—yawning. “Stan, were you sleeping? Sorry, honey. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
Stanley, realizing it’s not yet dinnertime, gives a grunt and jumps up on the couch, curling into a ball.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub…
“I’m going to run to the washroom before dinner.” I scrape the chopped cucumber and parsley into the salad bowl, rinsing both the knife and cutting board before setting them in the above-sink drying rack.
“Feel free to use mine,” Shelby says.
“That’s okay. I need to take my vitamins anyway.”
I pass my bedroom door and head up the next flight of stairs, moving slowly to avoid heavy footfalls.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub…
It’s louder up here. Undeniably a beating heart.
Pausing outside my studio door, I wait for my own heart rate to decelerate. It’s high, in part from climbing the stairs at eight months pregnant. I check my watch. Good, it’s coming down. Pressing an ear to my studio door, I listen.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub…
I pull back quickly. It’s coming from inside the studio. My mind races. The studio has been locked for a week. No one, and nothing, has gone in or out.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure no one’s followed me upstairs, my heart rate picking up again. So much faster than the slow and steady beat coming from inside the studio.
With shaking fingers, I press the code on the keypad. Three beeps followed by a click as the lock disengages. I’m not supposed to go in until tomorrow morning. But the heartbeat sound is agitating, and I have to know what it is. The compulsion to make it stop trumps my good sense.
I step inside, swiftly closing the door behind me.
My studio is dark, and I blink a few times to allow my eyes to adjust. I don’t want to turn on a light for fear Wyatt is coming up the street at precisely this moment and will see it, asking questions I’m not prepared to answer.
I tap my watch screen so it illuminates, then step closer to the canvas. The heartbeat sound speeds up, matching my own. As I near the painting, which remains under its cover, the beating intensifies. The sound echoes through my tissues and bones. It’s not exactly painful, but almost.
There’s movement in the center of the cover. A sort of pulsing outward—a bubble forming in the material, then disappearing, then bulging out again.
It takes only a moment to see the in-and-out movement is timed to the heartbeat. The rhythm matches.
Every instinct tells me to get out of there. But I don’t, even as the sound threatens to overtake me. It’s now so loud I can barely keep myself from screaming, Shut up!
A snap! sound echoes in the small room, as one of the corners of the cover comes off the painting. The other three corners follow suit, as though invisible hands are releasing the cover. I gasp, then grab onto the desk, my legs unwilling to hold me.
There’s an odd tug through my middle, a fuzzy static in my head.
My heartbeat is erratic, each thud vibrating through my bones a match to the lub-dub, lub-dub inside the studio.
My fingers caress the desk’s keypad, then…
beep, beep, beep, beep. I’ve entered the code as though by rote.
The drawer unlocks, and the fingers I don’t recognize as mine slowly slide it out until I can reach the back of the tray.
I don’t want to look at the syringe; I can’t take my eyes off of it.
My fingers are steady as they retrieve the syringe, slowly pulling it out of the drawer. A haze blankets my mind, the rational part of me screaming from somewhere far away. Straightening, I grip the syringe like it’s an extension of my hand and slowly walk over to the workbench.
The canvas pulses, the heartbeat louder, as though acknowledging my presence.
My hand moves mechanically, like I’m a puppet being manipulated.
I’m not in control, but I don’t resist it either.
The syringe in my hand hovers over the painting, and the crimson liquid within gleams in my watch’s low light.
The blood should be clotted after all this time, but the syringe is warm to the touch, as though I drew it moments ago.
“Beautiful,” I murmur, mesmerized by the scene, peculiarly fearless. Something within the painting catches my eye—the faintest of undulations—then, a riiiiiip sound like Velcro being pulled apart, ever so slowly.
I watch the subject’s mouth open, tentative. Her lips part, a hollow black slit forming between them. There’s a sigh, then a breath out, and the chill of it hits me in the face.
I know what she’s waiting for.
She wants to be fed, Tilly.
Without hesitation I lean over the painting and press the syringe’s plunger, releasing the thin stream of my blood between the subject’s lips. It disappears, sucked into the blackness, and the now-empty syringe drops from my hand.
“Thank you, Mathilde.”