Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Carlotta

I t was fair to say that yesterday was by far the worst day of my life. Seeing a body dead on our lawn wasn’t exactly a great start to my day. Even if Candy was a whore who deserved to be punished for ruining my marriage, she didn’t deserve to die. And then being questioned in the precinct for hours on end before finally coming home, only to have another fight with William and end the day sitting on the couch in tears, listening to him snore.

At least he stayed put and didn’t come to bed with me. Those few hours of alone time were something I had really needed. The glazing company had even managed to get the window fixed after the promise of a very large bonus if they got it done on time.

I was so glad that today was a new day, and there was surely no way it could be even close to as bad as yesterday was. At least that’s what I told myself as I showered and pulled my overalls on. I had a gallery show looming, and I was still a couple of pieces short of the full collection. Maybe it was wrong of me to want to try to do something normal with everything that had happened, everything that was still happening, really, because I had no illusions that this thing was over, but I knew I had to at least try to get back into my normal routine if I wanted a chance at retaining what little sanity I had left at that point.

I went downstairs and put a pot of coffee on. William was still passed out on the couch, and I debated waking him with a cup of coffee, but I decided against it. He was perfectly capable of getting his own coffee when he did wake up, and to be honest, listening to his droning snores wasn’t even close to as annoying as listening to him bite my head off or berate me.

I waited for the coffee to brew, and then I poured myself a cup and took it to my studio. My studio was my sanctuary, the one place where my troubles didn’t follow me, although I was finding it hard to shake off these troubles. A dead body was a lot harder to ignore than a cheating husband. Being one of only two suspects in a murder case was harder to forget about than the whiff of perfume on your husband’s shirt after another evening alone while he was presumably working late.

I couldn’t shake the knowledge that very soon, I might be parted from my husband forever, not even as I pulled out my supplies and got my easel, paints, and brushes set up. I forced myself not to go down the road of wondering which one of us would be the one to go to jail for this. It was hard to imagine a scenario where neither of us ended up locked up, and as much as I wanted to punish William for what he had done to our marriage, I wasn’t ready for him to go to jail, but I certainly didn’t want to be the one to end up behind bars.

I realized I had allowed myself to start thinking about jail as a real option for one of us, and I sat down heavily on my wooden stool and closed my eyes for a moment. I opened them and looked at the blank canvas in front of me. A canvas that had endless possibilities. I thought about the other pieces in the collection, trying to draw inspiration from them. I closed my eyes to picture the pieces, but all I saw where splatters of red, blood splatters. I knew I couldn’t bring that vision to life. It made me feel sick to just see it in my mind, and the vibrant red paint on the stark white of the canvas would be too much for me to bear right now.

I opened my eyes again and picked up my brush. I dipped it in a pot of yellow paint, with no real idea of what I was going to do with it. I just knew it was a bright color, the color of sunshine and happiness, and for that reason, it seemed like a good starting point.

Somewhat timidly, I swept the brush over the canvas, leaving behind a swirl of yellow. I pursed my lips and thought for a moment and then I added a swirl of green. Before I really knew it, the art took over and I was momentarily free of thoughts of Candy and William and Detective Del Rey and his officers.

In that moment, I was no longer Carlotta Alden, wife of William, potential murder suspect. Instead I was an artist, creating beauty in a world that needed every bit of it that it could get. I was the muse as well as the artist. I was even the paint brush as it danced over the canvas.

The colors began to take on a life of their own, and I suddenly saw it. I was painting a meadow on a summer’s day. It was so vivid that for a moment, I imagined I could feel the sun on my shoulders, the grass beneath my bare feet. The thought further inspired me, and I began to work on a woman standing in the meadow, her back to me, appreciating the beauty before her. The only red in the picture was the scarf the woman wore tied in her brown curls.

“She’s all out of proportion, you know,” a voice said from behind me, pulling me out of the picture and back into the cruel reality of the real world.

William. As always, he was berating my work. Trying to make me doubt myself. Well, this time, he wouldn’t succeed. I ignored him, continuing to paint, humming to myself as I went.

“And if she’s meant to be you, she’s too skinny. You’ve developed quite the little paunch over the years,” he added.

His words caused my hand to falter slightly, but I knew the smudge mark I made could easily be reworked into a flower. It was a shame his insults couldn’t be so easily reworked into something else in my mind.

I reminded myself that this was just his way. Whenever something knocked William’s confidence, he retaliated by knocking mine. In all honesty, hadn’t that been the cause of all this shit? His confidence was knocked when everyone talked about my mural instead of his building, so he retaliated by sleeping around and making me feel inadequate as a wife.

“It’s not me,” I said quietly, hating that I could hear a slight tremor in my voice as I spoke. “It’s someone who is happy.”

“Ah,” he said. I glanced up at him. His mouth was twisted into a sneer of contempt. It was far from the way a husband should look at his wife. “Perhaps she’s someone who knows how to be a good wife. Maybe her husband doesn’t have to look outside of his marriage for fulfilment because she hasn’t let herself go.”

That did it. I could no longer ignore William and his taunting. I felt something snap inside me. How dare he accuse me of not being a good wife after everything I had put up with from him? How dare he say I couldn’t fulfil him when I had sacrificed so much, risked so much? All for him.

I stood up and threw my paintbrush at him. He ducked, and it missed him by a mile, but it was still worth it to see the flicker of shock on his face as I stalked toward him, so angry I felt like I would explode .

“Just shut the hell up for once, you absolute fucking asshole!” I heard myself screaming at him.

That shocked look flicked back over his face again, and then his smirk came back into place, but this time, it didn’t look quite as cocky.

“I’m just saying,” he said, his tone petulant and nasty. “You wouldn’t want to showcase anything but your best work, would you? You like to play pretend in public and act like it’s all perfect, don’t you? You wouldn’t want the cracks to show and people to know how bad a wife you really are, would you?”

“Are you kidding me? A nineteen-year-old kid is dead because of your actions, and you still somehow think you’re the victim in all of this,” I shouted. “When are you going to grow up, William, and realize that all of this hatred you feel inside is of your own doing? When will you realize that we were meant to be a team, but you made it a competition, and now that you can’t compete, you blame it all on me?”

I knew I had gone too far when I saw his jaw drop, but at the same time, I had only spoken the truth, and maybe it was about time that William heard it.

“You ... you bitch,” he said, his voice quiet.

“No, William.” I sighed. “I’m not being a bitch. I’m being honest. I’m telling you what I should have told you months ago when you first started constantly putting me down. Maybe if I had told you some home truths back then, Candy would still be alive, and we would still have something worth saving.”

He shook his head slowly and then looked me right in the eyes.

“Are you really trying to put the blame for all of this on me? It’s not my fault Candy was unhinged. It’s not my fault she couldn’t deal with our being over. And the only reason I ended things with her in the first place was because of you.”

“Oh, well excuse me for not wanting my husband to fuck some little skank and end up giving me fucking herpes or something,” I shot back.

He shook his head again and then turned away from me. Normally, I’d just be glad the abuse was over, and I could get back to my painting, but he had pushed me too far today, and I wasn’t ready to just let him walk away from me this time. Not until I’d said my piece.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” I demanded.

He turned back to look at me over his shoulder, but he didn’t stop walking away .

“I’m going out. I’m going to a bar to get drunk and find someone I can talk to without being made to feel like shit,” he said.

He was gone before I had a chance to respond. I knew what he really meant. He was going out to find some dolly bird to cheat on me with. Fantastic. That was exactly what we needed at this point.

I felt the anger leave me in a rush, replaced by a deep sadness that penetrated my entire soul. I sank slowly to the floor and sat there, my knees tucked up to my chin, my arms wrapped around my legs. I rocked slowly back and forth as the tears flowed.

William had finally managed it. He had knocked me so much that I no longer even wanted to paint. Suddenly, my studio didn’t feel like my sanctuary any longer.