Chapter Eighteen SCARLETT

Chapter Eighteen

S CARLETT

Sunday, July 14, 2024

8:30 p.m.

I’d proven I could withstand a date for two hours and fifteen minutes. There’d been no kiss or hug. Not even a handshake. Luke hadn’t pressed for anything beyond conversation, and I’d relaxed a fraction. And at the end of our date, there’d been no talk of another night out. Oddly disappointing. And comforting. But all in all, it was a victory for me, and I took wins when they presented themselves.

Luke had offered to drive me home, but I’d politely declined and walked the five blocks to my place, my pepper spray clutched in my fist. As I punched in the code to my front door, the streets around me were slipping into the shadows.

Inside my locked concrete walls, I felt safe staring at the sea of partially made prints now drying from clotheslines. Alone in my warehouse, I wasn’t hurting, I had plenty to eat, and I could leave anytime. Tension drained from my body.

However, staying here sealed behind my own doors reinforced that I needed a prison to feel safe. I was maintaining the oppression with my own locks and self-isolation.

My runs and rock climbing, even painting the mural, were my ways of proving I was free to come and go. But I was never totally at ease outside. And most of my activities remained solitary and brief. All forms of self-imprisonment.

I glanced out my front display window and looked toward the apartment complex across the street. I knew all the windows and the people who lived in each unit. The man on the first floor closed his curtains the moment he entered. The guy on the second floor cycled every night on a stationary bike. The third floor was always dark, and the woman on the fourth floor danced and strummed an air guitar as she drank wine in the evenings.

The top floor, which had been dark for months, was now lit up. A new neighbor. Another person on a long list of people I would not meet. I pulled my shade down, closing out the world.

Removing my shoes, I tugged off my dress and walked toward my bedroom behind the large screen. Pulling on an oversize T-shirt, I pulled my hair into a loose ponytail as I moved toward my studio.

I flipped on the lights and uncovered the painting of Della. Until now, I’d kept this painting and all the ones like it hidden away. And when I was satisfied with the latest, I would take it into the back alley and set it on fire. I always stood alone for this, watching the flames eat at the canvas and Della’s face. But maybe this time I wouldn’t burn the portrait. Maybe I would save it, display it in my studio, so the world could see Della and maybe someone would recognize that face.

“Are you afraid to have your face shown?” I asked.

The portrait’s eyes looked off to the side, and as I stepped back, the eyes seemed to follow me. Della was always present. Always watching.

I stared back at Della. We both got away from Tanner. I’d been tossed into the spotlight after Tanner’s death, whereas she had faded into the shadows.

A week after my rescue, I left the hospital, and the police took me to the site of Tanner’s house. Wearing borrowed sweats, a jacket two sizes too big, and purple lost-and-found sneakers, I stood before the smoldering remains of my former prison. The roof and first and second floors had collapsed, filling in the basement and obliterating all traces of my cell.

The flames, the cops had said, had destroyed the DNA evidence of Della, me, and anyone else who’d been in the house. There was no physical evidence of any of us. Like it never happened.

Anger and disappointment had twisted around each other. I’d felt abandoned. Della, who had said we’d survive together, had left me.

Months later, I’d taken my mother’s car and returned to Tanner’s house alone and walked around the scorched ruins. The fallen timbers had cooled, but it was difficult to approach the foundation. Still, I’d worked my way close to the blackened bricks, hoping to find something in the charred remains. I’d found nothing in the rubble.

The summer of 2014 had passed in most people’s lives without being noticed, or if it had been, it was sunshine, beaches, and cool drinks. But those months had passed for me with aching slowness. And they were forever burned into my soul.