She’d stripped her damp sweater and jeans and was boiling water for grief tea when Regina and Gaby returned from the art appraiser’s. The two of them blew into the kitchen along with some errant dead leaves and a jointly generated bad mood. Regina unwound her scarf and plucked leaves off her ballet flats, flinging them onto the linoleum floor where they stuck with a wet slapping sound. Gaby lugged the portrait of Abigail Lake by the piece of electrical tape that secured the pink bedsheet in which the painting was unlovingly wrapped. She banged the bottom corner against the door frame, she grimaced and groaned, kick-carrying Abigail Lake to the far side of the kitchen.The bottom of the bedsheet was soaked. Clearly someone had propped Abigail Lake in a puddle while searching for meter money or the car keys.“How was it?” Mary asked, biting back an impulse to criticize the handling of Abigail Lake. After all, she hated the painting too.“Waste,” Gaby said. She pulled the sickle-shaped remnant of a soft pretzel from her coat pocket.
