The garbage disposal? Way too gross.

A compromise. Rose puts the towel-wrapped package into a zip-lock bag and drops it into the produce drawer. The sketchbook is left open on the kitchen counter. Acrylic ink dries quickly, but she doesn’t want to chance smearing any of the evidence. Evidence, she reminds herself as she glances at it before leaving the kitchen. Not art.

In the living room she returns to the box of painting supplies. The easel is set up in minutes, an eighteen-by-twenty-inch canvas in place. Black, white, Payne’s gray, and ultramarine blue: Those will be all the colors she needs. She arranges the tubes of paint and several brushes on the top of a chest-high moving box marked DINING ROOM.

A quick trip to the kitchen for a roll of paper towels and half a pitcher of water, and she is ready to begin.

CHAPTER 13

“Gigi?”

The word penetrates the layers of Rose’s mind. The sun is well up, morning. Mel, plastic bags in one hand, the ubiquitous cell phone in the other, is standing on the deck. Between them is the shattered sliding door.

“Gigi, what happened?”

The caution in her granddaughter’s voice wakes Rose up to her surroundings. The entire top of the packing box has been used as her palette. Paintings are propped against various boxes. Two are on the couch, another, partially finished, on the easel. The floor and the sides of nearby boxes are splattered with black, white, blue, and shades in between. Paint streaks Rose’s shoulders, the consequences of holding one brush in her teeth while using another, loaded with a different color.

Drawing herself out of the land of visions, the world from which she paints, Rose greets Mel in what she hopes is a normal and reassuring manner.

“Be careful of the broken glass,” she says. “I’ve been painting.”

“So I see,” Mel replies, still with a distinct note of caution. “Planet of the Apes?”

For the first time since the painting trance took her, Rose looks critically at her work. A black hand, knuckles creased more like living skin than dead leather, clutches a knife the size a butcher might use for the serious work. Dark eyes, burning with sparks of blue, glare from beneath a cap brim, the shadow and the eyes melting together. Hunched and canted, a simian shape lurches through the spill of a streetlight. A shadowy vehicle hints its existence in lines and planes. Seen from above, one thick leg extruding from a pair of black cargo shorts, another ape-like figure hunkers over, straddling a windowsill. All are in shades of night and terror.

“Bad day at the zoo?” Mel asks.