42. Petra
PETRA
“Sin,” I finally manage to say. “W-what are you doing here?”
“I came to say sorry,” he replies smoothly, holding out the bouquet toward me, and I notice he has taken care to fill it with orchids and poppies, the sly man.
“For yesterday. I was way out of line at the funeral, and afterward . . .” Here he pauses to give me a scorching look that almost makes my legs quiver.
“I was rude and overbearing. Please forgive me,” he finishes simply.
I don’t know what to say, so I take the flowers and take in their smell. “Thank you, Sin,” I reply after a while. “For the flowers, and the apology. They have been well received.”
I stand aside and gesture for him to enter the house.
“And I also brought you this,” he adds as he steps into the living room. He’s holding out the present. “I remember you mentioned this painter once, the one who trained . . . who was it now? Goya? Anyways, I found this painting and thought of you.”
He’s kidding, I think in complete disbelief. Sin is referring to an unnamed mentor of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, widely regarded as one of the first truly modern painters.
On one of our dates, I had mentioned how much I love the artist’s brushwork and complex use of light and shadows. Surely, he wasn’t really paying attention?
So thinking, I unwrap the package carefully. And a loud gasp slips from my lips when I see the piece Sin has carefully wrapped up: Titled Sinful Desires, it’s the long-rumored last painting by Goya’s brilliant master.
The title evokes something in my mind, a long-lost memory that prods at my consciousness. I’ve seen this before, haven’t I? I’ve seen it in the flesh, no?
But as soon as that memory tries to poke its head, it’s gone.
Instead, I continue to marvel at the piece in front of me.
My breath catches. “Sin, I can’t believe this! Where did you even find this painting?” I gush.
Sin is beaming at my obvious enthusiasm, yet there is no trace of self-importance.
Instead, he looks genuinely pleased to have elicited such a response from me.
But I can hardly remember to thank him before my attention is completely caught up in the frame before me: the solitary figure of a girl walking down a windy English moor captured in such dramatic, gothic detail that it would put the best landscapists to shame (J. M. W. Turner be damned).
I’m enthralled by the dark, muted colors of the girl’s velvet-green dress and her long brown hair and the windblown trees in the background—all of it so deliciously stormy, brimming over with savage intensity.
“No, really,” I exclaim aloud as the light from the windows falls on the painting and makes me see details that had previously escaped me. “Where did you find this piece? Tell me you didn’t just rob a museum or something!”
“Relax,” Sin replies with a wry laugh. “We have all sorts of collectors in my family: Edwardian furniture, Fabergé eggs, antique Chippendales, someone or the other is always pawning or circulating stuff around.”
I don’t look very convinced, so he sighs.
“Look, that’s part of the reason I even knew of Ms. Matthews’s class. What, did you think a handsome jock such as myself just happened to have a head for art as well?”
Now he is teasing me using the same wits he had displayed the first night we had met.
“I don’t know . . .” I begin uncertainly but without much conviction, as my attention returns to the marvelous painting in my hands.
“Trust me, Petra. I have connections.” Sin waggles his eyebrows theatrically at the last word and plonks down at the dining table.
“Connections? Like, what kind of connections?” I press gently, perhaps because some part of me was still unimpressed by this grand gesture. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s complicated, Petra,” Sin replies in a voice that is starting to get testy.
As if sensing this ominous inflection, he rubs the back of his neck, his smile strained.
“Look, I just wanted to find something special for you. To show you how sorry I was and . . . and how badly I want to set things right. Can you just accept that?”
A knot tightens in my stomach, and the unease from last night resurfaces.
“Sin, I appreciate the gesture, I really do,” I begin cautiously, putting away the painting on the table. “But given everything that’s—that’s been happening, you can understand why I’d want to know more.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while, so I say, “Right?” to jolt him into responding.
“I guess,” he responds in a slightly petulant tone.
“You’re right. Maybe I’m overthinking it,” I say quietly.
And suddenly he’s standing very close to me, his hands cupping my face and his cologne—lemon groves and pine—scenting the private space between our bodies.
“I promise, Petra, I’m not hiding anything that would hurt you,” he says in a gentle whisper, like one would adopt while talking to a newborn lamb. “I would never let anyone else hurt you either. Trust me on that.”
His palms are warm and slightly calloused against my face; his face is hovering inches away from mine. I try and fail to control my breathing and with it, my errant thoughts.
“I’ll try, Sin.” I’m weighing out my words as carefully as I can, because by now, I’m weathered enough to be wary of this guy’s unpredictable moods. “It’s just . . . hard right now. Given all that’s happened recently, you know.”
Like my friend’s head detaching from his body and rolling onto the hem of my dress, my inner voice pipes up, and I try my hardest not to wince at the cynical casualness of her tone.
“Of course, Petra, I understand,” Sin says in an amiable enough tone before quickly pecking my forehead and sliding back into the chair he had been sitting on.
I sit down at the table, too, and return my attention to the painting.
The old master has used a peculiar shade of Prussian blue, almost greyish, to outline the woods in the distance, and I love how the girl is positioned in the frame, with just a slim sliver of her side profile turned toward the viewer.
But before I can linger on the deft lines with which the folds of her cape have been sketched, another urgent thought tugs at my attention.
“Sin, can I ask you something?” I try my hardest to keep my tone subtle and noncommittal.
“Of course, anything,” he replies, gently patting my arm.
“Did you come by my house last night?” I ask without further dilly-dallying; at the same time, I’m watching his reaction carefully. “Were you here?”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was certainly not this: Sin’s brows furrow with confusion, and he shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. Why, what happened?”
“I . . . I thought you might have come around,” I respond, thinking fast. “I thought I heard someone call my name . . . I guess it was just the wind.” I drop my gaze back at the painting, straining to keep my face neutral.
“Petra, you’ve been through a lot,” Sin says in a kind tone, stroking faint circles on my arm—a gesture that is so familiar to me by now that it makes my throat close up with emotion.
“And given your pregnancy . . . it’s normal to feel overwhelmed is all I’m saying.
I’m just sorry that I added to your stress. ”
“What about my pregnancy?” I blurt out.
“Petra, I don’t care that you’re pregnant,” Sin says in a steady tone as he looks straight at me. “I also don’t care who the father of the baby is; all I care about is your happiness. Do you believe me?”
“I-I think I do,” I reply hesitantly. What else can I say? And anyway, he does sound sincere enough.
Perhaps my nightmares had been darkening all other aspects of my life, much like the greyish blue of the skies in the painting made many of the features look slightly ashen.
Maybe everything from last night really was just a product of my overactive imagination and pregnancy hormones mixing with fear.
“Thank you for the flowers and the painting, Sin,” I repeat myself from before, but this time I offer the words as a genuine gesture of gratitude. “And thank you for apologizing.”
“Of course. I so want to make things right between us.” He smiles at me for a moment before his expression turns pensive again.
“What is it?” I can’t help but ask.
“I should have been gentler with you at the cemetery,” he says, his voice softening. “I let my emotions get the better of me. I don’t like that you had to see that part of me.”
Those last words remind me of my earlier analogy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Sin’s many opposing moods.
I am slightly taken aback by this sudden shift in his demeanor.
“Sin, it’s . . . yeah, it was sort of messed up. I understand you were upset, but yesterday was really intense.”
“I know,” he continues, his tone sincere. “And I am really, really sorry about my behavior. But . . .”
“But what?” I reply, piqued by his expression. He looks reluctant, like he’s forming some thought he’s afraid of saying out loud.
“There’s something that’s been weighing on me.”
“Which is?” And now my tone is impatient at how he’s stretching out this air of suspense. “Tell me!” I demand again.
“Look, Petra, the two deaths, Edwin and Harry. They were both people you knew, and I’m—” he breaks off and gets up from his chair, as if determined to look away from me while conjecturing about my safety.
“I’m worried about you, all right? I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and honestly, I’m scared something might happen to you. ”
At last, he turns around to look at me, and I can see that his eyes are filled with a kind of fear as well. A shiver runs down my spine when I realize that Sin is being honest, and I hug myself surreptitiously.
“Sin, I’m scared, too,” I finally admit in a quiet tone full of unspoken despair. “It’s all been a little too much too sudden, right? And I just don’t know what to make of it all.”
He breaks off his pacing to come and stand beside my chair and rub my shoulders in a comforting gesture.
“Apart from all that madness, how are you handling everything, Petra? Are you doing okay?” he asks softly.
“I’m not entirely sure. For now, I’m just trying to get through each day. The deaths, the pregnancy, the crypt, and all those godawful paintings in there—my head feels like it might just burst one of these days!”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I gasp and cover my face with my hands. An image of Harry’s mutilated body has just swum past my mind’s eye. Sin flinches as well but doesn’t stop kneading my shoulders in the same cadence as before.
“I can’t even imagine what you’re going through,” he whispers into the tense air. “But don’t think for a second that you’ve got to go through all of it on your own.”
He pulls up a chair and sits next to me, his palms grasping my own in an assuring way that calms me down, despite everything.
But there is still a faint recollection of something wrong in the past. Perhaps my mind still retains scraps from the volley of questions and demands Sin had lobbed at me—in dream or recollection, I don’t know.
And now he seems genuinely worried for my safety.
Once again, I get the feeling of being manipulated in some way.
“Why do you care so much, Sin?” I ask in a much quieter voice. “You barely even know me.”
“And that’s where you’re mistaken, Petra,” Sin replies with an ineffable look in his eyes. “I already feel like I have known you for a long time.”
There’s a dreaminess to his face that’s almost contagious. He puts his forehead against mine, and I’m thrown off by the endearing, affectionate movement.
“But either way, I need you to promise me that you’ll be careful. The fact that the two deaths so far were people you knew—it’s too much of a coincidence. Just doesn’t sit right with me, you know?”
“Of course I want to be careful, Sin!” I cry out in exasperation. “I’m scared, too, but what can we even do about it? It feels like everything is just spiraling out of control.”
“I don’t have all the answers,” he admits, his voice heavy with frustration. “But we need to stay alert. If there’s someone targeting you, we can’t take any chances.”
“I just want things to go back to normal,” I exclaim forcefully, a loud sigh following the wistful words.
“I know,” Sin adds. “And I am here for you. I won’t let anything happen to you, so there’s no need to be all doom and gloom yet, you understand?”
“I guess,” I reply uneasily, unwilling to be lulled into a potentially false sense of security.
“Great!” Sin jumps up from his chair and prepares to leave. “I have to get going, but if you need anything . . .” He glances at the painting once more before looking back at me. “Anything at all, you call for me, okay?”
“I will, Sin,” I reply as I trail behind him, like a miserable little cloud tailing a ray of sunshine.
He pauses at the door. “Stay safe, Petra. And please, think about what I said.”
“I will,” I reply.
In the next few moments, the door closes behind him, and I come back to the painting on the table. Its faintly solemn atmosphere seems to have touched a raw string inside me.
The more I look at it, the more puzzled I am at how Sin could have something so precious to gift to me.