Audrey looked down at Remi’s legs. “Why?”
“No reason. I just feel like wearing them for the rest of the summer.”
12
Remi watched transfixed as the thick, red liquid dripped onto the plastic on the floor, splattering in a macabre pattern over her bare foot.
Radiohead’s “No Surprises” blared from a wireless speaker on the table. Pulsing waves of oranges, blues, and rich purples shifted around the interior of the cottage. But instead of feeling comforted as she usually did, she was sick, almost dizzy as the red rolled like blood over her skin. The canvas in front of her taunted with its blinding white perfection.
Red. White. Blood. Snow. The shimmer of broken glass glimmering in headlights. Dark. Dark. Dark.
Despite the sunshine reflecting off the endless surface of the lake beyond the windows, she felt like she was back in the suffocating midnight black of that cold, horrible night.
The brush—a tool once so familiar—felt foreign and wrong in her left hand.
She shook herself forcefully.
“Don’t be a fucking baby,” she insisted, raising the brush like a wand. A spell to vanquish the darkness. To bleed color onto the canvas and, in the process, exorcise the terror, the helplessness.
Sweat dotted her brow and the back of her neck where her hair hung in a limp curtain. Her breath was weak within the confines of her lungs. A warning that she needed to pause, to breathe.
The bristles inched closer to the surface. One sweep, and the white wouldn’t be perfect in its emptiness anymore. She’d learned the lesson early. Void wasn’t perfection. Putting her colorful, lawless mark on an otherwise blank canvas was what she did best. At least, it had been.
“This is stupid,” she hissed through her teeth as the song started over again for the ninth time. “Just put the damn brush on the damn canvas.”
It had been nearly two weeks since the last time her brush had swept through richly colored oils and created worlds where before there’d been nothing. It felt like a lifetime.
But the nothingness, the void, was safe. Pristine.
The tightness in her chest started to burn, and the brush rolled from her stiff fingers.
“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered, sucking in a breath.
She sank to the ancient, dusty drop cloth she’d reclaimed from her parents’ basement and used a corner of it to swipe the paint from her foot.
This whole “breakdown” thing was really starting to piss her off.
Her breath sounded thin and wispy.
“How are you going to live a full life if you can’t take a full breath?”
An old question posed by a new friend. And for once, Remi had paid attention.
“I’m not a yoga type person,” she’d insisted, eyeing the colorful parade of tights and tank tops and mats as students of all shapes, sizes, and colors marched into the studio. “I’m more of a ‘boot camp that makes you barf at the end’ person.”
“Mmm. And how is that working for you?” her friend had asked serenely.
“Fine, but next week you come to a boxing class if I hate this.”
She hadn’t hated it. She’d found something different, something special in the yoga classes that taught her to harness her energy and her breath. To move her body in ways that felt like honor rather than torture.
The breath was an anchor, and she’d clearly lost hers. Now she was adrift. And alone.
The song cut off, and her phone’s ringtone filled the living space. Pain in My Ass. Ugh. She hit ignore, sending the call to voicemail again.
On a wheezy groan, she switched playlists, cueing up some Lizzo girl power. Pinks and purples instantly billowed around her in pretty, vibrant clouds as she forced herself to sit and breathe in one of the swivel chairs in front of the window.
She glared out at nature’s perfection.
It had been premature and stupid to borrow studio space from Brick if she wasn’t even going to be able to use it. Thankfully she hadn’t tried this little failure of an experiment at his place. The idea that he could catch her in a moment so pathetically vulnerable made her want to barf like a finisher of a boot camp class.
If he caught her in the midst of a life crisis, he wouldn’t stop until he’d pried the story out of her. Then, he’d do what he’d always done, ride to her rescue.
And this time, it could get him killed.
There was no rescue. No hero to swoop in and clean up her mess. She’d gone too far. And the consequences due were hers alone.
“I’ll end her. And you’ll know it was because of you.”
The threat echoed in her head, and she did her best to breathe through it.
She just needed to push through. What she wouldn’t give for a sweaty sun salutation or a marathon painting session to get her head right again. She needed to find a way through the fear, back to the Remi who wouldn’t just roll over and let a monster win.
The tightness in her chest demanded her attention.
She drew in a breath, holding it when she’d hit capacity, then exhaled with control. Breathe in. Breathe out.
The familiar scents of her oil paints, the brush cleaner, the bread she’d baked that morning grounded her, blocked out the memories of the metallic smell of blood and smoke.
She wasn’t going to sit here, wallowing in the what-ifs, and give herself a goddamn asthma attack.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She sat still, breathing deeply until the tightness in her chest loosened, until her yoga instructor back in Chicago would be proud.
Crisis averted, for now. She decided to unearth her inhaler and keep it handy just in case. But just as she started to work up the energy to get her ass off the chair and start digging through her hastily packed luggage, a familiar jingle on the street caught her attention.
Remi threw on her coat and slippers and jogged out to the gate just in time to see Mickey Mulvaney and his trusty steeds Murphy and Rupert clip-clop into view, the dray wagon stacked with boxes and bins.
“Mickey Mulvaney, haven’t you retired yet?” she teased. The man had been running package and freight deliveries over the island for practically her entire life.
The man beamed down at her from his perch behind the Clydesdales. Brown eyes peered out at her between a wool cap and thick scarf. “Well, if it isn’t little Remi Ford!” he crowed. “I’ll retire when I’m dead. How’s big city living?”
“Not as good as island life. Packages show up there in these things called trucks.”
“Those mainlanders don’t know what they’re missing.” He cackled as he hopped into the flatbed to paw through envelopes and packages. Mickey and Murphy were fixtures on the island, running mail and deliveries all year long.
“Got something here for you,” he said, triumphantly snatching a thick envelope from one of his satchels.
“For me?” That was a surprise. The only people who knew she was here were the ones on Mackinac. And for them, it would be easier to just knock on the door rather than send a package.
He handed it over. Her name was written across the white envelope in a harsh, black scrawl. Her mind adding a pink shimmer to the E’s. There was no return address.
“You planning to fix a little hockey action while you’re back? I heard Red Wings are down a couple so far this season.”