Later, she would recall it down to the smallest detail, was able to see, hear, and smell everything, to stretch time out and contract it like a rubber band, especially the approach of the car. Rubbing one sandal against what felt like a mosquito bite on the other leg, Sarah waited to cross the road to Roper’s driveway. It wasn’t even noon, her watch was saying, but she’d finished painting for the day and packed up, among her accoutrements one of the thirty-six-by-twenty-four-inch sheets. The paper had seemed monstrous when she’d taped it to the board on her easel, but her new determination to get out of Roper’s house as quickly as possible had fired her up to make a start on the large painting. The morning had been heavily overcast, the coconut leaves making an empty, rattling sound in the wind gusts. Unlike itself, the ocean’s aquamarines and turquoises had turned a solid mass of gray. Its life force seemed diminished without sunlight.
