Chapter 63
I drag myself to the studio door, which is only a foot away but seems at least a hundred times farther.
Glancing behind me, I see I’m bleeding. Heavily.
The pain continues its assault, tuning out nearly every other sense.
But I’m single-minded on getting Clementine out of there and away from that goddamn painting. From her.
Back on my hands and knees I try to take a few deep breaths, but they’re shallow and do little to clear the light-headedness. Keep going, Tilly. She needs you.
I reach up and grasp the door handle. It’s locked.
Your watch. Use your watch, Tilly. I sit back on my heels, scream with a fresh wave of pain, but at least in this position I can access my watch.
Sweat drips down my face, and I hastily wipe at it with the back of my hand to clear my vision.
“Unlock studio door,” I say, holding the watch close to my mouth.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” the robotic voice says. “Please try again, Tilly.”
I rattle the door’s handle with every bit of strength I have. “Open the door, honey! Open the door!”
There’s no response.
“Unlock. Studio. Door,” I say again, clenching my teeth to keep the chattering from muddying my words. There’s too much noise in the hallway; the rain slams into the window’s steel coverings; the wind howls through the oaks and between cracks in the home’s brick and stone.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” the voice says. “Please try again, Tilly.”
I set both hands on the door handle and pull myself to standing. I cry out as I do, because it’s as though I’m being split in two. The alarm pad on the door swims in and out of focus.
“Do not pass out, Tilly. You cannot pass out.”
Still clutching the handle, I lean heavily against the door and type in my code.
But I’ve fumbled the numbers and the red X appears on the screen.
I know I only have one more chance before I’ll have to reset the password.
On my work tablet, which is downstairs on the kitchen island. I’ll never make it.
The keypad is old, and I wish I’d replaced it with one of the newer fingerprint or retinal scanner ones. But I try again, slower this time to ensure I hit each key only once: 0-4-1-9.
My mother’s birthday—April 19—and again, today’s date.
“I’m coming, Clem. Momma’s coming!”
The keypad screen flashes green and the lock disengages. Relief fills me. I press down on the handle and the door flies open, my body’s weight heavy against it.
I can’t comprehend what I see when I stumble inside.
Clementine stands directly in front of the painting, rigid. The subject’s hands are on her face, cupping her cheeks. The subject smiles, sharp teeth startlingly white against the blackness of the painting’s background. Her eyes are locked on my daughter.
I don’t hesitate. Closing the gap between us, one arm cradling my belly, I reach the other toward Clementine.
Almost there…almost there…
I close my hand around Clementine’s, which is hanging by her side, readying to pull her toward me and out of the studio. But before I can, the subject’s right hand leaves Clementine’s cheek and wraps around my wrist. Her grip is ice-cold, vise-like and possessing superhuman strength.
Clementine stumbles backward with the push and pull, and I position myself between her and the painting. The subject tightens her grip on my wrist. There’s a pop, a sharp pain, and I know it’s broken. I scream but hold my position.
“Get out of here!” I yell at Clementine. She’s fallen to the floor on her back and isn’t moving. Her eyes have rolled back in her head, only the whites showing. I shout her name again, trying to rouse her. A moment later her limbs jerk, and she whimpers.
“Get up, Clem. Please, honey, get up.” I’m moaning in agony, every part of me consumed by fiery pain.
She sits up, slightly hunched, and looks at me in confusion. “Momma? What happened?”
There’s no time. “Run, Clementine. Go get Nana. Run!”
The subject’s eyes—my eyes—remain on Clementine as she runs from the studio, before turning on me. We’re locked in an unblinking stare. A second later a contraction consumes me, and I slam my free hand against the canvas. Trying to balance myself, to stay upright.
There’s sudden movement under my hand. Like water ripples in a slow-moving creek tickling my palm, the oil paint becoming fluid. Running down the canvas, coating my fingers, then my entire forearm with warm, blackish paint.
“What do you want?” I whisper, staring into her eyes. I’m desperately trying not to succumb to the pain. Oh, what a relief it would be.
The subject tilts her head to the side, purses her lips. Then she blinks, and the moth antennae Charlotte Leclerc used for eyelashes shimmer like beating wings. “I want what you have, Mathilde.”
The voice is like wind chimes in a lazy breeze.
“Why? Why me?” I’m crying now, for there is no escape. My fate sealed the moment I signed for that delivery, all those months ago. Oh, how foolish I was, so quick to agree to the work. To not question the wicked serendipity of the project, nor the perilous implications of our shared history.
An overwhelming scent of something floral fills my nose, though it’s not fresh. It’s the odor of decay and I cough, retching violently. I can barely see the woman through my tears.
“Your mother, Mathilde.”
“My mother? What about her?” I can’t understand anything. Black halos close in around my vision. I’m drowning, the decaying flowers clogging my throat.
“I lost my little girl, Marigold. My sweet Mari.” The eyelashes shimmer rapidly. Something drips from the inside corners of her eyes. She’s crying, I think. “Do you know how she died, Mathilde?”
pleasestoppleasestoppleasestoppleasestoppleasestoppleasestopplease…
“She choked,” I manage to say. “When she was five.”
“Yes, my perfect girl choked to death, on a piece of bubblegum. Pink bubblegum, Mathilde, of all things!”
Pink bubblegum. Nothing I’ve read about Charlotte Leclerc contained this small yet significant detail.
My mind goes to the painting of The Child.
To the pink-gum bubble the little girl blew as she skipped.
I hear it now, the swish, swish, swish sound that first came to me the night my mother took me to the museum.
Then a vision fills my mind and I know the Mother put it there. It’s of the Child, Marigold, and she’s come to life. She’s under a bluebird sky, skipping, laughing, the rhythmic sweep of the rope timed exactly to the swishing sounds in my head.
Charlotte Leclerc has been haunting me—haunting my mother—from the very beginning.
A searing pain slashes across my chest before settling on the left in a fireball. It’s heartbreak—her heartbreak—visceral, palpable, and it’s consuming me.
“Being Mari’s mother is the most important thing I’ve ever done. Can you imagine what it’s like, Mathilde, to be a doctor and still be unable to save your child? To lose her in such a pointless way? That’s not grief you can live with.”
“I know what it’s like…to be unable to save your own child.” The words leave me like they’re being pulled out of me.
“Yes, I suppose you do.” The woman pauses, the corners of her mouth dropping. The insect wing in her top lip cracks, a drop of deep red filling in the spot. “Your mother felt my pain as she worked, and eventually it consumed her too.”
“My…mother…is dead.” There’s no oxygen left in the room. I’m gasping tiny breaths, but I’m fading.
“I know. I was there.”
Staring at the figure in front of me, the one I’ve painstakingly—most regretfully—conserved, I suddenly understand.
You made her fall. My lips move soundlessly. We’re communicating on a different plane now. I hear her like she’s inside me.
“She was fulfilling a long-ago-made promise,” the woman says.
The painting has come fully alive now. The parts of the insects used to create the woman’s eyelashes, eyebrows, and lips try to reassemble into their whole beings.
But tacky inside the paint, the wings and things strain to move, the delicate structures breaking with the effort. The sound of their struggle sickens me.
“I lost my daughter, Mathilde, and Margot wanted to help. So she offered me hers. It’s time to collect on that promise.”
You’re lying…she would never have…, I say, again in my mind.
“You know that black feeling you have right now?” the woman asks. “That devastation? That fear, the raw agony? Your mother couldn’t take it, and she begged for an end. She pleaded for peace.”
My mother was strong. She wouldn’t have let this happen.
“Oh, she tried, Mathilde. She did. But I am stronger. You’ll see…”
I have a sense of falling backward, over a wide expanse of nothingness—right into the black hourglass-shaped hole in the woman’s chest. It’s wider now, like a never-ending cavern. Soon it devours the studio and everything in it. Me included.
The last thing I’m aware of is a poignantly familiar voice, tender and soothing as it says, “I promise that I tried. I promise you, I tried…
“I’m sorry, my darling.”