On Monday morning at 9:13, Susan stepped into the bonus room, cried out, and dropped her coffee cup. The ceramic mug smashed to pieces on the hardwood, splashing Susan’s legs with scalding liquid where they peeked out from her pajama bottoms. She screamed again, in pain and surprise, stumbled backward and clutched the doorframe, but her eyes remained locked on the portrait. Though still half complete, it was nevertheless an excellent rendering, a vivid and precise re-creation of the girl in the photograph that she’d stuck on the lower-right-hand corner of the easel. Sweet, funny Jessica Spender with her slash of scarlet bangs, her wicked and amused expression, her high cheekbones and red lipstick. Except there, along the left cheekbone, Susan had given the girl a row of nasty welts, three of them in a line, running at a slight angle from the far corner of the left eye down to the nostril. Three marks, three round, raised, red circles, each with a pinprick of white at its dead center.
