For Alice, With Love

Chapter 20 - Reunited

The paintings were across the kitchen table, wrapped in smooth brown craft paper like Christmas packages. Chris stared at them, hands in his pockets, still not quite sure how to process the entire twisted story as it revolved in his head. All this fuss over three paintings, all because they were Mel's. He hoped he was making the right decision to let her see them right away.

Mel had been asleep all day and he'd been adrift. He wanted to be with her, comforting her, but she needed rest. He felt useless in his own home, worried and cautious. He'd cleaned up, he'd gone for a walk, he'd checked his messages. He had no appetite to eat.

Now he was staring at the paintings, it was late afternoon, and the cleaners were supposed to be here in a half an hour.

The first thing he did when they got home and she beelined for her bed was slam a double of scotch to kick his shot nerves down. He allowed himself a few minutes of fuming about what had happened, and then wandered up to the upstairs hallway to survey the damage, the warmth of the alcohol temporarily muting the ball of anger that was rolling around inside of him.

The copper tang of blood lingered in the air as he climbed the stairs, he looked up how to remove blood stains from the carpet. Baking soda. He could do that.

After dumping the entire box from the fridge onto the stain, coating his shoes with white powder, he wondered if maybe new carpet would be a good thing. He'd have to find out what Mel would like instead, an odd feeling coming to him as he thought that. It was his family home, but now, just as much hers too.

It stopped him in the middle of the hallway.

The idea that she could stay, be with him, and they could make this their home together was there, but he wondered if it was too soon to think it. How they navigated their relationship from here was anyone's guess. It was not exactly how dating was supposed to go. You lived together after you decided to spend the rest of your life with someone, not before you even started dating. He'd done it wrong with Gillian too, in that respect. 

But his relationship with Mel was nothing like how he and Gillian had started, and he wanted it to come from a better place. There was a cottage on the property that had been Dave and Fern's, maybe—

"Stop it," he'd muttered. He was getting ahead of himself, and her. One thing at at time, and that thing right now was the battle scene he was trying to figure out how to clean up before Mel saw it.

As the baking soda had taken on a pink tinge, he'd headed for the doors to his room, leaving white footprints on the carpet, and spent some time examining the bullet hole where Al had shot the door. He missed the mechanism and went through the panel instead, thankfully. The bullet had been pried out of the wall on the far side of his room by the investigators, leaving a gaping hole in the drywall beside the window and dust on the carpet.

They'd used the brass floor vase to hammer at the door as well, which was discarded on its side, the decorative reeds scattered across the floor, ground to dust from them stepping all over them. He'd always thought those were fake reeds and cattails, and kicked at some of the fluff, sending it into the air to lazily float in a sunbeam from the high windows. He didn't want to imagine the chaos that had been part of their destruction, so he'd opened the doors to his room, unbolting the second door as well.

She'd put a chair from his room under the knobs, and the bullet had grazed the edge of it, ripping the fabric, spreading the inner batting across the carpet where it was laying now, on its side. That chair was getting tossed. He'd never really liked it anyway.

But it was more than that. He wanted no reminder of what had happened.

The ball of anger rose back up when he'd seen the blood smears on the bathtub and wall from her head in his ensuite. It was all Jet's blood, not hers, and he'd turned away when his hands started to shake. He imagined her cowering on the floor, right there. Scared out of her mind and it pushed him to keep himself busy a bit longer as he'd cleaned up the chair, the batting, the broken reeds, and dented brass vase. Putting it all in the garage to go out on garbage day, he'd then brought the paintings in, undoing the tape handle and setting them out one by one.

Now, staring at the paintings, the stress from the past two days wound through him as he drained another scotch. He drew a chair over and was about to park his ass when he heard shuffling feet.

"What are these?"

Chris turned at Mel's voice, and put on his best smile as she shuffled into the room, her frumpy house sweater wrapped around her, her hair falling out of a messy bun. She still looked tired, but her face wasn't white as a sheet, and she looked somewhat recovered. He cleared his throat and tried not to crowd her as she walked up to the table.

"They're your paintings," he replied as calmly as he could.

Mel put her hand out, and pulled at one corner of the brown craft paper, looking up at him. He nodded and she levered out a taped corner, then ripped it off across the front in one big motion. The first of the paintings came into view. The familiar blue swirl of the water popped up and she let out an involuntary ohh before ripping it away completely.

"They're in good shape," she murmured, more to herself than him, so he didn't respond. Let her have all the time she needed. He watched her, praying she was ready for this. He'd debated waiting until she was a bit recovered from the night before, but then had changed his mind, anticipating her seeing them again. She needed to have some closure as well as he, so this could be the start.

"They're in new frames," she murmured, and held up the painting to look at it, then flipped it over. "Professional framing. Moisture proof. You said they were in the bathroom?"

Chris nodded. "Yes, our guest suite."

She put the painting down, nodding, and went to the next two, opening them quickly. When they were all unwrapped, she stepped back and simply looked at them, eyes going from one to another, her hand on her mouth, tears forming. The emotion from her hit him square in the chest. He was glad he hadn't waited.

"Chris," she whispered. "Thank you."

He had to touch her. He stepped to her, put an arm around her, and kissed the top of her head. She leaned on him, still looking back and forth at them.

"My God," she said. "They're really here."

Do you want to put them back in Alice's, I mean, your room?" he asked, carefully, and she shook her head against his shoulder.

"Let's hang them up out here," she replied softly, and moved to lift up another one. "They'd look good in these frames in our main foyer."

"Okay," he agreed, perfectly aware that she had said "our".