She doesn’t laugh this time, but I can tell she wants to as her honey eyes sparkle with amusement.
“A panda bear and a dandelion. That will make a very cute combination, don’t you think?” she asks the kids, and they all exclaim in agreement.
She turns her attention to the room next. “Laney, what’s your favorite animal?”
A little girl with a mop of brown curls shoots out of her seat at the front of the class. “A toad!”
I can’t help the smile that stretches across my face when the room explodes in giggles, and a fewews.
“And my favorite flower is a rose!” Laney shouts.
“Brilliant!” Chloe squeals back. “What about you, Noah?”
I follow Chloe’s gaze to a boy near the back of the class, his choices shared much more quietly than Laney’s. “A lion,” he says. “But I don’t really like flowers.” He scrunches his nose up. “My mom has a really pokey cactus in the kitchen, and that’s my favorite plant.”
“That’s perfect,” Chloe assures him. And that’s how the next five minutes of painting class carries on. Chloe calls on each child in the crowd by name, and lets them share their favorite things before she tells everyone to get to painting.
“You too, detective,” she whispers, nudging me with her elbow and urging me to a canvas near hers at the front of the room.
I settle into my adult-sized chair in front of a blank canvas. The paintbrushes beckon me to grab them, but I fumble with where to start. I glance around the room, seeing Chloe kneeling near a kid and helping him squeeze the colors he’ll need onto a paper plate.
She does it with each one. She whispers and giggles with them, tickling their sides every now and then. She looks up when she gets to the fourth kid, and finds me staring. Smiling, she nods at my canvas, encouraging me to get started.
I reach for the paints on the small desk between me and Laney, squeezing some black, white, grey, and green onto my plate.
I amnotan artist. Everyone took art class in elementary school, and I chose it as an elective in high school, too, because I thought it would be an easy elective. It was not. I was so out of my depth it was embarrassing, and that’s exactly how I feel now, even in a room full of children.
Pressing the end of my brush into the black paint, I smear a large circle into the middle of the canvas that will become my attempt at a panda bear. If I had known this is what was going to happen, I probably would have lied and said my favorite animal was a seal. Slapped a grey blob onto the canvas, gave it some whiskers, and called it good.
I glance back at Noah, jealous that he announced his favorite plant as a cactus. That sounds easy as fuck to paint.
Chloe eventually settles into her chair in front of me, partially obscured by her own canvas. I force myself to stay focused on my own, and not get distracted by this soft, jovial side of her I’ve never seen. Not even when she was cleaning the possum skull in her basement.
My gaze carries to her every now and then. The way she bends her neck as she takes a break from whatever she’s painting to study what she’s done so far. She takes the edge of her bottom lip between her teeth, and then runs the end of her paintbrush along her lip line.
She doesn’t notice me watching her as she turns her gaze away from her canvas to survey the room, the kids with crinkled brows and their tongues sticking out in concentration as they focus on their paintings, just as immersed in their art as I am in her.
I return my attention to my canvas.
Silence engulfs the room as we all give our undivided attention to our masterpieces.
Eventually, Chloe lets out a stretch, rising from her chair and meandering around the room to check on everyone’s progress. I can sense themoment she zeroes in on me, the energy in the air shifting as she approaches me from behind and settles her forearms on my shoulders, her chin resting on her wrist. Her face is so close to mine, I can feel the tickle of her skin against my ear. I turn my head toward her, putting us cheek to cheek.
“What do you think?”
She lets out a soft laugh, the warm air and her perpetual scent of berries fanning across my lips.
“It’s perfect,” she murmurs. She’s just being nice, because it’s most definitely not perfect. Every body part on the poor panda is misshapen. I couldn’t even get his eyes to look in the same direction, and all I had to do was stick a little dot right in the middle of each circle. The dandelion in his paw doesn’t look too bad, though.
Butthis moment, it feels perfect. Which feels…odd.
In this place, with all these kids around, I can’t be curt with Chloe. I can’t back her against a wall or put my hand around her throat. I can’t threaten her. I certainly can’t accuse her of being an evil psychopath, especially not after the way I’ve seen her treat these women and children.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her in a good light, and I have a sinking feeling it’s not the only opportunity I’ve had—I’ve just missed them all, or refused to see them.
I stiffen under the pressure of Chloe’s body on mine, feeling no better than the men these families are running from.
Chloe lifts herself off me, not seeming to sense the sudden tension in my body. “Come see mine.”
