True Colors (2 page)

“Or change his mind,” Emma said
diplomatically. “Maybe he’ll find out that the real estate market
is really depressed right now, and he’ll decide it’s not a good
time to sell.”

“Or he can die,” Monica argued. “That would
work for me.”

Emma laughed. Reluctantly, Monica laughed,
too.

“It’ll work out,” Emma assured her. “Things
always do work out the way they’re meant to.”

“Except when they don’t,” Monica said darkly.
She turned toward the stairs down to the first floor. “Get back to
your painting, girl. You’re going to need the money.”

It looked better than he remembered it.

Staying away for a year had clearly been a
good idea. During that year, he’d regained his perspective, his
balance, his sanity. He could evaluate the house with detachment.
It was no longer the elegant retreat he’d envisioned when he’d
bought it for Vanessa, no longer the extravagance he’d lavished
upon her. She was gone from his life, and soon this property would
be, too.

He hadn’t remembered that the front walk was
paved with bluestone and the front door was flanked by those round
bushes with the dark, leathery leaves and voluptuous pink blossoms.
He couldn’t remember what they were called; botany was not his area
of expertise. Whatever they were, they were in bloom now, vibrant
splashes of pink where in his memory he’d visualized only gray
clapboard and stark glass. He hadn’t remembered the pine trees, so
tall and straight he could imagine the seafarers of an earlier era
creating towering masts for their schooners from them. He hadn’t
remembered the isolation of the house, perched as it was on a rise
with a breathtaking view of the town and the ocean beyond.

He did remember that the house’s
architectural style was modern. He liked modern. He liked the sharp
angles and broad planes of the house, the simplicity and geometry
of it. He remembered that the first time Vanessa had looked at the
place, she’d said, “It’s kind of cold.” Then she’d rethought that
opinion and said, “Kind of cool, actually.” He’d thought she was
cool for loving it. Eventually, he’d realized she was just
cold.

But he’d bought it for her. And now she was
gone, and he would sell it.

He strode up the walk, trying not to let
those gaudy flowering shrubs distract him, and pressed the
doorbell. Through the glass sidelight bordering the door, he heard
the bell resonate inside the house.

A few seconds later, he saw movement through
the glass, first a shadow and then a woman approaching the door. He
hadn’t expected anyone to be home. He’d rung the bell as a courtesy
before letting himself inside, but he’d expected his tenant, Monica
Reinhart, to be at work at three-forty in the afternoon. According
to Andrea Simonetti, the real estate broker who’d set up the
rental, Ms. Reinhart worked at that big inn in town, in some sort
of management capacity.

The woman he viewed through the glass did not
look like a manager. She was petite, with wild red hair tumbling in
curls around her face. She wore a baggy sweater, baggier cargo
pants, and canvas sneakers, none of her apparel particularly new or
neat. Trailing behind her were two little girls, maybe eight or
nine years old, their hair pulled back in ponytails. Both had on
oversized men’s tailored shirts, the tails of which fell to their
knees.

As soon as the red-haired woman spotted him,
she fell back a step, then turned and said something to the girls.
She didn’t open the door.

Fair enough. She didn’t recognize him, and
she was apparently smart enough not to open the door to a stranger.
He tried to signal her through the glass, digging his wallet from
the hip pocket of his jeans so he could show her his driver’s
license, but she took another step backward and then moved the
girls and herself out of his line of sight.

He abandoned his wallet and pulled out his
cell phone instead. He’d programmed Monica Reinhart’s phone number
into it, even though he’d never had occasion to call her. Andrea
had served as a go-between for them, but he’d wanted his tenant’s
number, just in case.

He tapped it, listened to her phone ring
twice, and then: “Hey, this is Monica. I can’t come to the phone
right now. Please leave a message.”

Oh, come on.
She was standing on the other side of the door.
Why couldn’t she answer her phone?

He tapped on the glass. She and the kids
refused to move back into view.

All right. He didn’t want to
scare the shit out of her, but
he
knew he was harmless, even if she didn’t. He slid
his phone back into his pocket, removed the front door key, and
slid it into the lock. The door swung open.

He found Monica huddling with the two girls,
pressed up against the coat closet door, all three of them pale and
wide-eyed. Monica had one girl tucked securely under each arm, and
she had her damn cell phone in one hand. “Get out,” she snapped.
“I’m dialing 9-1-1.”

“I’m Max Tarloff,” he said, spreading his
hands palm up to show he wasn’t holding any weapons.

She frowned, as if his name meant nothing to
her.

“Your landlord.”

“Max Something?”

“Max Tarloff.”

Her mouth fell open, then slammed shut. He
probably shouldn’t have noticed her lips. They weren’t covered in
lipstick, and the light in the entry foyer wasn’t exactly bright,
but he could see that those lips settled into a natural pucker, a
little too full for her face. Her complexion remained pale, and
despite her red hair she had no freckles, at least none that he
could see. Sharp cheekbones, though, and a wide forehead, and
pretty hazel eyes. Her hair was so thick and long and curly, he
could imagine losing small objects in it.

His key, for instance. He pocketed it so she
wouldn’t think he was planning to attack her with it.

“Tarloff,” she repeated. “Monica could never…
Oh, I mean…” She faltered, then loosened her grip on the girls. “I
think it’s okay.”

“He has his own key,” one of the girls
said.

“Well, yes. As the landlord, he would.” She
peered up at him. “I thought you were in California.”

“I was. Now I’m here.”

“But we—I mean, you’re not going to evict us,
are you?”

Why was she acting as if he were an ogre,
planning to boot her into the street, where she could live in a
cardboard box? “I thought Andrea explained to you that I plan to
sell the house when the lease is up in June.”

“She told Monica, but… I mean, it’s not June
yet.”

That was the second time the woman referred
to Monica. Evidently, she was someone else. Someone who was living
in his house, if her comment about being evicted was anything to go
by.

And perhaps he
should
evict her, because
he’d rented this house to Monica Reinhart, not Monica and some
other woman, and two little girls. Sure, the house was too big for
one person, but he’d rented it only so there would be someone
living inside it, making sure the pipes didn’t freeze in the winter
and the roof didn’t leak during the spring rains. He’d set a
ridiculously low rent because he’d felt Ms. Reinhart was doing him
a favor by living here. An empty house was an invitation to
mischief. He didn’t want people to think the place was
abandoned.

Anyway, he didn’t need the money. What he’d
needed was a quiet, discreet person turning the lights on and off
and announcing to the world that the house was occupied.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“She’s our art teacher,” one of the girls
announced.

“You interrupted our class,” the other
added.

A class? An
art
class? In his house?
What the hell? “Who are you?” he asked in a tight voice, not
wanting to erupt and frighten the children—or have the woman phone
911. “That’s number one. And number two is, are you running a
school in my house?”

“Not a school, no.” She loosened her grip on
the two little girls. “Why don’t you go upstairs and do a little
more work on your collages while I talk to Mr.—Tarkoff?” she asked
him.

“Tarloff.”
Number three, why don’t you know the name of your
landlord?

“Mr. Tarloff. Go, go, go!” She sent them
toward the stairs with a gentle nudge, then turned back to Max.
“I’m Emma Glendon. I’m sharing the house with Monica.”

Max watched the girls as they scampered up
the free-floating stairs to the loft. He was a nanometer away from
losing his temper, but he didn’t want to explode in front of her
students. “Number one, you are not on the lease. The lease offers
no subletting provisions. I did not give permission to Ms. Reinhart
to open this house up to additional tenants.”

The woman gazed up at him and he tried to
ignore how lush her lips were. But when he steered his gaze away
from them, it settled on her eyes, which were wide-set and fringed
in dense lashes a shade darker than her red hair. Her irises
contained a multitude of color—green and gray and amber. The way
she peered at him gave him the uneasy sense that she could see more
than he’d like.

Not that he had anything to hide. He just
felt…unnerved.

“What was number two again?” she asked when
his silence extended beyond a minute.

Number two? Right. “Number two, this property
isn’t licensed for commercial enterprises. It’s not insured for you
to be hosting classes with children. You need a permit from the
zoning board to do that, and I know you don’t have one, because as
the landlord, I’d be the one to have to request it.”

“It’s not a commercial enterprise,” the woman
said. “It’s two little third-graders who come here and make
collages.”

“They called it a class.”

“I teach them things. Parents teach their
children things, too, but that doesn’t make their houses commercial
enterprises.”

He glanced toward the stairs and scowled.
“Are they your children?”

“No.”

“Are they paying you to teach them whatever
the hell it is you’re teaching them?”

She hesitated long enough for him to know the
answer.

“That makes it a commercial enterprise,” he
said. “Most parents don’t charge their kids to teach them how to
tie their shoes.” He scraped a hand through his hair in
exasperation. He wasn’t sure what he was most upset about: the fact
that Monica Reinhart was in breach of her lease, the fact that if
something awful had happened—say, a pint-size art student got
injured in his house—his insurance wouldn’t cover it and he might
just find himself afoul of the law…or the fact that Emma Glendon,
with her wild, fiery hair and her paint-spattered clothing, oozed
sex appeal.

He couldn’t figure out why. She was no
Vanessa. She was short, unfashionably curvy, and messy. A smear of
paint tattooed her left hand. Not his type. Not at all.

“All right,” he said, as much to himself as
to her. “You’re going to have to vacate the premises.”

“At the end of the lease. I understand.”

“Now,” he said. As soon as the word emerged,
he felt terrible. Since when had he become such a tyrant? It wasn’t
as if he was a landlord by profession. If he was in breach of
zoning laws, he could hire an army of lawyers to rectify the
situation.

But he wanted this house vacated. He wanted
it sold. He wanted to put this part of his life to an end. He
couldn’t move on as long as he still owned the place.

And it was probably going to be more
difficult to evict two tenants than it would have been to evict
one. Two tenants and a couple of pint-size Picassos in
pigtails.

He was angry. He thought he’d overcome all
his anger, his bitterness, his resentment. That was what this year
had been about: rebalancing his life. Reclaiming it. Healing. And
then moving on.

The red-haired art teacher standing in his
entry hall only complicated matters, making it harder to rebalance,
reclaim, heal, move on. Of course he was angry.

Before he could say anything more, anything
that would make him feel even angrier, he yanked open the door and
stormed down the bluestone front walk. The fat pink flowers on
those shrubs couldn’t possibly be mocking him, but it felt as if
they were.

“Who was that?” Abbie asked.

The little girl’s voice distracted Emma from
her inspection of the white carpeting on the steps leading up to
the loft. She’d noticed a few faint smudges of dirt, but nothing
that looked like paint or glue or ground-in clay, nothing a vacuum
cleaner or a little rug shampoo couldn’t remove. At least she hoped
so.

She wondered if the condition of the floors
mattered anymore. The guy was kicking her to the curb, literally—or
as literally as possible, given that the road leading to the house
didn’t have a curb. Whether or not the carpet was in pristine
condition seemed irrelevant. He would probably confiscate the
security deposit just for the hell of it.

She didn’t want to discuss him with Abbie and
Tasha, but she wasn’t about to lie, either. “He’s my landlord,” she
said as she joined the girls at the work table, which held a
chaotic clutter of construction paper, cotton balls, satin ribbon,
aluminum foil, toothpicks, fabric, salvaged giftwrap, and
magazines, pages of which had been scissored to shreds. Although
Abbie and Tasha insisted they were old enough for pointy scissors,
Emma had supplied each with snub-nose scissors—they cut just as
well as pointy ones, so why tempt fate?—and a jar of rubber
cement.

She loved having her young students create
collages, which encouraged the children to think abstractly about
shape and texture and the juxtaposition of images. Collages were
messy. They were fun. And they didn’t require fine motor skills.
Not everyone could draw or paint. But anyone could make a
collage.