Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

said good-bye and got up to leave, she got up too, following me out of the dining room, holding my hand as if we were going for a walk with Dashiell, the way we’d done the first day I was here.
    I was about to tell her that I couldn’t take her for a walk when I decided I couldn’t do that. If she wanted one that badly, I’d take her out, maybe just go around the block with her, but I wouldn’t say no to her.
    Getting with the program, I thought; everything for the kids.
    I looked at Charlotte, clinging to my hand, not reaching for Dashiell’s leash, not going upstairs for her gloves and earmuffs, but sucking her fingers and not walking toward the front door, but pulling me to the door to Venus’s office.
    I was sure it hadn’t been cleaned up yet, but Charlotte was twisting the doorknob, then banging on it, starting to moan. Whatever it was she wanted, it was urgent.
    There was no one in the lobby. I quickly took out Venus’s key ring and unlocked the door to her office, stepping inside with Charlotte and Dashiell and letting the door close and lock. I stood in the way of the blood stain, dry and brown now, so that Charlotte would have to walk to the other side of the desk, the side where Eli had been standing.
    In fact, Charlotte never looked at the side of the room where the blood was. Nor did she go to the other side of the desk.
    Against the wall were three chairs. On the farthest one there was a pad, just like the one I’d found in the garden. She picked it up, bent down, and looked under the chair. There she retrieved a box of colored pencils, just like the ones I’d seen her sharpening in the dining room.
    When she had her things, I expected her to turn around and leave the office.
    But she didn’t.
    She sat on the chair, opened the pad, and began to draw.
    That’s when I heard Dashiell sneeze. A team player, he had followed Charlotte, had stood next to her, had even put his big head under the chair when she did, helping her look for he didn’t know what, his tail wagging. Now he was headed for the other side of the desk, the part of the room I was trying to avoid. When I put my leg out to stop him, he glanced up at me, confused.
    I looked back at Charlotte, working on her picture as if the only thing that counted was now, as if nothing at all had happened in this room earlier in the day.
    When, I wondered, had she left the pad and pencils here?
    But when I looked at the pad, I stopped wondering. She was drawing what she saw—Dashiell, his strong white body, the patch over his right eye, careful with her lines and colors, the way she’d been when she drew the tree and started to draw the squirrel, the model who got away.
    I watched her put down the charcoal gray pencil she’d used to color Dashiell’s patch, careful to place it point to the top of the box, like all the others. Then she took another pencil, a red one this time, and began to color the rug behind Dashiell. Only the rug was blue, a pale Wedgwood. Except for the place where Venus had fallen and bled, the place behind where the dog in the picture now stood.
    From where Charlotte was sitting, she couldn’t see that part of the rug, the part I’d blocked her view of on our way in.
    It wasn’t only David who had been here. Charlotte had been here, too.
    And that squirrel hadn’t gotten away before the artist finished his portrait. Clearly Charlotte could draw from memory. So it must have been the artist who was called away, perhaps for lunch, leaving the portrait undone.
    Dashiell sneezed again. Frustrated because I wouldn’t let him examine what he felt needed his canine attention, he began to search for something else. He turned around and put his paws up on Venus’s desk, trolling, his breathing audible now, his head moving from side to side, his nose telling him what he needed to know, then turning to look at me, then back at the desk, whining now to get me to look, see why his nose was twitching the way it was, find out for myself, the way he was telling me to, what was so interesting on Venus’s desk.
    At first, I didn’t see a thing.
    And then I did. Green paint on top of Venus’s dictionary, the dictionary lying down because the bookend that usually held it up wasn’t there.
    Was that what he’d wanted me to see, green paint? Jackson’s favorite color.
    “Good boy,” I told him, touching the paint with one finger, finding it dry. It could have been there since early afternoon. Or for years, for all I knew. But