Page 15 of What Happened Last Night

“What are you hiding, Carlotta?” I said.

“From the police? Your affair,” she snapped.

“Not from the police. From me,” I said.

“I didn’t kill Candy, if that’s what you’re implying,” she snapped.

I was getting sick of her trying to manipulate me and snapping at me like I was the bad guy here.

“It’s funny you sound so certain about that when your only form of defense is the claim that you can’t remember anything that happened that night,” I said with a smirk.

She looked at me for a second and then she looked down at the ground. I almost pressed the matter, but truthfully, at that point, I was just glad to get her to shut up for a minute and let me think.

I sat back down and ignored Carlotta when she picked her book back up again. We remained sitting in silence, each of us hiding our secrets, each of us filled with bubbling resentment. I began to wonder how the hell my marriage had come to this.

I remembered when Carlotta and I first got together. How we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. How we would talk and talk for hours and share every little secret. And now, we barely spoke to each other except to fight. I didn’t know how Carlotta had changed so much.

I knew for sure in that moment that our marriage was failing. Maybe not even failing. Maybe it had already failed. Carlotta was no longer the woman I had fallen in love with. She had spent our whole marriage manipulating me until she believed she was in charge. She had even pushed me into the arms of other women. And yet still I was here, by her side. She really needed to wake up and realize how lucky she was.

My thoughts became darker and darker and I felt myself sinking into despair. This wasn’t how my life was supposed to go. We were supposed to be happy. Carlotta was meant to make me happy, but she didn’t. Not anymore.

Only one thing made me happy now. The feeling of being wanted by some pretty young thing who could have any man she wanted and yet chose me. Maybe that’s what I should do. Go out and find some eager girl to fuck. That would certainly help to ease some of the stress out of me. I could do it now. Just get up and go and get changed and hit the town.

I shook my head, pushing the idea away. Even though I was totally wired, I also felt exhausted, tired to the bone, and I knew I didn’t even have the energy to go and get changed, let alone go out.

Instead, I stood up and headed for the liquor cabinet. I poured myself a large scotch, and after a second of internal deliberation, I poured Carlotta one as well. She barely looked up from the book she had actually started to read at some point while I was brooding. She grunted something that I took to be a thank you.

I went back to my seat and sipped the scotch, hoping to push all of my problems away with it. Tomorrow would be soon enough to go out and find someone to take my mind off this shit.

I finished my drink and debated going for another one, but I didn’t even have the energy to do that. As my eyes started to close, I figured sleeping right where I was would be the best thing for both of us tonight. I didn’t think Carlotta would want me in our bed any more than I wanted to be there.

Chapter Nine

Carlotta

It was fair to say that yesterday was by far the worst day of my life. Seeing a body dead on our lawn wasn’t exactly a great start to my day. Even if Candy was a whore who deserved to be punished for ruining my marriage, she didn’t deserve to die. And then being questioned in the precinct for hours on end before finally coming home, only to have another fight with William and end the day sitting on the couch in tears, listening to him snore.

At least he stayed put and didn’t come to bed with me. Those few hours of alone time were something I had really needed. The glazing company had even managed to get the window fixed after the promise of a very large bonus if they got it done on time.

I was so glad that today was a new day, and there was surely no way it could be even close to as bad as yesterday was. At least that’s what I told myself as I showered and pulled my overalls on. I had a gallery show looming, and I was still a couple of pieces short of the full collection. Maybe it was wrong of me to want to try to do something normal with everything that had happened, everything that was still happening, really, because I had no illusions that this thing was over, but I knew I had to at least try to get back into my normal routine if I wanted a chance at retaining what little sanity I had left at that point.

I went downstairs and put a pot of coffee on. William was still passed out on the couch, and I debated waking him with a cup of coffee, but I decided against it. He was perfectly capable of getting his own coffee when he did wake up, and to be honest, listening to his droning snores wasn’t even close to as annoying as listening to him bite my head off or berate me.

I waited for the coffee to brew, and then I poured myself a cup and took it to my studio. My studio was my sanctuary, the one place where my troubles didn’t follow me, although I was finding it hard to shake off these troubles. A dead body was a lot harder to ignore than a cheating husband. Being one of only two suspects in a murder case was harder to forget about than the whiff of perfume on your husband’s shirt after another evening alone while he was presumably working late.

I couldn’t shake the knowledge that very soon, I might be parted from my husband forever, not even as I pulled out my supplies and got my easel, paints, and brushes set up. I forced myself not to go down the road of wondering which one of us would be the one to go to jail for this. It was hard to imagine a scenario where neither of us ended up locked up, and as much as I wanted to punish William for what he had done to our marriage, I wasn’t ready for him to go to jail, but I certainly didn’t want to be the one to end up behind bars.

I realized I had allowed myself to start thinking about jail as a real option for one of us, and I sat down heavily on my wooden stool and closed my eyes for a moment. I opened them and looked at the blank canvas in front of me. A canvas that had endless possibilities. I thought about the other pieces in the collection, trying to draw inspiration from them. I closed my eyes to picture the pieces, but all I saw where splatters of red, blood splatters. I knew I couldn’t bring that vision to life. It made me feel sick to just see it in my mind, and the vibrant red paint on the stark white of the canvas would be too much for me to bear right now.

I opened my eyes again and picked up my brush. I dipped it in a pot of yellow paint, with no real idea of what I was going to do with it. I just knew it was a bright color, the color of sunshine and happiness, and for that reason, it seemed like a good starting point.

Somewhat timidly, I swept the brush over the canvas, leaving behind a swirl of yellow. I pursed my lips and thought for a moment and then I added a swirl of green. Before I really knew it, the art took over and I was momentarily free of thoughts of Candy and William and Detective Del Rey and his officers.

In that moment, I was no longer Carlotta Alden, wife of William, potential murder suspect. Instead I was an artist, creating beauty in a world that needed every bit of it that it could get. I was the muse as well as the artist. I was even the paint brush as it danced over the canvas.

The colors began to take on a life of their own, and I suddenly saw it. I was painting a meadow on a summer’s day. It was so vivid that for a moment, I imagined I could feel the sun on my shoulders, the grass beneath my bare feet. The thought further inspired me, and I began to work on a woman standing in the meadow, her back to me, appreciating the beauty before her. The only red in the picture was the scarf the woman wore tied in her brown curls.

“She’s all out of proportion, you know,” a voice said from behind me, pulling me out of the picture and back into the cruel reality of the real world.

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