Page 108 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

“Yes,” Andy repeated. She could see where the game really required two people. “And they’ll ask lots of questions. Questions you don’t want to answer. Like about why your eye has petechiae.”

Paula looked over Andy’s shoulder again. “Is that your car in my driveway, the one that looks like a box of maxi pads?”

“Yes, and it’s a Reliant.”

“Take off your shoes if you’re going to come inside. And stop that ‘Yes, And’ bullshit, Jazz Hands. This isn’t drama club.”

Paula left her at the door.

Andy felt weirdly terrified and excited that she had managed to get this far.

This was it. She was going to find out about her mother.

She dropped the messenger bag on the floor. She rested her hand on the hall table. A glass bowl of change clicked against the marble top. She slipped off her sneakers and left them in front of the aluminum baseball bat. Her wet socks went inside the shoes. She was so nervous that she was sweating. She pulled at the front of her shirt as she stepped down into Paula’s sunken living room.

The woman had a stark sense of design. There was nothing craftsman inside the house except some paneling on the walls. Everything had been painted white. The furniture was white. The rugs were white. The doors were white. The tiles were white.

Andy followed the sound of a chopping knife down the back hall. She tried the swinging door, pushing it just enough to poke her head in. She found herself looking in the kitchen, surrounded by still more white: countertops, cabinets, tiles, even light fixtures. The only color came from Paula Kunde and the muted television on the wall.

“Come in already.” Paula waved her in with a long chef’s knife. “I need to get my vegetables in before the water boils off.”

Andy pushed open the door all the way. She walked into the room. She smelled broth cooking. Steam rose off a large pot on the stove.

Paula sliced broccoli into florets. “Do you know who did it?”

“Did...” Andy realized she meant Hoodie. She shook her head, which was only partially lying. Hoodie had been sent by somebody. Somebody who was clearly known to Laura. Somebody who might be known to Paula Kunde.

“He had weird eyes, like...” Paula’s voice trailed off. “That’s all I could tell the pigs. They wanted to set me up with a sketch artist, but what’s the point?”

“I could—” Andy’s ego cut her off. She had been about to offer to draw Hoodie, but she hadn’t drawn anything, even a doodle, since her first year in New York.

Paula snorted. “Good Lord, child. If I had a dollar bill every time you left a sentence hanging, I sure as shit wouldn’t be living in Texas.”

“I was just—” Andy tried to think of a lie, but then she wondered if Hoodie had really come here first. Maybe Andy had misunderstood the exchange in Laura’s office. Maybe Mike had been sent to Austin and Hoodie had been sent to Belle Isle.

She told Paula, “If you’ve got some paper, maybe I could do a sketch for you?”

“Over there.” She used her elbow to indicate a small desk area at the end of the counter.

Andy opened the drawer. She was expecting to find the usual junk—spare keys, a flashlight, stray coins, too many pens—but there were only two items, a sharpened pencil and a pad of paper.

“So, art’s your thing?” Paula asked. “You get that from someone in your family?”

“I—” Andy didn’t have to see the look on Paula’s face to know that she’d done it again.

Instead, she flipped open the notebook, which was filled with blank pages. Andy didn’t give herself time to freak out about what she was about to do, to question her talents or to talk herself out of having the hubris to believe she still had any skills left in her hands. Instead, she knocked the sharp point off the pencil and sketched out what she remembered of Hoodie’s face.

“Yep.” Paula was nodding before she’d finished. “That looks like the bastard. Especially the eyes. You can tell a lot about somebody from their eyes.”

Andy found herself looking into Paula’s blank left eye.

Paula asked, “How do you know what he looks like?”

Andy didn’t answer the question. She turned to a fresh page. She drew another man, this one with a square jaw and an Alabama baseball cap. “What about this guy? Have you ever seen him around here?”

Paula studied the image. “Nope. Was he with the other guy?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” She felt her head shaking. “I don’t know. About anything, actually.”