Chapter 61
I’m outside my studio, back against the landing’s wall, staring at the painting through the open door.
Still shocked by my workbench tilting up, without me being near the control panels.
The painting is upright now, and the subject faces me directly.
So, it’s more accurate to say I’m staring at her…
and she’s staring back at me, still smiling.
I’ve put as much distance between myself and The Mother as I can, while still being able to watch the painting. I refuse to take my eyes off her.
It continues raining. Hard. The house creaks and groans with the shifting winds.
I think again of Wyatt working in this, hopefully safe.
I think, oddly, of Ana’s client, fervently wishing both baby and mom are okay.
I take in gulps of air, my lungs refusing to fully inflate.
I imagine my baby, tucked up inside the safety of my body.
I remember that today would have been my mom’s sixty-seventh birthday.
I’m shaking, tears streaming down my face.
Finally, I think about Charlotte Leclerc and the woman in the painting.
WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
The subject’s eyes—exactly like my own—are wide open, watching me watch her. Every now and then I catch a flutter of her moth-antennae eyelashes. I stare with so much effort that my eyes twitch.
Eventually, I have to blink.
After a split second of darkness, my eyes open and everything has changed.
She’s no longer smiling, those sharp white teeth hidden behind closed lips. Her eyes are now closed. The pink heart in her hand is motionless, the lub-dub sound gone.
There is no movement whatsoever in the artwork. It’s still, once again.
I scramble to my feet, with some difficulty due to my belly and the aftereffects of my panic.
Was any of this real? I stand in the doorway, scanning the painting for any signs of life.
Wait…was that…? Something’s happening. A slight wheeze of breath reaches my ears.
Inhalations and exhalations. Steady and rhythmic, like the sounds of someone sleeping deeply beside you in the dark. I focus on the black hourglass in the subject’s chest.
There’s a faint pulsing around the hourglass’s edge, then a rising of the chest until it hits the constraints of the canvas. Stretching out toward me; going flat again.
Then, a moment of quiet between the breaths.