furniture as in every guest room. A desk. A chair. A chest of drawers. On the luggage stand is an open suitcase of some summer person. Slacks and flowered silk hangs in the closet. A damp bikini is flopped over the shower curtain rod.
Just for the record, it’s the best job of wallpapering Misty’s ever seen. Plus, it’s not bad paper, the wallpaper in room 313, pastel green stripes alternating with rows of pink cabbage roses. A design that looked ancient the day it was printed. It’s stained with tea to look yellowed with age.
What gives it away is the paper’s too perfect. Too seamless and even and straight, up and down. They’ve matched the seams too well. It’s definitely not Peter’s work.
Not your work. Dear sweet lazy Peter, who never took any art very serious.
Whatever Peter left here for people to find, sealed inside this room, when he drywalled over the door, it’s gone now. Peter’s little time capsule or time bomb, the people of Waytansea Island have erased it. The way Mrs. Terrymore erased the library books. The same way the mainland houses have all been burned. The work of OAFF.
The way Angel Delaporte is dead. Stabbed in bed, in his sleep.
In Misty’s bed. Your bed. With nothing taken, and no sign of a break-in.
Just for the record, the summer people could walk in at any time. To find Misty hiding here, clutching a bloody knife in one hand.
With the serrated blade, Misty picks at a seam and peels away a strip of wallpaper. Using the sharp tip, Misty peels off another strip. Peeling away a third long, slow strip of wallpaper, Misty can read:
“. . . in love with Angel Delaporte, and I’m sorry but I will not die for . . .”
And just for the record, this is not what she really wanted to find.
WITH THE WHOLE WALL shredded, all the old cabbage roses and pale green stripes peeled away in long strips, here’s what Peter left for people to find.
What you left.
“I’m in love with Angel Delaporte, and I’m sorry but I will not die for our cause.” Written around and around the walls, it says, “I won’t let you kill me the way you’ve killed all the painters’ husbands since Gordon Kincaid.”
The room’s littered with curls and shreds of wallpaper. Dusty with the dried glue. You hear voices in the hallway, and Misty waits frozen in the wrecked room. Waiting for the summer people to open their door.
Across the wall, it’s written, “I don’t care about our traditions anymore.”
It says, “I don’t love Misty Marie,” it says, “but she doesn’t deserve to be tortured. I love our island, but we have to find a new way to save our way of life. We can’t keep harvesting people.”
It’s written, “This is ritual mass murder, and I won’t condone it.”
The summer people, their stuff is buried, the luggage and cosmetics and sunglasses. Buried in shredded trash.
“By the time you find this,” the writing says, “I’ll be gone. I’m leaving with Angel tonight. If you’re reading this, then I’m sorry, but it’s already too late. Tabbi will have a better future if her generation has to fend for itself.”
Written under the strips of wallpaper, it says, “I’m genuinely sorry for Misty.”
You’ve written, “It’s true I never loved her, but I don’t hate her enough to complete our plan.”
It’s written, “Misty deserves better than this. Dad, it’s time we set her free.”
The sleeping pills Detective Stilton said Peter had taken. The prescription Peter didn’t have. The suitcase he’d packed and put in the trunk. He was planning to leave us. To leave with Angel.
You were planning to leave.
Somebody drugged him and left him in the car with the engine running, shut in the garage for Misty to find. Somebody didn’t know about the suitcase, packed and ready in the trunk for his getaway. They didn’t know the gas tank was half empty.
“Dad,” meaning Harrow Wilmot. Peter’s father, who’s supposed to already be dead. Since before Tabbi was born.
Around the room, it’s written, “Don’t unveil the devil’s work.”
Written there, it says, “Destroy all her paintings.”
What they don’t teach you in art school is how to make sense of a nightmare.
It’s signed
IN THE HOTEL dining room, a crew of island people are hanging Misty’s work, all her paintings. But not separate, they fit together, paper and canvas, to form a long mural. A collage. The crew keeps the mural covered as they assemble it, only letting one edge show, just enough to attach the next row of paintings. What it is, you can’t tell. What could be a tree, could really be a hand. What looks like a face, might be a cloud. It’s a crowd scene or a landscape or a still life of flowers and fruit. The moment they add a piece to the mural, the crew moves a drape to cover it.
All you can tell is it’s huge, filling the longest wall of the dining room.
Grace is with them, directing. Tabbi and Dr. Touchet, watching.
When Misty goes to look, Grace stops her with one blue, lumpy hand and says, “Have you tried on that dress I made you?”
Misty just wants to look at her painting. It’s her work. Because of the blindfold, she has no idea what she’s done. What part of herself she’s showing to strangers.
And Dr. Touchet says, “That wouldn’t be a very good idea.” He says, “You’ll see it opening night, with the rest of the crowd.”
Just for the record, Grace says, “We’re moving back into the house this afternoon.”
Where Angel Delaporte was killed.
Grace says, “Detective Stilton gave his all clear.” She says, “If you’ll pack, we can take your things for you.”
Peter’s pillow. Her art supplies in their pale wood box.
“It’s almost over, my dear,” Grace says. “I know exactly how you feel.”
According to the diary. Grace’s diary.
With everyone busy, Misty goes to the attic, to the room Grace and Tabbi share. Just for the record, Misty’s already packed, and stealing the diary from Grace’s room. She’s carrying her suitcase down to the car. Misty, she’s still dusted with dried wallpaper glue. Paper shreds of pale green stripes and pink roses in her hair.
The book that Grace is always reading, studying, with its red cover and gold script across the front, it’s supposed to be the diary of a woman who lived on the island a hundred years ago. The woman in Grace’s diary, she was forty-one years old and a failed art student. She’d got pregnant and dropped out of art school to get married on Waytansea Island. She didn’t love her new husband as much as she loved his old jewelry and the dream of living in a big stone house.
Here was a ready-made life for her, an instant role to step into. Waytansea Island, with all its tradition and ritual. All of it worked out. The answers for everything.
The woman was happy enough, but even a hundred years ago the island was filling up with wealthy tourists from the city. Pushy, needy strangers with enough money to take over. Just as her family money was running out, her husband shot himself while cleaning a gun.
The woman was sick with migraine headaches, exhausted and throwing up everything she ate. She worked as a maid in the hotel until she tripped on the stairs and became bedridden, one of her legs splinted inside a massive plaster cast. Trapped with nothing to do, she started to paint.
Just like Misty, but not Misty. This imitation Misty.
Then, her ten-year-old son drowns.
After one hundred paintings, her talent and ideas seemed to disappear. Her inspiration dwindles
