She’d never seen this one, of course. She assumed Daphne had created it, along with the sixth, once she got to London. In the painting, Daphne stood on a cobbled London street, rain falling from a gloomy gray sky. She wore the same white dress, the hem tattered and more than halfway up her thigh, and the sleeves were ripped, revealing her upper arms.
Revealing her tattoo.
Her hair was lavender, blond roots just starting to grow out, creating a lovely ombré effect, and the rain hadn’t quite soaked it to her scalp yet.
Her eyes were cast upward toward the sky, and she had a smile on her face, her expression serene, but also anticipatory.
Her features though…they were just a hair shy of perfectly clear. April had to zoom in on the digital image, and she still wasn’t completely sure, but it definitely looked like her face was still a little bit off, a little blurred.
She scrolled to the last piece, her heart in her throat, and when she saw it, she clapped a hand over her mouth. She couldn’t help it.
“Holy shit,” she said through her fingers.
“What?” Sasha asked, leaning over Gertie’s center console to try and get a glimpse of April’s phone. “What’s happening?”
But April needed a second to process what she was seeing on her screen.
Daphne’s sixth and final painting.
In it, Daphne’s facial features were completely clear. It was a closer image of her, just the chest up, and she was smiling widely, showing all of her teeth, her eyes cast down, lavender hair beautiful and curling over her shoulders, the roots just a bit more grown out than the previous painting.
And the white dress was gone.
In this piece, she wore a sky blue dress with a sweetheartbodice, thin straps over her lovely shoulders. It took April a second to place it, but this was the same dress Daphne had worn the night of the solstice party.
The first time she and April had kissed.
But that wasn’t what had made April gasp, what had stolen her words and her breath.
A person stood behind Daphne, their arms circled around her shoulders, holding her back tight against their chest. Their face was mostly hidden, only below their nose visible at the tip of the canvas, their head turned to the side, iridescent hair hitting right at their neck. They wore a gauzy-looking off-the-shoulder top, dark blue and dotted with moons and stars.
And their arms.
Their arms were covered in tattoos. Scorpion girls and flowers and trees, the edge of a tiny pair of scissors visible just inside their elbow, ink curling over their collarbones and shoulders and down their wrists.
“Fuck,” Sasha said when April finally angled her phone so Sasha could see. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Do you think it’s me?” April finally managed to ask, her voice dazed, her brain whirling.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Then I think you’re right.”
“Hey, you’re here!”
April looked up to see Ramona running down the diamond-patterned driveway in a pair of cutoffs and a purple T-shirt with a black cat printed on the front. Dylan was behind her, smiling and waving.
April couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. She stuffed her phone into her pocket, eyes welling with tears, and fell into her best friend’s arms.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Half an hourlater, April paced in one of Jack and Carrie’s many guest rooms, chewing on her thumbnail. The room was calming and beachy with light blue walls, a queen-size bed framed by drapey silks from a custom headboard and covered in blue and cream linens, and a rattan swing chair secured to the ceiling.
“What are you going to do?” Ramona asked. She sat on the edge of the bed with April’s phone, staring down at Daphne’s paintings.
“I have no idea,” April said, throwing herself into the swing chair and causing it to sway like a pendulum. “What the hellcanI do?”
