Dawn of Eve - MJ Howson (read full novel .txt) 📗

cotton robe from the rack. She ran her fingers through the thick fabric and wondered if it would be warm enough.

Suddenly, a thin child-like voice echoed quietly in the closet.

Wear some color.

Dawn looked around, confused. She glanced up at the overhead speaker playing music and shook her head, realizing it wasn’t the song or the voice of her smart home assistant. She sighed and said, “I . . . I guess I’m not fully awake yet.” Dawn walked back into the bedroom. She smiled when she noticed Eve’s eyes had opened. Dawn looked at the robe in her arms and said, “It wouldn’t kill me to wear some color. Would it?”

The closet’s mirrored back wall included two doors that led to a second hidden section. Dawn dropped the white cotton robe onto the floor and opened the other set of doors. The overhead lights popped on, revealing racks and shelves filled with a rainbow of clothes. The left side had upper and lower rods. Everything was grouped together - blouses, sweaters, skirts, and pants. The opposite side was packed with coats, gowns, and dresses of various lengths. Built-in drawers and shelves contained scarves, gloves, jewelry, and other accessories. The vibrant colors on display were in sharp contrast to the bland front half of the closet.

Dawn rarely stepped beyond the mirrored doors, and not due to her disinterest in color. The clothes in here came from her mother’s most prized collections. At her peak, Evelyn Easton dominated fashion runways across the globe, her designs becoming envied and copied by many. Dawn always felt a bit intimidated, and perhaps even jealous, whenever she came face to face with her mother’s greatest achievements. Dawn never wore the clothes hidden back here, but every now and then would treat herself to a bit of jewelry.

The clothes were grouped by color. Dawn went to the far end of the long row of clothes where the colors were lightest. She flipped through several white garments. A white charmeuse full-length robe with bright blue basket flowers caught her eye. The funnel-like petaled flowers were clustered together in a few small areas lending the robe a kimono-influenced design.

Dawn slid the garment on, stopping to admire herself in the mirror. She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. Her black roots were two-and-a-half inches long.

“Evelyn, remind me later to book an appointment to get my hair done,” Dawn said as she left the wardrobe closet.

“Setting a reminder for noon to book an appointment to get your hair done.”

Before leaving her bedroom, Dawn made a quick stop in her bathroom to get her sapphire pendant. She looked around, shocked at the mess. A pair of hair clippers sat on the vanity, with several attachments resting by its side. Hair clippings covered the floor and sink.

“Jacob,” Dawn said. She folded her arms and sighed. She’d bought him a set of clippers last Christmas so he could manscape whenever needed. “You couldn’t clean up, could you?”

The pendant from Jacob hung from a cabinet pull handle. Dawn grabbed it and held it against the blue flowers stitched into her robe. The colors were an almost perfect match. She glanced at the hair spread everywhere and returned the pendant to the handle.

Dawn went into the bedroom and picked up Eve. She left the room and took the private elevator to the main floor. When prepping the coffee maker last night, Dawn had added drops of vanilla extract to the water. The smell of freshly brewed coffee and vanilla bean greeted her as she entered the kitchen. Dawn poured herself a cup of coffee. She turned to Eve and said, “Let’s hit the studio.”

The first-floor den of Dawn’s apartment served as her art workshop. Unlike the sophisticated, sleek design of the rest of her home, this space looked unfinished. It was as if the construction crew closed the door and forgot to complete the room. The floors were bare polished concrete. The plastered walls were primed a dull flat white but never painted. The wall of windows lacked any sort of drapery or blinds. A small utility sink and counter sat beside a long set of closet doors.

The walls were riddled with picture hangers but otherwise bare. Stacks of paintings, wrapped in plastic, lay bundled together in the corners of the room. Some paintings were completed works of art, while others were half-finished. Dawn had stripped the walls bare shortly after her miscarriage.

Black metal easels, each holding paintings at various stages of development, were spread about the room. A few days after bringing Eve home from Zuni, Dawn had started a new project leveraging four-by-four-foot square black canvases as her starting point. High viscosity acrylic paints, in various shades of white, were her only choice of color. The thick paint created a buttery texture that highlighted her brushstrokes.

Her latest piece was an idea in search of meaning. Currently, the canvas was nothing more than two white humps. Were they hills? Breasts? Nothing? She wasn’t sure. She felt they most resembled hills but still hadn’t decided in what direction to take the painting.

Dawn placed Eve on a wooden folding chair away from her work area, twisting the doll’s articulating legs and feet into a steady position. The rubber soles on Eve’s tiny white leather shoes helped keep the doll steady. She glanced at Eve and then the painting and said, “We’re getting closer.” Dawn ran her fingers through Eve’s hair and tugged on the bow. “My little spark of inspiration.”

Dawn removed the painting from its easel and placed it against the wall near the other rejected works. She went into the closet along the back wall and looked at the various blank canvases inside. There were multiple shapes and sizes, in either black or white. Dawn grabbed a four-by-four-foot white one and brought it to the easel.

“Maybe . . . maybe I need to try something different,” Dawn said. She looked at the bright blue clusters of flowers on her robe, turned to Eve, and