The Chameleon
by
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Laura Daniels was sitting on the hillside looking at the panorama of Texas Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes as they presented a maze of beautiful colors and covered all of the hills and valleys of theTexas hill country at a specific time of the year. In her possession were a palette and a canvas as she was ready to apply paint to the canvas and give a new rendering which she had done many times before, to catch the beauty of the place and in that specific time. The time itself was limited. Only a few brief months allowed one to view and even to paint this unique beauty. Their faces appeared in early March and continued on until the end of May, when the heat of the forthcoming summer would brown them and reduce all to seeds only to reappear as flowers of beauty in the following spring.
And Laura was like those flowers, she mused, she had blossomed, flowered and in the heat she had wilted, and now only wanted to blossom or flower again. It was her spring again, she hoped.
A former art student and now again a struggling artist, she was attempting to render another representation of the panorama before her that would join the diminishing numbers of like items she had done before. Those could be found in art studios, picture stores, even in ladies dress shops and other assorted venues in the area. She was pleased that she had reached a variety of celebrity in this matter, but she had been away from her calling for some three years and now was the time to change all of that. She had to.
You see, she was using this as an outlet to assuage her unhappiness and to try to forget the reason for this turmoil in her present life. There was, yes was, something cathartic about being here and doing which she was doing, painting beautiful landscapes. Something she should have continued rather than choose the direction she did, almost three years ago.
How could she have done what she had and now find herslf alone, used, unhappy, more unhappy than she has ever been. She had done something that she never would have thought of doing just a few years or so before, but she had succumbed under the relentless pressure placed or her. She had to relent or all would be lost. But now her self respect is gone and she hoped it had not been replaced an intolerable sense of self despair.
She had believed him. Every thing that he had said. How foolish she had been. The promises, followed by additional promises, were lies, cleverly set out and so believeably that it had convinced her.
But now, she felt no pity for what had happened to him not even a little remorse, that which had happened to him was in many ways over due, maybe not as harshly as it had been, with such an outcome. But even he should have expected something like it to happen at one time or another.
Yes, she did identify him when asked and saved them a lot of time and trouble, in the condition that he was in, and the place, but when they asked her about him, she said that she had been separated from him and had not seen him for some time, not quite true, but her alibi was perfect and she felt no need to go further.
“Didn’t you see him at your company office?”
“No, he was in outside sales and that was different from where I worked in the company.”
She was right that the last time she had seen him was in Laguna Niguel at the place they occupied together for the three months, but after that not again. She had left during the melee, anxious to run away and at the same time as far away as she could reasonably go. When the police came, she did not see them, but she could hear them approaching, their sirens, loud then grinding down. Someone must have heard the noise and her cries as he continued to get up and they continued to pummel him as he would offer some resistance, still, and he was a bloody mess. She wanted to get away, away to some place, any place. But there.he was attempting to stave off the two men, to get away, but they were bigger and faster. What if they killed him? She could prove that she was just south of
“No one else, Senora?” remembering that there was always two of them.
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A young boy is shuffled around during his boyhood from foster homes and finally to a relative in