Page 38 of Jasmine Street Blues

“You might be surprised by what people can accept.”

Loran sighed, the expression long and unbearably sad. He wanted to pull over and wrap his arms around her. He didn’t dare.

“Henry isn’t the first person to assume that I had something to do with a person’s death, just because I painted their portrait,” she said. “More than that, I paint them as they were at the time of their deaths. The age, the clothes they wore. In the beginning I didn’t know, I just painted the same way I always have.”

The portrait of Carrie was different from the others. He kept telling himself that. She looked to be twenty years old, the age she should be if she’d survived her life on the run, if she was still out there, somewhere. And those bright colors… He hung onto those colors hoping they meant what Loran said they did, that Carrie was alive.

He didn’t look at his passenger as he asked, “Is Loran Raine really your name?”

“It is. I haven’t tried to get away with a fake name for years. It’s a pain in the ass to do everything with cash. Rent, sales, odd jobs, everything. I could manage for a while, but there was always something that called for an ID, and I… like I said, I never had or even looked for the kind of contact that could handle that for me.”

Was that what Carrie did? For years he’d looked for her under her legal name. What else did he have to go on?

“After I was found out that first time I left home, moved from place to place doing my best to be invisible. I almost completely lost touch with my mother. She didn’t believe me, couldn’t wrap her head around what I could do. What I told her I could do. She thought I’d had a mental break, or was doing drugs. As I moved from place to place I did call her a few times a year. Now and then she’d asked me to come home. I thought about it more than once; there were even times I packed everything I owned with every intention of going home. Mom passed before I worked up the nerve. I knew she was gone before I got a phone call from her lawyer, because I… well, you know.”

She’d painted her own mother’s portrait. How hard that must’ve been!

He should apologize, but that wasn’t something he did well. Kylie had lied about so many things, he had a hard time trusting any woman. Any person.

Kylie had been gone a long time, and still she was screwing with his life.

“Let’s go back to my place and talk,” he said, forcing a calm tone which didn’t come out all that calm.

“No. Take me home.”

He turned onto his street.

Loran took a deep breath and said, “If you drive to your house I’ll just walk home from there. Unless you plan to force me inside in front of all your neighbors.”

Shit.

“Fine.” He changed course, turned at the next corner and drove to Jasmine Street. “I’ll drop by later to check on you.”

“Don’t.”

That single, sharp word cut him to the bone.

He pulled to the curb in front of her house. “Call me and let me know you’re…”

“Very nice,” she said as she opened the door. “But too little too late.” Loran stood, then leaned over to look into the car. Her eyes were harsh, unforgiving. “Yes, I lied. Yes, I always lie. But you… I thought you were different. I thought you’d understand.”

With that she was gone. He watched Loran stride into her house with purpose.

He had no idea if he’d ever see her again.

* * *

Loran finished the portrait of Carrie in less than an hour. It was nearly complete anyway. Nothing pushed her, no spirit guided her. All that was left were a few finishing touches.

Absolutely nothing hung on Mac’s walls. Would he like to have this picture of Carrie? It wasn’t as if the girl was dead and gone. She was missing, she might be in trouble, she might be hiding. But Carrie was alive. Loran knew that to her core. It was more than the colors, the realness of the young woman’s face, the subtle ways in which this portrait was different from the others. It was more than Kylie’s word, passed on through Colt. She just knew.

Henry had found her, so it was time to go. Maybe he’d believed Mac’s tale about Helen being Loran Raine. That was possible, but she couldn’t rely on it. The idea that she might turn around one day and see Henry standing there terrified her.

Back in the day when she’d moved around, working for cash, finding cheap places to live while she hawked her paintings at local art fairs and festivals to get by, it had been easy enough to claim a different last name. She should’ve changed her first name, too, but always being Loran allowed her to keep something of herself even as she hid. Smith, Wells, Johnson. She’d been Teller when she’d met Henry. There had been a time when she’d loved him, and she believed he’d loved her. A couple of weeks after meeting him she’d left the ratty hotel, which was willing to take cash and didn’t ask for ID, and moved into Henry’s apartment.

She’d been happy for a while, as happy as she’d been here in Seawolf Beach.

Stupid. She couldn’t allow herself to be happy, not ever. It was a trap.