I cannot move my arms. The blanket is tightening around my neck like a noose. I buck my legs and try to scream, but no sound comes out.
“There’s no use in struggling,” she says, the warmth in her voice gone.
With one final kick, I fall from the couch, hitting my head against the coffee table as I land on the floor. I manage to choke out one word: “Why?”
“You want to know why?” Maude has rope now—not rope, no, but some kind of thick craft string. She is tying it around my ankles, the string pinching into my skin. “You must understand why I wanted to get rid of that painting,” Maude says while tying my legs together. “It was a constant reminder of my husband’s affair.”
I stare at her, thinking of how I saw her on the street the day before, as it begins to make sense. “The flyer.” A whisper, but she hears me.
She chuckles. “Yes. I saw you walking, and I couldn’t believe how much you looked like Ivan’s model, so I followed you. It was all planned: the flyer on your door, the estatesale. Didn’t you wonder why you were the only one there?” She smiles at me as if I were a child. “I didn’t get rid of Ivan’s paintings, just the ones of your mother.” She gestures to the wall where several paintings I’d noticed at the sale are displayed. “I wanted to meetyou. See what you were like and if it was true. You see, your mother was a model for Ivan’s art class—that’s how they met. She would come over, pose for him for hours. I would hear them laugh from upstairs. They went to museums together, to antique markets, to shows. He spent more time with her than he did with me, his own fiancée.”
She shakes her head, and her expression darkens. “When I got pregnant, I dropped out of school to raise our son. I cleaned and cooked and did his laundry. I had many suitors before Ivan, suitors whom I’d like to think would have appreciated me.” She sighs.
“Anyhow, when I gave birth to our son, I thought that would be the end of it, but your mother kept coming back. I tried to get rid of her. Oh, I remember her face when I confronted her, how her eyes dropped to my pregnant belly. I was eight months pregnant at the time—I don’t think Ivan even told her we were married.” She pauses, the look on her face so hardened that she hardly resembles the woman who answered the door.
“But then, two years ago when Ivan was in the hospital, she reappeared quite unexpectedly. She looked the same, even after all this time. She was pleasant enough, so I excused myself and stood in the hall, listening to them talk from behind the door. There was that laugh again. The two of them, laughing. I despised it. Then she told him that she wanted him to meet her daughter, and I thought to myself:How peculiar. Why would she want him to meet her daughter?That is when it dawned on me. The betrayal. The lies. In the thirty years wewere married, Ivan never told me that she had been pregnant, too—” She stops short.
The tension in the air is taut as a string. I stare at Maude in horror as the final piece falls into place: I was that child. Ivan was my father.
They hit all at once: confusion, hurt, disbelief. My mother lied to me. She knew my father was alive. She knew exactly where he was. She had been in touch with him all along. How could she let me think that he had left us? And does this mean that Brooks is my half brother? Does he know? My vision swims, and I feel as if I might be sick.
Maude takes another string and begins to wrap it around my chest, tightening it around my neck. I forget about my mother’s betrayal for a moment, and all my focus goes to her.She is trying to kill me.I desperately search the room for something to defend myself with. There. Metallic, long, sharp—her knitting needle.
I wait until Maude finishes tying me, pushes herself to her feet, and turns her back to look for something across the room. Maude is distracted. This is my chance. Her knitting needles are in a basket under the table. I might be able to reach them.
My hands are bound, but I manage to rub the string against the edge of the table until it loosens, and I work an arm free from the blanket. Closing my eyes, I reach as far as I can.One more inch ...Pain shoots through my bound collarbone and jaw. With all my might, I give one last effort.There!My fingers are tightening around the knitting needle when a shadow falls over me. I hear a crunch, and a terrible pain shoots through my hand. My eyes fly open to see the heel of her shoe grind over the tops of my fingers.
My fear is replaced by adrenaline and fury as I pull my hand back. “What do you want with me?” I manage to say,hand clenched to my side. “To hurt me because I’m the product of your husband’s affair? What are you going to do, kill me?”
Maude doesn’t reply. She turns back to a box of craft supplies, looking for something. I work my uninjured hand free and manage to loosen the string tied around my neck. I keep it in place, though, waiting for the right moment.
“When I saw you that day in October, I wanted to see if it was true, if you really were Ivan’s daughter,” she says without turning around. Her tone is oddly calm. “For a year I’d grieved Ivan’s death. I’d convinced myself that his illegitimate child had moved away. I would never have to see or think about his affair again. I’d managed to put it all behind me until I saw you on the street that day. Your likeness—I knew it had to be true. You had his cheekbones, his mouth, his determination. I wanted to talk to you once, and maybe then I could finally let all of that go. But now you’ve used Ivan’s painting to make a fortune. I have to see your face—and hers—everywhere.” She stops. Her cheeks are flushed with anger.
“Look, the money doesn’t matter to me,” I tell her. “You can have it. Or I’ll tell them the truth. Anything! Just let me go. Please. You’ll never see me again.”
She doesn’t seem to hear, but she stares at me from across the room, a roll of duct tape in her hands. “You look just like your mother,” she says instead.
Dread widens inside of me as she takes a seat on the couch. The emotion has left her eyes, and they are vacant, frightening.
Maude bites her lip as she picks at the end of the duct tape roll. “I didn’t intend for anyone to die—of course I didn’t. But, you see, I couldn’t help myself. As she was leaving the hospital, I followed her to the restroom. I slipped a little of Ivan’s liquid pain medication into her thermos. It was raining,and—” She hesitates. “I imagine it was difficult to see in that weather ... and with the drugs in her system.”
She killed my mother.
The realization comes swiftly and with sudden clarity, as if the room has snapped into focus.It wasn’t an accident. She killed my mother.
I have never been a violent person, and yet a profound, overwhelming rage rises up within me. I want to hurt this woman. This monster.
Fury overtakes me, and with a surge of adrenaline, I seize the pot of tea in both hands, rise up, and smash it over her head. She falls, grabbing at the painting and knocking it over. Tea spills down the canvas, over my mother’s face.
I stare at Maude’s unconscious form on the floor.What have I done? Oh god, what have I done?
I remember the look on Isabella’s face when she came into the studio and saw it for the first time. All I had to do was say, “It’s not mine.” And yet I was so desperate for success, so selfish and naive and stupid, and now that one terrible decision has caused a chain reaction rippling tothis.
After freeing my legs from the blanket, I take out my phone, but it is dead. I look at Maude, lying there, and a wave of nausea nearly knocks me over.
Focus. Maude’s phone.
Holding my breath, I check her neck for a pulse. Nothing.No, oh no.Panic floods me. I shift my fingers, press harder on her neck.There it is!A faint flutter, barely a pulse, but it’s enough.
