Saturday, 1:41 p.m.
When she’d entered Grace’s bedroom, Meredith had closed the door behind her out of habit. Too many ghosts lived in that room; best to keep them contained. Now Meredith opened the door to semidarkness. Though it was only midday, the room-darkening blinds were drawn to help fight the heat, but Meredith would’ve bet her Winsor and Newton brush set that she’d switched on the light when she’d come up the stairs.
Leyna moved closer to her, steps tentative, as if she, too, was surprised by the gloom. They remained still as their eyes adjusted. Meredith listened intently for sounds beyond her daughter’s breathing.
Leyna glanced at her mom, brows raised, and mouthed: Is someone here?
Meredith shook her head, more wish than answer. Even in the dim light, she felt seen in a way that raised goose bumps on her arms.
Leyna’s fingers grazed the wall next to the light switch, the one Meredith was now certain had been toggled on before she’d entered Grace’s room. An inch to the right, followed by one soft tap, and the hallway would be cast in full LED light. Leyna hesitated before dropping her hand. Was she thinking, like Meredith, that it might be safer to remain in the dark?
Downstairs, a door clicked shut.
Someone leaving? Or someone entering?
Earlier, the severed battery cable had seemed a nuisance, a message not much worse than others delivered before, like the mail thrown in Meredith’s garbage or her recycling can “accidentally” upended. A message like the bag of dog crap Meredith had once tossed in the open window of the Durans’ Audi.
Now Meredith’s heart drummed at that click of the door. She waited for the generator to fall quiet again or for the sound of glass shattering, drawers opening, footsteps ascending the stairs.
The hall was quiet but she couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched. Someone had threatened her through Brian. Someone had sabotaged her generator. Someone had left a warning for her in the woods. And now, someone was in her house.
Her house.
She clenched her fists to stop their shaking.
How dare they.
Leyna lifted her foot as if to take a step, then set it down again, likely afraid a creak of the floorboards would give them away. She glanced at her mom, mouthed another word: Who?
There was only one way to get that answer.
Meredith thought of the knives in the kitchen, the tools in the garage, and the Taser locked in the box downstairs. All useless to her. At the moment, she would’ve settled for a turpentine-soaked rag and a match.
Meredith’s eyes locked with Leyna’s, which were wide and bright. This was the expression her daughter had worn as a child when climbing trees or trailing, unwanted, after her sister.
It was also the expression she’d worn at eighteen when she’d announced loudly to the neighborhood that Adam had killed Grace, and anyone who didn’t believe that had their head firmly lodged somewhere dark and unpleasant.
Meredith had forgotten how fearless her daughter could be.
Leyna marched down the stairs, flipping light switches as she went, each spotlight a challenge. She’d spent more than half her life looking for her sister. Why would Meredith expect her to hide now that she’d gotten that close to the truth? Her daughter had never been built for half measures.
In the kitchen, a canvas was on the easel, facing away from them. She’d stowed the half-finished portrait during her argument with Leyna, before they’d headed upstairs. So who had brought it out again and stuck it on that easel for her to find?
Meredith crossed the room to the easel. A sudden chill shot up her spine. When Leyna stepped around her to view the portrait too, she gasped.
“Is it—was it—another portrait of Grace?”
That she had to ask spoke to the violence with which the painting had been defaced. The eyes had been removed, the mouth gouged, the cheeks slashed to ribbons. The palette knife that had been used still jutted from Grace’s throat.
Leyna stared at the painting with open revulsion that quickly gave way to anger. “Why?”
Meredith knew it was because of what had happened to Grace and Adam. But the question occurred to her again—who could know about that?
Whoever had done this had likely entered with the intention of sending a message—I know what you did. If the person hadn’t stumbled across the painting, Meredith might’ve found the same message written on her refrigerator whiteboard that Leyna had found on the snack-cake wrapper pinned to the sugar pine.
As Meredith stared at the angry slashes that crossed Grace’s painted face, the dull anger inside her chest sharpened into something far more dangerous.
Meredith grabbed her designer duffel, two portraits—one of each of her daughters, now hastily wrapped in paper pads—and the locked metal box that contained her Taser. “You can drive.” Meredith handed the bag to Leyna and excused herself. A minute later, she came back with a bottle of wine. She tipped it in Leyna’s direction.
Two paintings, a bottle of wine, and a Taser. The necessities.
“If I’m going to spend the night in that tiny apartment of yours, I’ll need a good cabernet.”
The wine would also dull the anger that continued to eat at her, allowing her to focus on finding out the identity of the person fucking with her family—and fuck with them right back.