For Alice, With Love

Chapter 3 - Lost and Found

Every light in the house was on, as Amelia sat on the couch and listened to the officer asking her parents questions about what had been stolen. The house was trashed. Lamps busted, drawers upended, the crocks on the kitchen counter smashed, flour and sugar cascading onto the floor.

The burglars had taken jewellery, silverware, the new flat-screen TV, the DVD player, and the stereo. Her mother had always told her father it was stupid to leave cash in the house, considering that would be the first place thieves would look for haul, and the roll her father kept in a coffee can in the garage was completely missing. They'd simply taken the can.

Obviously, her mother had been right.

She looked around the living room, thanking God they had not been home. Her parents had been working late over at the Smith Estate, and Amelia had been working the 5 to 9 shift at the local grocery store. God, she hated that job. But artists only got paid so much, right? They'd picked her up at the end of her shift and all come home to...

Well, chaos.

Thinking about painting made her look up to the wall where three empty squares stood out. That was the worst of it. The bastards had taken one of the only things she had left to remind her of Alice. The trio of paintings she had done for Alice for Christmas the last year she was with them. Their favourite place together.

Gone. Taken, likely, for the expensive frames that Alice had insisted they be in. The wires from the frames were snapped in two on the floor, mirroring how she felt.

Alice's mom Pearl had brought them over to her not long after Alice died. She'd just shown up a few days after they'd gone riding together at Juniper Beach, the paintings in her trunk. Amelia had been excited to get them back, and sad that Pearl hadn't wanted to keep them. She understood though. They'd cleared the air when they'd gone riding, their first interaction in weeks after the funeral. It was hard for Pearl to have reminders in the house, especially like that.

To top it off, it had only been a few weeks ago she had bumped into Chris at the Smith estate, and she had been an utter bitch, her feelings all popping to the surface and crackling like ice in a glass of soda. It had dredged up feelings she had finally wrestled back to sleep, and was still shoving back down inside herself.

Fuck, this sucked. She put her hand on her emerald charm, glad she had been wearing it. That would have been too much to bear to lose it as well.

"You okay, honey?" her mother said, putting an arm around her. She felt so numb, seeing everything through a fog of disbelief.

"They were hers, Mom," she said, looking at her hands. I—"

Her mother pulled her into a hug, and the officer and her father headed towards the door, her father looking back worriedly over his shoulder.

"It's okay." Her mother said, stroking her head. "Maybe they will wind up in a gallery somewhere, we'll find them."

It was little solace. Amelia nodded into her mother's coat, and let the tears come.

#

Three Years Later

Gillian looked at the paintings, her sleek, bobbed hair swaying gently as her head tilted, studying them. There was no mistake. They were signed 'A. Harris'.

That girl was—or had been—a painter, and these looked similar to the beach Chris had dragged her to when they were home visiting his parents one time. It had been dreadful, all the local pasty-white puffy people, and him reminiscing about summers there, his memories peppered with his dead sister, and that girl he'd been so hung up on. These had to be the paintings in those ridiculous letters.