Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(11)

Amelia slipped out of her shoes and socks and stood barefoot on the painter’s tarp surrounded by the painter’s things that saved her and fed her and made her different from her brother.

She heard a rattling from the back room and turned to see her studio mate, Joie Lenk, stroll up front, startling when she saw her.

“Oh shit! I didn’t hear you come in,” Joie said. “How long have you been here?”

Amelia smiled and watched Joie, her brown face dusted and smeared with plaster of Paris. She wiped her hands clean on a wet towel. Joie was artsy through and through, from the purple streak in her dark curly hair down to her plaster-splattered pink Crocs.

“Not long,” Amelia said. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

Joie stuffed the towel into the pocket of her dusty overalls. “I had a spark of inspiration and wanted to test it.” She padded over to her work in progress, a sculpture of Winged Victory that she’d been working on for months, only Joie’s Nike wore combat boots and a Wonder Woman tee. The plaster creation stood six feet tall, its wings spanning three feet across, the piece commissioned by a women’s outreach center in Andersonville. “But I didn’t expect to see you today. It’s Monday. You never come in on Mondays.”

“I needed to paint,” Amelia said.

“Well, if you want the place to yourself, I can bounce. That inspiration I thought I had isn’t panning out.”

“No worries,” Amelia said. “Stay. I don’t mind the company.”

The scrape of dog claws on hardwood broke their exchange. They’d woken Winston, Joie’s English bulldog, whose doggy pad was in the back room.

“Uh-oh,” Joie said. “You’ve done it now. Prepare yourself.”

Amelia waited for it, grinning as Winston, a waddling meatball of a thing, ran into the room, his nails clicking against the floor, mouth open, pink tongue out. The dog made a beeline for her. Though Winston went home with Joie, Am knew he loved her best, and the feeling was mutual.

She plopped down on the dusty tarp and scratched Winston behind the ears, rubbing his belly and kissing him on the snout.

Joie peeked from behind the plaster. “You’re spoiling him.”

Amelia gave him one last snuggle. “He deserves to be spoiled. He’s a prince.”

Joie grumped. “A prince that eats like a horse.”

“All right, boy.” Am stood and dusted off her jeans. “Enough cuddles for now. Next time it’s my turn.” Winston studied her for a moment, his big head cocked to the side, then waddled away and plopped down at Joie’s feet.

Joie donned protective glasses, ready to get started. “Everything okay with your sister?”

Am smiled. It was one of her many reinventions, necessary to fit who she was now. A new person who had a younger sister, not a twin brother prone to mental breakdown. This new person also had a mother in Florida and a father who’d died when Am was just eighteen. She had added in a hardscrabble upbringing in a small midwestern town far from here. It made her success now all the more impressive to people. It also made her seem interesting, industrious, relatable. The truth was, she hadn’t laid eyes on Tom Morgan since he’d dropped her and Bodie off at the University of Michigan with their tuition paid and a nice nest egg set aside. Then he’d ghosted them. He was just gone, moved, without leaving a forwarding address. Bodie, she knew, was fine with that. He had feared their father and needed to believe that he was dead. But Amelia knew he wasn’t dead. She could still feel him, sense him, and she wasn’t afraid. Where could he be now? she often wondered. Was he in another country? Had he chosen a new name? She supposed, in the end, it didn’t really matter. He’d made his mark. “She fell and broke her ankle,” Amelia replied. She conveyed just the right amount of sympathy and concern. “My sis has always been a bit of a klutz. Six weeks, then out of the cast and back to her life.”

Joie went back to her plaster. “I have a cousin like that. She’s broken practically every bone in her body, and she’s barely forty. I told her she needed to roll herself in Bubble Wrap.” Joie peeked around again, this time with a devilish grin. “She told me to go fuck myself.”

Amelia picked up a brush, letting it breathe in her hand, then she approached her canvas, deciding where to start. “Family, huh? Can’t live with them—”

Joie chuckled. “Can’t strangle them for the insurance money.”

Amelia took a bead on her feelings, then lightly dipped her brush in gray paint. She thought about Bodie, still rudderless at their age. She thought of the old Am and their house of secrets. It was a wonder she and Bodie had survived to do as well as they were doing, but that just showed how resilient people could be. Life always found a way. Amelia painted a small padlock, then moved back to assess it. There were many locks in the painting. She gently dipped her right index finger into the paint and smeared crimson against her thumb, then stepped forward again and pressed her finger lightly to the canvas. Then she painted a door around the mark. There were also many doors.

If she closed her eyes, she knew she’d see what she always did. A woman. The basement steps. The stillest, bluest eyes and hair like fire. She hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from the unimaginable—severed feet and hands, a savaged middle, and blood snaking down the basement drain. Her father’s doing. A father to whom she and Bodie were inextricably bound. A father who killed for sport. Could a healthy tree grow from a twisted root?