CHAPTER27
That night Kari dreamed she was a ghost.
Such dreams, and the reality behind them, had framed much of her childhood. For years she had viewed herself as a slender wraith, one who drifted beyond the reach of her family’s sudden rages. Her father’s molten fury, her mother’s icy venom, she had done her utmost to avoid both. The young Kari had had no idea what brought them on. Everything she did had seemed at least partly wrong.
Her brother shared their parents’ dual nature, but at least with Justin, there were clear signals as to when he might erupt. What was more, Justin possessed a rock-hard solidity, or so it seemed to his young sister. He was able to endure their father’s ire, remain intact, and then move on. Unlike Kari, who feared any such outburst might destroy her entirely. Even the slightest hint of another tempest left Kari withered. Utterly defeated. Weeping in terror.
It was far safer simply to vanish in plain sight.
In those dark early years, she often dreamed of being a ghost. Sometimes it was fun, slipping safely from place to place, watching and listening and moving on. Shielded even when their shouting matches took aim at her shadow form.
When she thought back on those fragile dreamscapes, Kari occasionally found herself frozen in place, captured by the thought of what might have happened if there had not been the two lifelines cast her way by the vagueness of fate. Her painting and Indrid, two reasons to grow beyond her wraithlike days and take on a real form. Have a purpose and a friendship, both strong enough to help her. Not to grow wings—that would have been too much to ask—but to find strength to walk forward. Face the new day. Build her own definition of a good life.
Tonight, in this dream, Kari merely drifted. She could not see clearly where she was. But she had the distinct impression of having entered a childhood space, one where she could pretend at safety. And yet the dream filled her with a restless disquiet. As if she risked missing something vital. Kari tried to run, to press through shadow walls and connect with a more distinct version of reality. And yet there were other wraiths, fragments of a life she had left behind, doing their best to hold her in place, keep her trapped....
She woke up.
Kari opened her eyes to the pastel wash of another dawn. The only sound was Sienna’s gentle breath by her left ear. She rose from her pallet, dressed, then lifted the slumbering kitten and left the bedroom. Her movements were deliberate, not slow or fast. There was no rush to the morning, though she was desperate to try to make sense of her dream. Gather some clear image from the internal tempest the night had left behind.
She entered the atelier, settled the kitten in her basket, grabbed a sketchbook and pencil, then returned to the kitchen. She put on a pot of coffee and began to draw. Page after page became filled while she drank two mugs and ate a bowl of granola. But the sketches remained amorphous, indistinct. As if the images in her head defied proper form.
Kari refilled the pot, set out fresh cups, and left them for Graham and Rafi when they woke. She carried her sketchbook and phone and mug back into the atelier, set up a blank canvas, and stood there. Taking cautious sips. Waiting to see if the swirl of images and emotions might finally . . .
Then it struck her.
She tore all the pages from her sketchbook and dumped them in the trash. Kari then took the same pencil and approached the canvas.
She drew a wraith standing before a mirror. Even before this initial figure was completed, she tossed the pencil away and began mixing oils. Every action seemed to take forever. Her impatience grew to a fire that threatened to consume her. Finally, at long last, she began to paint.
The very indistinct central figure was painted in pearl and white-gold. She surrounded it with a myriad of other indistinct figures painted in shades of blue-gray. They sprawled in languorous ease around three sides of the canvas, like ballerinas on break. Their oddly disjointed forms all faced the central figure, who stared straight ahead, facing the empty white expanse.
Kari stopped then. She took a step back and collided with Graham. Rafi stood beside him, both men gazing at the canvas. Their expressions were blank. Confused. She turned away. She didn’t want to hear whatever it was they might wish to say. It was vital she remain focused on the work at hand.
She liked the quality of the half-seen wraiths. They added a vibrant intensity to how the central figure stared at nothing. That ghost, fashioned from the colors of honey and lemon, hovered at the canvas’s heart. All the other apparitions took aim, their faces pointed at the main figure. And yet they did so without eyes.
Kari was tempted to leave the final space empty. A wraith staring into the cloud of unknowing.
Then she decided it would be an easy way out. The painting would remain less than it needed to be. Her inner turmoil unresolved.
Kari resumed work.
She was vaguely aware of quiet movements behind her. The men came and went. While the men were away, Sienna padded into the atelier’s bathroom, where her litter box was stashed. The men returned, and she scampered back to her hiding place beneath the canvas tarp. The door opened, permitting a dry desert wind spiced with sorrel and heat to enter. The door closed. The men seated themselves. Spoons clinked against bowls. Kari felt a pang of hunger, but she pushed it away.
She painted a mirror in an ornate gilded frame. But what the mirror revealed was no reflection. Instead, a face struggled to break from the surface. Fractured, stretched, nearly torn apart by the effort required to emerge fully. The face was far clearer than the central wraith, who watched the reflection take form. Just the same, her features were incomplete. Or perhaps the features were fragmented by her battle. Only the eyes were painted in vivid clarity. Wide and desperate and frantic with the urgent desire to break free.
Kari was not finished, but she could not paint more. As she set down the palette and began cleaning the brushes, Kari glanced back. The two men sat on the blanket they had spread out the previous afternoon. Some distance away, Sienna had found a dash of sunlight by the side wall and sat observing the men and cleaning one paw. With a mild start, Kari realized in all the time they had known each other, the men had never before watched her paint. Rafi studied the painting with a furrowed brow, as if struggling to understand the work’s deeper purpose. Graham, the normally calm and stoic partner, was having difficulty controlling his emotions. His face was creased with what could have been mistaken for genuine pain.
Graham’s emotions left Kari unsettled, as if she had glimpsed a forbidden element from a locked and lonely room. She finished cleaning the brushes, then pulled the drop cloth away from her other two unfinished oils. Both had been started upon her arrival in Miramar, then set aside in her impatient need to work on these others. She set up two more easels, with her current work in the center position. On the left easel she placed the happy family walking the desultory city street. Only now they seemed to frolic blindly down a concrete canyon. On the right-hand easel, she set the woman staring through the glass door at two men raging into their phones. Kari had assumed these secondary figures required a great deal more work. Now she wasn’t so sure. She actually liked how their vague images were threatened by unseen winds. Only the pair were too busy with their phones, too immersed in their angry tirades, to notice.
She walked back and settled between the two men. Sienna trotted over and climbed into her lap. She gave the silence a long moment, then pointed to the canvas depicting the two men and said, “I’m wondering if this one is actually finished.”
“Not another brushstroke,” Graham said. “Neither a jot nor a tittle.”
“I suppose . . . if you like, you can have it for Miami.”
“We like,” Rafi said. “We like a lot.” He hesitated, glanced at Graham, then added, “It’s probably not my place to say so, but I think your new one is ready, as well.”
She tried to distance herself from the new canvas. View it as, well, another work. But the emotions and the potent hours still held her. “Are you absolutely certain?”
Graham nodded, his gaze still on the canvas. “It should be front and center in Miami.” He looked at her, his features solemn. “It is that good.”
She had never given up a painting so soon after completion. Days and sometimes weeks of living with the work, touching up small elements, hours spent examining and in many cases wishing she could have done it better. This time, though, she heard herself say, “Then it’s settled.”
She was so drained from the hours of work, she could have remained there for hours. But Rafi rose to his feet and announced, “It’s time to go see what this little frontier town has in the way of high fashion.”
“There’s a lovely shopping street, with some beautiful things in the windows,” Kari said. Giving the new canvas a final look. Saying farewell. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
