I felt such sympathy for her. I wanted to reach out and console her, but I didn’t think she would welcome a comforting gesture.
“Anyway, I stayed here for eight years, and it was always just when I thought about leaving that I got pregnant again. It wasn’t until three years ago I started refusing Stephen in bed. I used a knife the first time to make sure he got the message.”
I wondered what kind of knife it had been. A kitchen knife, by any chance?
She made a sharp motion with one hand. “But it didn’t matter. I was just as stuck as before. God, I hated him. I wished him dead a thousand times, but figured God didn’t listen to a woman like me. I guess I was wrong again, wasn’t I?” That odd half-smile, again, as she stared at me and waited for a response.
She had just told me she wanted Stephen dead. Did that count as a confession?
“I don’t think Stephen’s death was an answer to prayer,” I said.
Sarah let out a brittle laugh. “No, I suppose not. God doesn’t use kitchen knives, does He? Too lowly for His tastes. He’d create a hurricane to destroy the whole compound while He was at it, wouldn’t He?”
Sarah hadn’t really confessed to anything other than wishing Stephen was dead, which wasn’t criminal. I thought about Maria and about Stephen’s tendency to prey on young, vulnerable women.
“Did you hear anything about a change in Stephen’s will?” I asked.
“What? Did he not leave everything to Rebecca?” Sarah asked. She smiled. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry for her.”
So she didn’t know anything about it. If she had, she’d have known the will hadn’t been changed, and that Rebecca got everything, after all.
“I heard you and Joanna talking the night before Stephen was murdered,” I said after a moment, trying to cover all the bases.
“So?” Sarah seemed to think back for a moment. “Joanna’s stupid premonition came true that time, I guess.”
“It didn’t come true at other times?” I asked.
Sarah waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, she always claimed that it did. She’d twist whatever she said into being whatever happened in the end.”
So she didn’t believe the gift was real, but that wasn’t a surprise.
“Did you go to bed right after Joanna left?” I asked.
Sarah shook her head. She wasn’t stupid. She knew what I was getting at. “I didn’t wait around the bedroom for five hours until I could sneak in and stab him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Who do you think did it, then?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” she said. And then, moving on to something that actually interested her, she took out two paintings and showed them to me. One was about the size of a chest of drawers; the other big enough to cover nearly the entire wall of a shed. Both were splattered with rich shades of color, thick enough with paint I could see waves of it.
I was so stunned that I couldn’t say anything for a long moment. The paintings were far better than I had thought they would be. I’d expected something more pedestrian, but Sarah’s use of color was astonishing. It stirred a wildfire of emotion in me that I hadn’t known paint and canvas alone could evoke.
“These are both amazing. You are very talented.”
I tried to remember the few art classes I’d had in college. These paintings were definitely abstracts, but I wasn’t sure “modern” would be the right word to describe them. Maybe “primitive”? The larger painting had only shades of red, but the gradations were such that I felt like the paint was every shade of rage captured in one canvas.
The smaller painting, meanwhile, was full of blues and made me think of the sea. I felt touched with calm when I looked at it, and I thought for a moment I could hear the rhythm of waves hitting the shore.
I pointed to the blue one. “The ocean?” I asked quietly, not wanting to let go of the feeling it evoked in me. Kurt and I had gone to a beach in California for our honeymoon, and this reminded me vividly of the physical pleasure of those few days and the heady sense of being special and loved above anyone else in the world.
Sarah seemed to soften, which was the first time I’d seen anything like that in her. I thought for that moment how young she still was. She said, “Yes. I’m from California. My parents used to take me to the beach nearly every day. I miss it in ways I never thought I would.”
The enveloping love I felt in that painting made me think better of her parents, at least a little. “Have you ever had a gallery show your paintings?” I asked. It seemed a crime that the rest of the world would never see these, or experience the feelings I had just felt on seeing them—both good and bad. Kurt would love these, and I was sad again for a moment that he wasn’t here with me to enjoy them.
“No, of course not. Stephen said my work was private and besides, he didn’t want to spend money arranging it.” That bitterness in Sarah’s voice again.