Safe In His Arms

“I’d like to go as early as we can in the morning. Did you have anything to do with the company?”

She smiled briefly. “I bailed it out whenever he needed funds but that’s about it. I’m no good when it comes to things like that.”

“You must be good when it comes to your own work.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No. But you support yourself and it looks like you did the same for him. I’d define that as success.”

“I suppose you’re right. I tend to define success differently than most people.”

“How is that?”

“All I’m interested in is my art. If I’m able to create something that expresses the emotion I’m after then I’ve been successful.”

“Tell me what you do.”

Like before, it seemed as if she didn’t want to answer him. Her expression shut down and she leaned back in her chair. He let the silence grow and wondered why she was so reluctant to discuss what she did.

“I build shadow boxes,” she said finally.

Again he waited for an explanation. When the silence reached the awkward stage, she spoke once more.

“They’re small boxes,” she explained. “Glass on the front and sides, a tableau inside. They’re…different.”

He didn’t force her. “And Sarah Levy sells them for you?”

“Yes.”

She waited for more questions and he had them, but he wanted to get back to the scene and see if Carter had come up with anything. A quick glance at his watch told him how late it was.

He stood and tucked his notebook into his suit pocket. “We’ll be talking again but I think we’ve covered enough tonight. In the meantime, don’t forget my list.” He paused. “Call your friends back and get them to stay with you. You’ve had a pretty traumatic evening.”

“I’ve gone through worse by myself and made it to the other side.” She looked out the darkened window behind him. “I’ll do the same with this.”

ANISE SHUT THE DOOR behind the cop, then rested her forehead against the wooden frame. She wanted to go to bed, to sleep and dream a senseless dream but she couldn’t. She had to call Donna. As much as she disliked the woman, no one deserved to hear about the death of someone they once loved on the morning news.

She went to the desk in the living room and pulled the phone toward her. Her fingers felt numb as she dialed. When Donna answered, Anise tried to compare her voice to the person who’d called Kenneth earlier but the slurred “hello” didn’t sound like the caller. It was two in the morning, though. Few people sounded like themselves when the phone rang at that time.

“Donna, this is Anise. Are you awake?”

“I am now. What the hell do you want? Do you know what time it is? For God’s sake—”

That was typical Donna. Anise interrupted her tirade. “Donna, I have some bad news. I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Kenneth’s been shot. We met tonight to sign our divorce papers and when we walked out of the restaurant, someone…shot him.”

Stunned silence echoed at Donna’s end. “What is this? Are you kidding me? Is this some kinda sick joke like one of your sick pieces of art?”

“I’m telling you the truth.” Anise closed her eyes and rubbed them with her thumb and forefinger. Star-bursts formed in the blackness. “He’s dead.” She took a deep breath and the reality hit her all over again. “Kenneth’s dead. He died in my arms in front of the restaurant.”

Donna’s gasp was loud, like fabric ripping. “He’s dead… Are you sure?” Before Anise could answer, Donna asked a second question. “What time did this happen? Where were you?”

Her queries made no sense but few things Donna said ever did. “It was around seven or eight, I guess. I’m not sure. We were at Lido’s—downtown.”

She expected Donna to start crying but she didn’t say a word. Anise wondered if she’d hung up. “Donna?”

Her answer was barely a whisper. “I’m here….”

“Can you tell Brittany?”

“Brittany…” She said her daughter’s name as if it were a stranger’s.

“Can you break the news to her?” Anise forged ahead with dogged determination. “She needs to hear it from you, not the TV or something. There might be reporters contacting you later. You don’t want her to be blindsided.”

She seemed to gather herself, although Anise couldn’t really imagine that happening. “I’ll talk to her,” Donna promised. “I’ll find her right now and tell her what happened.”

Anise weighed the odds over whether or not Donna would follow through. Whatever they were, she couldn’t worry about them now. She had enough to handle on her own. “I’ll call you when I know more.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

DESPITE HER PROMISE, Anise didn’t call Sarah. She didn’t have the emotional strength to fight with her friend and that’s how the conversation would turn out because Anise didn’t want her or Madelyn to come back. She wanted to be by herself and went straight to bed after talking to Donna even though she didn’t expect to sleep. She dozed restlessly when things were going well. Tonight she’d do nothing but stare at the ceiling and replay the events of the day.

She closed her eyes and pretended regardless. Sometimes she could fool herself into a short nap.

It took less than a minute to realize that wasn’t going to happen.

Behind her eyelids, the images came fast and furious, a slide show running amok. Everything that had happened from Kenneth easing into their booth on time to his final, dying gasp replayed itself behind her shuttered gaze. She tried to stop the visions from coming, but realized her efforts were pointless.

She got up, threw on her robe and went into her studio.

In the streetlight filtering through the windows everything looked just as it had earlier when she’d left to go meet Kenneth. The worktable was strewn with pieces of broken glass and lengths of wood. At her painting station by the window, brushes soaked in glass jars while tubes of paint littered the tabletop. Beside another window, her drawing easel stood ready. She’d half expected a tornado-like path of destruction to greet her.

She tightened her belt and walked slowly to her stool and the pad of paper propped up before it. Before she started a project she always sketched it out, the concept flowing from her brain to her fingertips without much conscious thought. She picked up the pencil and looked at it, her mind drifting back to her childhood. There had only been the two of them. Anise had no idea who her father was, and her mother hadn’t had contact with her family for years. Mother and daughter had been incredibly close. Her mother had seen her talent early. When she’d hardly been able to feed them, she’d encouraged Anise with sets of colored pens and bordered papers. “Someday you’ll be a famous artist,” she’d predicted. “Your pretty pictures will hang everywhere—in fancy houses and important museums. You’ll be legendary.”

Anise hadn’t known what legendary meant but from the shine in her mother’s eyes when she made the pronouncement, Anise had known it was a good thing. Too bad her mother hadn’t lived long enough to see part of her prediction come true. Anise was well-known in the art world and her pieces were displayed in “fancy houses.” She wasn’t legendary, though, and she didn’t do “pretty pictures.”

Any desire she might have had to do that had vanished the night her mother died. After she’d been pulled from the closet where she’d hidden, Anise had begun to see the universe differently than she had before. It had changed, just like the skin on her palms. It was full of danger and scary things and situations that could go wrong. If you weren’t careful enough, you could die. People died every day. They left and you had to cope all by yourself.

From that point on, she’d been another person and no one, except Sarah, had even known she changed because no one else had known her that well before. She looked three times before she crossed the street. She wore a cross and the Star of David. She guarded her emotions and her body and most of all her heart. That’s why she’d married Kenneth. She hadn’t loved him so she’d thought it might be safe. Her plan had worked for a while, but then she’d come to care for him. In return, he’d wanted more of her and she hadn’t been able to give it to him. Now he was gone, too.

She sat down on the stool, with only the streetlight for illumination. A pattern of leaves from the pin oak danced across the tablet before her and her pencil drifted over the paper trying to catch the design.

When the sun came up, she was still drawing. The doorbell brought her out of the trance and her eyes shot to the clock that hung between the windows on her right. It was seven.

BISHOP STARTED TO CURSE. He’d told her he would call first but he hadn’t had the time; now he was standing on Anise’s front porch with ten dollars’ worth of fancy coffee and she wasn’t answering her door. He’d left last night with the impression she wanted to be by herself but maybe she’d changed her mind—or her friends had changed it for her—and she’d gone to spend the night with them after all. He wouldn’t have wanted to be alone if he had gone through what she had. But a moment later, the door swung open.