Page 48 of There is No Devil

I finally fucking snapped.

Cole watches me, calm and satisfied.

He got what he wanted.

I wait for the guilt and shame to wash over me, but I feel nothing. Only the hot throbbing of my throat with every frantic heartbeat.

Cole lays his hand on my head, gently stroking my hair.

“It’s alright, Mara,” he says. “It’s always better to tell the truth. Lie to the world, but not to yourself.”

* * *

8

Cole

Ifinally got Mara to crack and admit what I’d known all along.

After that, I back off for a while.

We don’t talk about what she said or what we’re going to do about it. I don’t want to risk her retreating back into familiarity, back into what feels safe to her.

Whatfeelssafe and what will actually keep you safe from harm are quite different from one another.

It’s not difficult to distract ourselves from the problem of Shaw.

Both Mara and I are continually pulled into our work so deeply that the rest of the world disappears around us.

Mara is painting a new series for the private show I’m throwing her in December.

I’m finalizing my design for Corona Heights Park.

I sketch it out first, and then I build a scale model that I’ll deliver to Marcus York.

I visit Mara in her studio to see how her latest painting is coming along.

She’s got her hair piled up on her head with several paintbrushes jammed into the bun to keep it fixed in place. Her face and arms are liberally streaked with color, her overalls so battered and stained that I can’t tell if they were originally black or dark denim. She’s got the legs rolled up mid-shin, bare feet beneath, paint on her toes as well.

She smells of linen and flaxseed oil, with a sharp edge of turpentine. For this series and the last one, Mara is using oil paints, not acrylic. The paint dries slowly over several days, so the pigment is malleable. She can stack transparent layers, one over the other, to create deep shadows or the impression of light glowing from within. She can blend shades for seamless transitions.

Her technique improves by the day.

Her previous series was mostly photorealistic. This new series blends high-detail figures with rooms and scenery that in places look solid and ultra-real, while other areas melt and fade away like the edges of a memory. It gives a soft, rotting effect, as if the whole painting is beset by decay soaking through the canvas.

This particular piece shows a young girl in a nightgown walking down a placid suburban street. The roses on the hedges are past their bloom, brown at the edges. A charred teddy bear trails from one hand. Behind her, a half dozen birds have fallen dead from the sky. Beneath her slippered feet, the grass withers away.

“What are you going to call this one?”

“I’m not sure,” Mara says, rubbing the back of her hand across her cheek. This leaves a fresh smear of pale pink along her jaw—the pink of the roses, which Mara is touching up in the lower right corner of the canvas.

“What about …The Burial?”

Mara nods slowly. “I like that.”

I’m looking at one of the fallen birds, pitifully laying on its back with wings splayed.

“What?” Mara says.

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