The house felt dead. Four days of silence hadn't cleared Andrew’s threat from the room. Every creak in the floorboards sounded like him coming back. Every shadow on the hall marble looked like a trap. We were just waiting, and the waiting was killing us.
I sat near the glass doors of the west wing studio. My thumb rubbed the edge of a blank canvas. Old charcoal stained my hands gray, the dust deep in my skin. Brushes sat dry in a glass jar next to the turpentine. The fight Julian and I had three nights ago still hung in the air like a wall.
Julian walked in without knocking. No suit jacket today. Just a black shirt with the top buttons open and the sleeves rolled up. He looked completely ran down. Dark circles under his eyes.
He stopped near the easel. He stared at the blank li
