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The Gravity of Birds
Tracy Guzeman


How do you find someone who wants to be lost?Sisters Alice and Natalie were once close, but adolescence has wrenched them apart. Alice loves books and birds in equal measure whilst Natalie, the beautiful one, is sexy and manipulative, effortlessly captivating men.On their lakeside family holiday, Alice falls under the thrall of the enigmatic next-door-neighbour, a struggling young painter. Natalie seems strangely unmoved by the charismatic stranger in their midst. She tolerates the family sittings for the portrait Thomas is painting with a barely disguised distaste. But as the family portrait nears completion, the family dynamics shift irrevocably. And by the end of the summer, three lives are shattered.Four decades later, the only thing that remains of that fateful summer is a painting of the sisters. The artist is determined to take the secrets of the girls to the grave, but his close friend decides to use the painting to beat a path to the past before it closes the door on them all for good…A haunting, unforgettable debut about family, forbidden love and long-buried secrets.









THE GRAVITY OF BIRDS

Tracy Guzeman








For my parents, Jane and Dean and my sisters, Jill and Marnie—voracious readers, all


I wake earlier, now that the birds have come

And sing in the unfailing trees.

On a cot by an open window

I lie like land used up, while spring unfolds.

Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them

Did not board ship with grief among their maps?—

Till it seemed men never go somewhere, they only leave

Wherever they are, when the dying begins.

For myself, I find my wanting life

Implores no novelty and no disguise of distance;

Where, in what country, might I put down these thoughts,

Who still am citizen of this fallen city?

On a cot by an open window, I lie and remember

While the birds in the trees sing of the circle of time.

Let the dying go on, and let me, if I can,

Inherit from disaster before I move.

Oh, I go to see the great ships ride from harbor,

And my wounds leap with impatience; yet I turn back

To sort the weeping ruins of my house:

Here or nowhere I will make peace with the fact.

Mary Oliver, ‘No Voyage,’ 1963


Table of Contents

Title Page (#ua53442fd-425e-5580-8834-91e4848e92d4)

Dedication (#ua887a76b-851d-5264-8536-db69f86cf964)

Epigraph (#u9d425126-2c4e-5ce2-8ee6-52e6297f1fab)

Chapter One (#u1f0a22d0-cddc-5b75-b427-49f4a7129a6c)

Chapter Two (#u2bafe699-cf17-5e3f-80e0-f626f2c48e36)

Chapter Three (#u55b7117b-9680-5a3a-81c6-4c6227def2d0)

Chapter Four (#u457fb362-ca5a-502e-bfe7-d6c4132b17f4)

Chapter Five (#ufc87111d-65bc-541b-a537-e2be76937598)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

The Gravity of Birds: Q&A with Tracy Guzeman (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise for Tracy Guzeman (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)











Chapter One (#ulink_14bd3d85-986d-57ff-a050-11820baab13e)August 1963


Alice haunted the mossy edge of the woods, lingering in patches of shade. She was waiting to hear his Austin-Healey throttle back when he careened down the utility road separating the state park from the cabins rimming the lake, but only the whistled conversation of buntings echoed in the branches above. The vibrant blue males darted deeper into the trees when she blew her own sweet-sweet chew-chew sweet-sweet up to theirs. Pine seedlings brushed against her pants as she pushed through the understory, their green heads vivid beneath the canopy. She had dressed to fade into the forest; her hair was bundled up under a long-billed cap, her clothes drab and inconspicuous. When at last she heard his car, she crouched behind a clump of birch and made herself as small as possible, settling into a shallow depression of ferns and leaf litter. Balancing her birding diary and a book of poetry in her lap, she peeled spirals of parchment from the trunks and watched as he wheeled into the graveled parking space at the head of his property.

He shut off the engine but stayed in the convertible and lit a cigarette, smoking it slowly, his eyes closed for so long she wondered if he had fallen asleep or maybe drifted into one of his moody trances. When he finally unfolded himself from the cramped front seat, he was as straight and narrow as the trunks behind him, the dark, even mass of them swallowing his shadow. Alice twitched, her left foot gone to pins and needles. The crunch of brush beneath her caused no more disturbance than a small animal, but he immediately turned to where she was hidden and stared at a spot directly above her head while she held her breath.

‘Alice,’ he whispered into the warm air. She could just hear the hiss of it, could barely see his lips moving. But she was sure he had said her name. They had that in common, the two of them; they were both observers, though of different sorts.

He lifted a single paper bag from the passenger seat, cradling it close to his chest, almost lovingly. Bottles, she decided, thinking of her father and his many trips back and forth between the car and their own cabin, carefully ferrying the liquor he’d brought, enough for a month’s worth of toasts and nightcaps and morning-after hair-of-the-dogs. Damn locals mark their inventory up at the first sign of summer people, her father had said. Why should I pay twice for something I’m only going to drink once? No one was going to get the better of him. So there’d been bottles of red and white wine, champagne, Galliano and orange juice for her mother’s Wallbangers, vodka and gin, an assortment of mixers, one choice bottle of whiskey, and several cases of beer. All of which had been cautiously transported in the same fashion Thomas Bayber now employed.

She waited until he’d navigated the short flight of flagstone steps and the screen door banged shut behind him before she moved, choosing a soft mound of earth pillowed with needles. She scratched at a mosquito bite and opened the book of poetry to read it again. Mrs. Phelan, the librarian, had set it aside for her when it first came in.

‘Mary Oliver. No Voyage and Other Poems. My sister sent it to me from London, Alice. I thought you might like to be the first to read it.’ Mrs. Phelan fanned the pages recklessly, winking at Alice as though they were conspirators. ‘It still has that new book smell.’

Alice had saved the book for the lake, not wanting to read any of the poems until she was in exactly the right surroundings. On the dock that morning, she’d grabbed a towel, still faintly damp and smelling of algae, and stretched out on her stomach, resting on her elbows as she thumbed through the book. The glare of sunlight off the crisp pages gave her a headache, but she stayed where she was, letting the heat paint her skin a tender pink. She kept reading, holding her breath after each stanza, focusing on the language, on the precise meaning of the words, regretting that she could only imagine what had been meant, as opposed to knowing with any certainty. Now the page with the poem ‘No Voyage’ was wrinkled, pocked from specks of sand, its corner imprinted with the damp mark of Alice’s thumb. I lie like land used up … There were secrets in the lines she couldn’t puzzle out.

If she asked, Thomas would decipher the poem for her, without resorting to the coddling speech adults so often used, choosing vague words and pretending confusion. The two of them had fallen into the habit of bartering knowledge whenever she visited. He schooled her in jazz, in bebop and exotic bossa nova, playing his favorites for her while he painted—Slim Gaillard, Rita Reys, King Pleasure, and Jimmy Giuffre—stabbing the air with his brush when there was a particular passage he wanted her to note. In turn, she showed him the latest additions to her birding diary—her sketches of the short-eared owl and American wigeon, the cedar waxwing and late warblers. She explained how the innocent-looking loggerhead shrike killed its prey by biting it in the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord before impaling the victim on thorns or barbed wire and tearing it apart.

‘Good grief,’ he’d said, shuddering. ‘I’m in the clutches of an avian Vincent Price.’

She suspected their conversations only provided him with reasons to procrastinate, but she made him laugh with her descriptions of the people in town: Tamara Philson, who wore her long strand of pearls everywhere, even to the beach, after reading of a burglary in the neighboring town; the Sidbey twins, whose parents dressed them in matching clothes, down to the barrettes in their hair and the laces in their sneakers, the only distinguishable difference between the two being a purple dot Mr. Sidbey had penned onto the earlobe of one. You, Alice, Thomas said, are my most reliable antidote to boredom.

She peered through the birch trunks toward the back of the house. If she waited too long before knocking, he might start working, and then she risked interrupting him. His manner would be brisk, his sentences clipped. He was like a feral animal that way, like the cats at home she tried to entice from behind the woodpile and capture. She would never have gone over without an invitation—one had been extended, after all, in general terms—but even so, she had found it best to approach him cautiously.

Come over and visit, he’d said to her family that first day, introducing himself on the dock the properties shared, appearing from the woods to retrieve the frenzied dog that circled his feet. But introductions weren’t necessary—at least not on his part. They knew exactly who he was.



***

‘That artist’ was the way her father referred to him, the same way he might say ‘that ditch digger’ or ‘that ax murderer.’ She’d staked out a listening post at the top of the stairs at home long before they’d ever driven to the lake, eavesdropping on her parents’ conversation.

‘Myrna says he’s gifted,’ her mother had said.

‘Well, I imagine she would know, what with her expertise in the field of … what is it he does?’ Her father’s voice had the exasperated tone he often used when confronted with Myrna Reston’s expertise in a myriad of subjects.

‘You know perfectly well what he does. He’s a painter. She says he’s received a scholarship to the Royal Academy.’

Her father snorted, unimpressed. ‘A painter. So people pay him to drink their booze and make eyes at their daughters and sit in a chair sucking on the end of a paintbrush. Nice work if you can get it.’ Alice pictured her father rolling his eyes.

‘There’s no need for sarcasm, Niels.’

‘I’m not being sarcastic. I just don’t want anyone in my family fawning over some artist. We’ve already had more than we can handle with …’ There was a pause, the whispers became inaudible, and Alice knew they were discussing Natalie. Her father’s voice boomed again and startled her on the step where she perched. ‘Why now, after all these summers of the house being deserted? Better it should stay that way—’

Her mother interrupted. ‘Whether or not they use the house is no business of ours. You’re only annoyed because if he’s there, you won’t be able to keep one of the boats tied up to the Baybers’ side of the dock. You can hardly blame the young man for that.’

Her father exhaled loudly—his sigh of defeat. ‘I can certainly try.’

The four of them had arrived on a Saturday evening three weeks ago: Alice, her parents, and her older sister, Natalie, all of them sweaty and road-weary, wrinkled and wretched from the long drive. When she woke the next morning the first things she saw were their suitcases lying open-jawed on the bedroom floor, spilling things yet to be unpacked. The swimsuit she grabbed from the clothesline and tugged onto her body after breakfast pulled like rubber against her skin, still damp from their ritual swim at dusk the night before. In spite of her father’s wild laughter as he splashed Alice and her mother, and her mother’s dramatic squeals in response, Natalie had refused to join in, and remained on the shore in the fading light, just watching them; her arms crossed and her face fixed with a cold violence, an expression she’d mastered since returning from her time away. Alice couldn’t account for Natalie’s sudden and intense dislike of the three of them. Why are you being such a pill? she’d whispered in the backseat of the car on the drive up, deliberately choosing a word Natalie often directed at her, then elbowing her sister when she refused to reply. You’re going to make them unhappy. You’re going to ruin everything.

When Alice was younger, her father had fashioned a rough mask from evergreen needles and lake grass glued to a rotten shell of pine bark, shed like a skin. He secured it to the end of their canoe with heavy yellow cord, telling Alice their ancient Dutch relatives believed water fairies lived in the figureheads of ships, protecting the vessels and their sailors from all manner of ills—storms, narrow and treacherous passageways, fevers, and bad luck. Kaboutermannekes he called them. If the ship ran aground, or even worse, if it sank, the Kaboutermannekes would guide the seafarers’ souls to the Land of the Dead. Without a water fairy to guide him, a sailor’s soul would be lost at sea forever. Natalie, locked in place on the rocky shore, did not look like she would protect any of them from anything.

Alice lounged on the dock that first morning, listening to her parents talk about all the things they might do with the day. They never moved from their chairs, only shifted from one hip to the other, their skin smeared white with contrails of suntan lotion, their eyes invisible behind dark glasses, their fingers intertwined until they traded sections of newspaper or reached for their Bloody Marys. When the dog suddenly appeared on the dock, a low growl deep in its throat, Alice’s mother drew her feet up onto the chair, alarmed. They heard a voice coming from the deep part of the woods, calling sharply, ‘Neela. Neela, come here right now.’

‘She’s really harmless, just suffers from ‘small dog complex’ is all’ was what he said. She was tempted to say in return, ‘You’re not what I expected,’ but held her tongue.

She stopped at the back door to Thomas’s cabin, the books tight in her hand, and took a deep breath, brushing the forest from her feet: a stain of pitch, the powdery dust of dry leaves, a citron smear of moss. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t visited him before, but her parents had always known exactly where she was, had waved and shouted after her, Don’t be a bother and don’t overstay your welcome. In that moment she realized what it was to be Natalie, to know what you shouldn’t do, and to do it anyway.

The paint on the door was tired brown fading to gray, cracked and buckled as alligator hide, chunky flakes of it falling to the ground as she brushed against it. She folded up the right sleeve of her shirt to hide the damp cuff she’d let dangle in the lake while reading. The wet of it soaked through, cooling a patch of her skin, but the rest of her body felt like a thing on fire, all twitchy and skittering. She rocked on her heels, holding her books to her chest. When she touched the doorknob it felt electric in her hand, hot from a shaft of sunlight slicing between the pines. She held on to it, letting it burn against her palm.

A breeze shifted across the lake, carrying with it the echo of gulls and the pungent smell of alewives rotting onshore after last night’s storm. Alice looked up through the maze of branches knotted overhead, to the bright washed sky. Her head swam, and she held the doorknob more firmly in her hand.

Feel free to visit whenever you like, he’d said. At the time of the invitation her mother nodded hesitantly, eyeing Bayber’s dog as the animal sniffed and scratched its way from plank to plank. Her father pulled himself up from the weathered Adirondack, causing the dock to sway slightly beneath them. With that unexpected movement something shifted, and Alice felt they were suddenly different people from the family they’d been only moments before.

‘Felicity Kessler,’ her mother said, offering her hand. ‘This is my husband, Niels. We rent the Restons’ cabin every August. You must know Myrna, Mrs. Reston?’

‘My family doesn’t let me out very often.’ He winked at her mother, and Alice was appalled to see her mother’s cheeks color. ‘Myrna’s—Mrs. Reston’s—name may have come up in conversation, but I haven’t yet had the pleasure.’

‘Lucky you, on that count,’ her father said.

‘Niels!’

‘I’m only joking, of course. As my wife will tell you, Mr. Bayber, it can be useful to have the acquaintance of someone so … well-informed.’

‘Please, I only answer to Thomas.’ He was wearing a dark sweater unraveling at the cuffs with a white button-down beneath it and paint-spattered khakis. A wicker basket piled with grapes swayed in one of his hands. ‘Here,’ he said, handing the basket to her father. ‘Our property’s thick with them. It seems criminal to let them go to waste when they’re ripe.’

When no one replied, he forged on, undeterred by the guarded look on her father’s face.

‘Consider them a peace offering. An apology for Neela, here. She and I have a great deal in common, chief being that, according to my mother, we’re both completely untrainable.’

That was the moment Alice liked him. Up until then she’d merely thought him strange, with his paint-spotted clothes, unruly hair, and eyes the same gray as the morning lake. Too sure of himself and too tall. And he stared at them—something her mother constantly admonished her not to do—but nonetheless there he was, staring at them quite deliberately and making no attempt to hide it, as if he could see past their fleshy outlines and deep inside them, into the places where they hid their weaknesses and embarrassments.

She wasn’t used to people speaking so directly, especially not at the lake, where adult conversations were burdened with enthusiasm and insincerity. We must get together while you’re here! You must come over for cocktails! What charming, attractive children you have! I’ll call soon! With August stretched out before her, she’d been sure her only excitement would be found in the books she’d brought. Living next door to someone completely untrainable sounded like salvation.

‘I’m Alice,’ she said, reaching down to pat Neela’s head. ‘What sort of dog is she?’

He towered over her. His eyelashes were black and as long as a girl’s and his hair was black and long as well, curling up around the pointed ends of his collar.

‘Alice. Pleased to meet you. Well, no one seems sure of her parentage. I have my suspicions, but, being a gentleman, one hesitates to make accusations. There’s a border collie and a Yorkie we usually see sitting on the porch of the market in town. Neela starts up with an earsplitting racket whenever we drive past. I’m quite sure they must be relatives of hers.’

Alice shielded her eyes from the sun in an attempt to get a better look at him. ‘So you and Neela come here often?’

He laughed, but it was a dry, cracked sound without a trace of happiness. ‘Lord, no. My parents have owned this property for decades, but have too much leisure time on their hands to actually vacation. Relaxation is very hard for the rich. There’s always something that needs to be watched, some event requiring an appearance.’ He glanced at her mother before adding, ‘Mrs. Reston may have mentioned they’re quite wealthy.’

Alice watched her mother’s throat work as she swallowed slowly and looked down to examine the planks of the dock. Her father choked on his Bloody Mary before laughing and slapping Thomas Bayber on the back. ‘And you said you’d never met the woman. Ha!’

Thomas smiled. ‘Up until now circumstances have prevented me from spending any time in this tranquil community.’ He gazed out across the lake. ‘But now arrived earlier this year, in no uncertain terms, speaking in an emphatic voice that sounded amazingly like my father’s. So I’ve been here since June, using their summer house as a studio. I paint, as you may be able to tell.’ He gestured toward his clothes and shrugged. ‘Not something my father considers a suitable occupation.’

He took a step back and squinted, studying them with his chin down, his arms folded. Alice wondered what they looked like to a stranger. Common enough, she imagined, like any cluster of people you’d see getting off of a train or passing you on the street, with only the vaguest hints that they somehow belonged to each other: the way they smoothed their hair with the palms of their hands; the determined set of their shoulders; the pale skin, easily freckled; a feature echoed here or there—her mother’s pert nose on Natalie, her father’s pale blue eyes repeated in her own face. The sister who was lovely; the other who was smart; a father with an expression grown increasingly somber through the years; a mother who knew how to achieve a certain degree of balance among all of them. They could be any family she knew.

Thomas nodded, his expression thoughtful. ‘Your arrival provides me with an opportunity. I wonder, would you let me sketch you? All of you together, I mean.’

‘Well, I’m not really sure—’

Thomas cut her father off. ‘You’d be doing me a favor, sir, I assure you. I can only paint this idyllic scenery so many times. Birches, hemlocks, the gulls and woodcocks, boats tacking back and forth across the lake. Frankly, I’m losing my mind.’

Her mother laughed, interrupting before Alice’s father could demur. ‘We’d be delighted. It’s very kind of you to ask. How exciting!’

‘You could keep the sketch. Who knows? Someday it might be worth something. Of course, it’s equally possible that someday it will be worth absolutely nothing.’

Alice could see her father weighing his options, one of which was likely four weeks of her mother’s wrath if he declined Bayber’s invitation. She wondered why he hesitated.

‘I suppose if it’s all of us together, it would be all right,’ he finally offered. ‘You’ve already met Alice, our amateur ornithologist. She’s fourteen, and starting ninth grade in the fall. And this is Natalie, our oldest. She’ll be a junior at Walker Academy next month.’

Alice realized then that her sister hadn’t looked up from the dock once, seemingly enthralled with a book she was reading. Odd, considering Natalie was long accustomed to being the center of attention. She had the shiny, polished look of a new toy. Her appearance drew gawky young men to their front porch in droves, each of them hoping to be favored with a task: fetching lemonade if Natalie was warm, retrieving a sweater if she felt a chill, swatting at bugs drawn too close to her dizzying gravity. Alice had less immunity to Natalie than any of them, practicing her sister’s mannerisms in the mirror when she was alone; accepting her hand-me-downs with secret delight; wishing for even a small measure of Natalie’s unapologetic impulsiveness. There was power associated with her sister’s prettiness. Even now, listless and drawn from some bug she’d caught after weeks spent away looking at colleges, Natalie was still the bright sun, the star around which the rest of them orbited. Her failure to attempt to charm, or even acknowledge Thomas Bayber was surprising. Even more surprising was the fact that neither of her parents admonished Natalie for her rude behavior or insisted she say hello. And Thomas Bayber, for his part, seemed equally unaware of Natalie.

‘Hello. Thomas, are you there? It’s Alice.’ She knocked louder; the slick doorknob turned in her hand and the door creaked open.

‘Thomas?’

Her father was on the skiff, halfway across the lake; Natalie had shunned her invitation to skip rocks, and instead put on her swimsuit, packed a lunch, and said she was going to the beach near town and didn’t want company. Her mother was meeting summer friends for a game of bridge.

‘Thomas?’

There was a scrambling sort of noise, and there he was, looming in front of her, blocking out the light. He looked as though he’d been sleeping—sloe-eyed, one side of his cheek creased with little half-moon impressions, his dark hair knotted—though she’d watched him carry the paper bags into the house not quite half an hour ago.

‘You look a fright,’ she said.

He smiled at her and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Alice. What an unexpected surprise.’

‘Is it all right?’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘Where’s Neela?’ She’d grown attached to the little dog, carrying table scraps with her in case of a chance encounter. Natalie, on the other hand, referred to Neela as the vicious little cur.

‘She’ll bite you if you’re not careful,’ she’d told Alice.

‘She will not. You’re jealous because she likes me.’

‘That didn’t stop her from taking a bite out of Thomas, and he’s her owner.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You should.’ Natalie had smirked. ‘I’ve seen the scar.’

Thomas turned and walked into the main room of the cabin. ‘Neela’s out visiting friends, I imagine.’ His bare feet left marks in a fine dust on the floor, and Alice trailed in after him.

‘Damn chalk dust,’ he said. ‘It gets over everything.’

‘What are you working on? Can I see?’

‘I’m not sure it’s ready for public consumption, but if you insist, I suppose you can have a preview. Stay there.’ He sorted through canvases stacked on an easel facing the bank of windows overlooking the lake. Settling on one, he picked it up by the edges and walked back across the room, sitting on an old velvet sofa, patting the cushion next to him.

The sofa was the color of dark chocolate, the fabric stained and threadbare in places, with big tapestry pillows stuffed into the corners. In spite of its condition, a shadow of elegance clung to it. That same shadow cloaked everything in the room. Beautiful books with tattered covers and pages plumped by mildew, a grandfather clock with a cracked cabinet door and a sonorous chime that sounded on the quarter hour, expensive-looking Oriental carpets with patchy fringe—all of it near to ruin, yet perfect in the way that something is exactly as you imagine it should be. The Restons’ cabin, by comparison, was a third the size and designed to look as though its owners were sportsmen, though nothing could be further from the truth. This place was like Thomas, Alice decided: flawed and sad, yet perfectly true.

She settled on the sofa next to him, folding her legs underneath her. He turned the canvas so she could see. It was a chalk sketch of the beach near town, sadly without birds. She recognized the silhouette of hemlock trees against the sky and the lip of shoreline that curled back toward itself after the point. But even though she knew the location, the way Thomas had depicted it made it unfamiliar. The pier was drawn in dark, violent slashes; the trees were leafless, charred spires; and the water looked angry, foaming against rocks and railing against the beach.

‘Why did you draw it that way? It scares me to look at it.’

‘I should thank you for preparing me for the critics. It’s supposed to do that, Alice.’

‘That stretch of beach is beautiful. It doesn’t look anything like this.’

‘But you recognized it.’

‘Yes.’

‘You recognized it even though it frightens you, even though you find it dark and ugly. So maybe those qualities are inherent, but you choose to overlook them. You don’t see the ugliness because you don’t want to. That’s the job of an artist: to make people look at things—not just at things, but at people and at places—in a way other than they normally would. To expose what’s hidden below the surface.’

Alice followed the line of a tree trunk, the tip of her finger hovering just above the paper. When she realized he was looking at her hands, she tucked them under her legs.

‘Why are you hiding them?’ His voice was patient, but firm. ‘Let me see.’

She wavered before offering them up for inspection. He took both of them in his own, his palms warm and smooth as a stone. He examined them carefully, turning over first the right, then the left. He ran his own fingers slowly down each of hers, circling her knuckles and rubbing the skin there as if trying to erase something, watching her face the whole time. Alice bit the inside of her cheek and tried not to wince, but the pain was sharp and she pulled away.

‘Be still. Why are you fidgeting?’

‘It hurts.’

‘I can see that.’ He let go of her hands, got up from the sofa, and walked to the window, resting his sketch again on the easel. ‘Have you told anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Not your parents?’

She shook her head.

He shrugged. ‘I’m not a doctor. I’m barely an artist to some people’s way of thinking. But if something hurts you, you should tell someone.’

‘I’ve told you, haven’t I?’

Thomas laughed. ‘I hardly qualify as a responsible party.’

She knew something was wrong; she’d known for a while now. She limped when she got out of bed in the morning, not every morning, but often enough that she wouldn’t be able to blame it on something random much longer: a twisted ankle, a stone bruise, a blister. Fevers came on like sudden storms at night, leaving her flushed and dizzy, then vanished by the time she got up and went to the medicine cabinet for an aspirin. Rashes dotted her trunk and disappeared along with the fevers. Her joints warred with the rest of her body, using tactics that were simple but effective: flaming the skin around her knees to an unappealing red, conjuring a steady, unpleasant warming that annoyed like an itch. She’d never been blessed with Natalie’s natural grace, but lately she was wooden and clumsy. Balls, pencils, the handles of bags—all fell from her fingers as if trying to escape. She stumbled over her own feet, even when staring at them. At night, time slowed to the point of stopping, each tick of the clock’s minute hand stretching longer as she tried to distract herself from the pain in her joints.

She’d said something to her mother, but only in the vaguest of terms, making every effort to sound unconcerned. Her mother’s reactions tended toward the extreme and Alice had no interest in finding herself confined for the entire summer. But her mother, who’d been getting ready for a dinner party at the time, had answered absently, ‘Growing pains. They’ll pass. You’ll see.’

‘Sometimes my hands shake,’ she told Thomas.

‘Sometimes my hands shake, too. That’s when a little whiskey comes in handy.’

She couldn’t help smiling. ‘I don’t think my parents would approve of that.’

‘Hmm. I imagine you’re right. Do you think you could sit still for a bit?’

‘I suppose so. Why?’

‘I just want to do a quick sketch. That is, if you don’t mind.’

‘You already did the drawing of all of us.’

‘I know. But now I just want to sketch you. Is it all right or not?’

‘As long as you don’t draw my hands.’

He rolled up his shirtsleeves and shook his head. ‘Don’t start hating parts of yourself already, Alice; you’re too young. I won’t sketch your hands if you don’t want me to, but they’re lovely. Hold them up. See? Your fingers are perfectly tapered. You could hold a brush or play a musical instrument more easily than most people because of the distance from the middle joint of your finger to the tip. Ideal proportions.’

He picked up a pencil and sharpened it against a small square of sandpaper. ‘Why do we lack the capacity to celebrate small bits of perfection? Unless it’s obvious on a grand scale, it’s not worth acknowledging. I find that extremely tiresome.’

‘Birds are perfect. Yet most people completely overlook them.’

‘Well, if birds are perfect, then you are as well. And I can’t imagine anyone failing to notice you, Alice. Now, hold up your hand. I want you to study it.’

She was suddenly self-conscious, aware of her unruly hair, her dirty feet. She held up one hand and stared at the back of it, wondering what it was she was supposed to see, while Thomas went to the phonograph in the corner of the room and thumbed through a stack of albums before taking one from its sleeve. He set the needle down on the record, then poured himself a drink and lit a cigarette. The voice that filled the room was French and mournful, the singer entirely alone in the world.

‘Are you concentrating on your hand? Do you see that river of blue running just beneath your skin? It’s a path begging to be followed, or a stream running over a crest of bone before dipping into a valley. Now sit still and let me sketch you. I’ll be quick.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Edith Piaf.’

‘She doesn’t sound happy.’

He sighed. ‘You’re going to have to stop talking. Your expression keeps changing. She’s called the Little Sparrow—ah, something bird-related! If she doesn’t sound happy it’s because she hasn’t had reason to be. Married young. Got pregnant. Had to leave her child in the care of prostitutes while she worked.’ He paused and looked up from his easel. ‘Am I shocking you?’

She shook her head, secretly alarmed over the woman’s circumstances, but thrilled with the image that formed: an insignificant brown-gray bird with a stubby beak breaking forth into magnificent, sorrowful tones.

‘The little girl died when she was just two years old from meningitis. Piaf was injured in a car accident and became a morphine addict. Her one true love died in a plane crash. She’s quite a tragic figure. But her history flavors her music, don’t you think? She’s haunted. You hear it in her voice.’ He hummed along, apparently pleased with his macabre story.

‘You’re not happy. Are you haunted?’

He peered at her from the side of his sketch pad before setting the pencil down on the easel tray. He was scowling, but one corner of his mouth curved up, as if she’d amused him. ‘What makes you think I’m unhappy?’

It was a fault of hers, telling people exactly what was on her mind. You should practice the art of subtlety, Natalie had told her once.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Alice.’

She bit the inside of her cheek before answering him. ‘Unhappiness is easy to see. People try so hard to hide it.’

‘Very astute. Continue.’

‘Maybe you hide it by the way you look at people. You only focus on their bits and pieces. Like you don’t want to get to know them as a whole person. Or maybe you just don’t want them to get to know you. Maybe you’re afraid they won’t like you very much.’

He stiffened at the last. ‘I’m finished. I told you I’d be quick. It’s an interesting theory, especially coming from a fourteen-year-old.’

‘You’re angry.’

‘With someone as precocious as you? That would be dangerous.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘You don’t like it? It’s meant as a compliment.’

‘It’s not a compliment.’ A flush of heat swept her cheeks and her eyes started to tear. She was miserable realizing she’d said the wrong thing. ‘It only means you know more than adults think you should, and that you make them uncomfortable. They’re not sure what they can and can’t say around you. Besides, it sounds too much like precious. I hate that word.’

He walked over to the sofa and offered her a handkerchief crusted with paint, but she pushed it back toward him, blinking in an effort not to cry. Thomas chuckled. The thought that he was laughing at her made her furious, and she started stammering until he put a finger under her chin and turned her face up to his.

The air in the room grew warm. The sound of her own heart startled her, the racing thump of it so obvious, so loud in her ears. How could he not hear? It drowned out the Little Sparrow, roaring over her words, her melancholy cry. The contents of the room twisted and Alice’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. Soon she’d be gasping to breathe, a fish flailing in shallow water. Her eyes darted from his feet, to the cuff of his sleeve, to the needle of the phonograph, gently bobbing along the surface of the record. Her skin tingled. There was no help for it. She had to look at him and, when she did, his expression changed from mock remorse, to concern, and then to understanding. Her face burned.

He dropped his hand and stepped back, studying the floor for a moment before looking at her again. ‘Fine. From this point forward, I will eliminate both precocious and precious from my vocabulary. Am I forgiven?’ He made a face and pressed his hands together, as if praying.

He was making fun of her in a kind way, or else trying to make her laugh. The world righted itself as quickly as it had been thrown off its axis. He was sorry he’d hurt her feelings. He wanted to be forgiven. A small current of power coursed through her.

‘Yes. I forgive you. Besides, I’ll bet if I asked your parents, they’d say you weren’t very mature yourself. You can’t be that much older than I am, Thomas.’

This time he didn’t smile. ‘Subterfuge doesn’t suit you, Alice, and I hope it’s not something you’ll grow into. If you want to know how old I am, just ask. Although I wouldn’t recommend it as a common practice. Most people would take offense. Fortunately, I am not most people.’ He bowed at the waist. ‘I’m twenty-eight. Worlds older than you. Ancient.’

‘You don’t seem ancient.’

‘Well, I am. I was born old. My mother told me once that I looked like a grumpy old man from the moment I was born—wrinkled, pruney face, rheumy eyes. You’ve heard the expression an old soul? I was born with a head full of someone else’s failed dreams and a heart full of someone else’s memories. There’s nothing to do for it, I suppose, although if I knew I was going to turn out this way, I would have preferred to choose whose memories and heartbreaks I’d be saddled with.’ He looked at her. ‘And you? I suppose, like most people your age, you’re anxious to be older.’

She ignored the pointed people your age. She didn’t want to admit that whatever serious plans she’d made for herself changed depending on the day of the week, or on the book she’d just read, or whether she felt strong from a full night of sleep or weak from a fevered one. The future was a dark cave yawning just ahead, beckoning her to enter.

‘Not anxious. You get older, whether you want to or not.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe we’ll all be blown up and it won’t matter.’

‘What? You mean by the Communists? I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t suppose the majority of them want to blow us up any more than they’d want us blowing them up.’

Alice nodded, remembering other conversations she’d overheard. ‘Mutual assured destruction.’

‘I’m shocked at the knowledge you possess. At your tender age I think it might be healthier for you to be less well-informed. At the very least, it would make for better sleeping. You’ll grow up fast enough as it is. One becomes jaded and cynical so quickly.’ He tore a filmy piece of vellum from a roll, placing it over the sketch and rolling the pieces into a tube.

‘Maybe one should try harder not to be so jaded and cynical.’

Thomas laughed and poured himself another drink. ‘A toast to you, Alice. You’re a young lady wise beyond your years. Wise beyond mine, as well. May nothing, and no one, disappoint you. Now take your drawing and go. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Can I come again tomorrow?’

‘I’ll likely go mad if you don’t. And as you kindly indicated, I need help improving my perspective.’

She was almost all the way down the drive and back to the Restons’ cabin before she realized she’d left her books sitting on the end table next to the sofa. She hadn’t even asked him about the poem. Tomorrow, she thought. But there was a sketch she wanted to finish—the domino-marked bufflehead she’d spotted scooting through the lake’s shallows that morning—and other poems waiting to be read. So she retraced her steps.

The wind picked up. A flock of grackles darkened the sky overhead, their raucous chatter filling the air like the swing of rusty gates. There was another storm coming in and if she wasn’t quick she’d be drenched, even though the walk back was no more than five minutes. She left the door to the cabin ajar when she went in, calling his name softly, but there was no answer. Work to do most likely meant sleep, she imagined, seeing his empty glass. She hurried into the main room. The doors leading to other parts of the house were closed and everything was quiet. The cabin itself seemed to have stopped breathing, its creaks and settlings absent in spite of the wind outside. She could still see his footprints in the chalk dust on the floor, like a ghost’s, leading to and away from his easel.

A gust swept into the room and sent the pile of drawings resting on the easel flying. Why hadn’t she thought to close the door? She started to pick them up, intending to put them back before he noticed anything was out of place, but stopped when she glanced at the first piece of paper she touched, a colored pencil sketch. Her breath caught in the back of her throat and her skin turned clammy. She sank to her knees, unable to breathe.

Even if she hadn’t looked at the face, she would have known it was Natalie. Those were her sister’s arms and legs flung so casually across the sofa, the pale thread of a scar just below her knee from a skiing accident two years prior. That was Natalie’s hair, mussed and wild, like caramelized sand, one long curl wrapped around a finger. That was the necklace from her latest boyfriend, the tiny pearls glowing against the skin of her neck. The tan line crossing the slope of her breasts, the small whorl of her belly button, the pale skin stretched taut between her hip bones, all the secret, private pink of her. And, erasing any hope or possible doubt, Natalie’s knowing smile.











Chapter Two (#ulink_0402e1fd-c4a4-5b86-9fe0-c94e658ee837)October 2007


Finch groped for the belt of his raincoat as he got out of the cab, holding his arm up in an attempt to shield his bare head from the late October rain. He crossed the sidewalk in two steps and took the steep flight of stairs, steering clear of the refuse and odors percolating on either side of him, but landing squarely in the puddles that had formed in the centers of the treads. The wet seeped into his socks as he watched the cab disappear. Stranded. He briefly considered calling a car service and returning to his own apartment, a warmly lit, tidy brownstone in Prospect Heights, where, thanks to his daughter, the refrigerator would be well-stocked with wholesome if uninteresting food. Your blood pressure, she would say. Your heart. Your knees. He would ask, How are prunes going to help my knees?, wondering if he had remembered to hide his pipe, and she would simply shrug and smile at him and in that smile he would see for the briefest of moments his wife’s mouth, and his entire perfect world, all as it had once been.

When he’d arranged for the Williamsburg apartment for Thomas Bayber five years ago, the neighborhood was in what the smiling real estate agent termed ‘a period of transition.’ Finch had considered it an investment, optimistically assuming it would transition for the better, but gentrification had yet to make its way this far south. He peered through a grimy, cracked pane of glass. He could barely open the front door, swollen from all the rain, and when he pressed the buzzer for 7A there was, as always, a comedic interlude when buzzer and buzzee could not coordinate their efforts and Finch yanked impatiently at the elevator door several times, always managing to turn the knob just as the lock reengaged. After three thwarted attempts and much cursing under his breath, he turned down the hall and headed toward the stairs.

He made it as far as the fifth-floor landing before he stopped, sitting down on a step and rubbing his throbbing knees. These persistent fissures in the machinery presented themselves with stunning diligence. His head ached, whether from guilt or anger, he couldn’t be sure. He only knew he didn’t enjoy being summoned. There was a time he might have chalked this visit up to a responsibility of friendship, stretching the very definition of the word. But he had moved beyond the requirement of an explanation and now saw things for what they were. He was useful to Thomas at times, less so at others. It was as simple as that.

His wife would not have wanted him here. Claire might even have surprised him by voicing the words she’d kept tied beneath her tongue for so many years. Enough is enough, Denny. She would have been right. Even the elaborate funeral spray Thomas had sent to the church—Finch couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d paid for that expression of Thomas’s largesse as well—wouldn’t have appeased Claire. Nor had it been of any particular comfort to him. Thomas, or things regarding Thomas, had consumed too many of their hours together to be balanced by one obscene display of orchids. A wave of grief washed over Finch, and he was overcome with her absence. Eleven months was not long—he still found the occasional sympathy card in his mailbox—but time had expanded and slowed. His days swelled with the monotony of hours, piling up in colossal heaps before and after him, the used the same as the new.

He shuddered to his feet and grabbed the stair rail, reminding himself to be thankful for this diversion. Would he have otherwise left the house today? This week? It was far more likely he’d have barricaded himself in the brownstone, surrounded by dissertations and examinations, half-listening to Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia and allowing a sharp red pencil to float just above the surface of a paper. The text would waver in front of his eyes and he would lose interest in whatever thought his student had been struggling to express, instead becoming maudlin and drifting in and out of sleep, his head snapping to attention before sinking again to his chest.

Even the small distraction of teaching might soon be behind him. Dean Hamilton had strongly suggested a sabbatical at the beginning of the new term next year, a suggestion Finch had opted not to share with his daughter or anyone else. ‘Take some time, Dennis,’ Hamilton had said to him, smiling as he stuffed wristbands and racquetball goggles into a shiny gym bag. It was all Finch could do not to throttle the man. Time. There was too damn much of it. If only he could wish it away.

When he was younger, he had often wondered about the kind of old man he was likely to become. His father had been a well-grounded person, amiable and easygoing with strangers, though rigorous with his own son. Finch assumed when he reached his own waning years he’d likely be the same, perhaps slightly more reserved. But in the void left by Claire, he found himself morphing into someone less agreeable. It was apparent to him that while they’d been together, he’d viewed people through his wife’s far more generous lens. The neighbors she’d always insisted were thoughtful, he now found prying and meddlesome, cocking their heads with an expression of concern whenever he passed, clucking noises of pity escaping from their mouths. The woman across the street, for whom Claire had cooked unsettled, custardy things, seemed helpless and completely incapable of the smallest task, calling on Finch whenever she needed a lightbulb changed or her stoop swept. As if he were a houseman. The general rudeness, the lack of civility, the poor manners—all of humanity appeared to be crashing in on itself, exhibiting nothing but bad behavior.

Reaching the sixth floor, he realized it was easy enough to shift all the blame to Thomas. The man made himself an obvious target. But with each step, he recalled some slight, some other way he himself had no doubt hurt his wife over the years. The gallery openings and the parties, any occasion where Thomas held court, his arm snug around the waist of a lovely young thing. The girl would be draped in fabric that clung to her sylphlike frame; hair polished and floating about her shoulders, buoyant with light; lips stained dark and in a perpetual pout, close to Thomas’s ear. These were the girls who looked off to a point just beyond Finch’s shoulder, never at his face, never interested enough to pretend to commit anything about him to memory. In spite of these offhanded dismissals, how many times had he casually unlaced his fingers from Claire’s or let his arm slide, almost unbidden, from her waist to his side? How many times had he taken a half step in front of her? Created a meaningful wedge of distance by gently grasping her elbow and turning her in the direction of the bar or the nearest waiter? As if she wasn’t quite enough, not in this situation, not with these people. His head throbbed and a slow burn flickered and ignited somewhere near the base of his spine as he forced himself up the final flight of stairs. She had been more real than anything else in those carefully ornamented rooms, the chill so prevalent he could almost see his own breath.

There was something more he alone bore responsibility for, the thing he knew must have cut her to the quick. It was the way he’d inferred that Thomas’s talent was beyond her understanding, that to be in the presence of such a rare thing was reason enough to allow oneself to be subjugated, to play the lesser role. He’d struggled against using the very words you just don’t understand on more than one occasion. But she’d understood well enough. She knew this was as close as he was ever going to get to adulation and success on a grand scale and he’d done more than just succumb to the temptation. He dove in, headfirst, with a great splash, causing a swell that threatened to upend everything, and everyone, in his life.

Forty years ago, Finch was teaching art history and struggling to support his young family on what the college considered generous recompense for someone of his age and limited experience. A colleague suggested he pad his meager funds by writing reviews for exhibition catalogs, which in turn led to his writing newspaper articles on various gallery shows. He was fair and open-minded in his appreciations, a stance that engendered neither an ardent following nor vocal detractors, but kept the work coming his way. He was temperate with his praise, anxious to encourage interest in an artist he felt deserved it, but never overly enthusiastic, staying well back from the precipitous edge of fawning. Then, a simple request from a friend in the English Department. A young man, quite gifted she’d heard, had a small showing at a gallery uptown. Would he stop by? The father was wealthy and well-connected, had contributed generously to the college. Could he just take a look? Finch mumbled under his breath before reluctantly agreeing. Days later, halfway home before he remembered his promise, he turned around in a disagreeable state and made his way to the gallery.

At first he’d thought Thomas was the gallery owner. He was too well-dressed for a young artist, not nearly as nervous as Finch would have expected for someone giving his first solo show. He stood in a corner, towering a head above the tight circle of women surrounding him. Occasionally one would sacrifice her spot to fetch another glass of wine or a plate of cheese, returning only to find her place taken. Finch noted with humor the jostling for position. These women were all purposeful elbows and withering glances. When he parted the waters and forced a hand into the circle to introduce himself, Thomas barely smiled but grasped his hand firmly and pulled himself toward Finch as if he’d been thrown a life preserver.

‘How long do I have to stay, do you suppose?’ he asked. He pushed a dark curl away from his face, and Finch gauged that they were of a similar age, while acknowledging this was the only physical quality they shared. Thomas would certainly have been thought of as striking: his thin nose, unsettling gray eyes, and skin with the same pallor as a blank canvas. His shoes were tasseled and uncreased, as if purchased just for this occasion. His clothing looked flawlessly tailored and expensive, and made Finch immediately conscious of the haphazard nature of his own appearance—slightly rumpled verging on disheveled.

He shook his head, not understanding. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Here, I mean. Do I stay until the drink is gone or until the people are? I certainly know what my preference would be.’

Finch smiled, disarmed by the man’s honesty. ‘You’re not the gallery owner.’

‘Afraid not. I’m the one with all the stuff on the walls. Thomas Bayber.’

‘Dennis Finch. Happy to meet you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I should probably excuse myself.’

‘Ah. Critic, heh?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘Oh, nothing to be afraid of, I’m sure. Everyone seems to think I’m quite brilliant.’ He motioned to a passing waiter for a drink and holding up two fingers, tilted his head toward Finch. ‘I’ll look forward to reading your review. The Times?’

Finch liked him a little less. ‘For a first show, that would be unlikely, Mr. Bayber.’

‘Please. Call me Thomas. No one ever calls me Mr. Bayber, thank God.’ He put an arm around Finch’s shoulder as if they were conspirators. ‘Perhaps at our next meeting we will both be in slightly more elevated positions.’ Thomas pointed in the direction of a group of canvases. ‘As I said, I look forward to your review.’

It was as close as Finch had come to deliberately disliking something before seeing it. Criticism with malice, he thought, as he made his way across the room. Hubris was a quality he found hard to stomach; respectful deference had been drilled into him by both his parents. But standing in front of the work, it was impossible not to see the talent behind it, and not to be shocked. The series of surrealistic portraits was unlike anything Finch had seen, managing to look new at a time when most said the movement was dying down. There was boldness in the way Bayber used color—it made Finch feel as if he were being shouted at—and an intimacy that made him almost ashamed to study the canvas closely. People pressed in all around him, stunned into collective silence. He felt the need for air. He tried taking notes, but quickly scratched out the few words he put to paper, unable to adequately describe what he was seeing. Something pricked at his skin, tightened in his throat. He turned. Bayber was staring at him with a smile.

At the seventh floor Finch paused and wiped his face and the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Four o’clock in the afternoon and he was exhausted. He stood outside Thomas’s apartment and wondered why he hadn’t bothered to inquire as to the purpose of this visit. When he knocked on the door, it opened. The curtains were drawn and what little afternoon light filtered into the room was filled with swirling motes of dust. The ceiling was the same pale ivory as always, but in the year and a half since his last visit the walls had been painted a deep shade of pomegranate. Finch looked more closely and realized the paint had been applied directly onto the wallpaper, already flaked and bubbling in spots. Chairs were everywhere, turning the space into an obstacle course. As his eyes adjusted to the dim, he noticed Thomas sitting in an overstuffed wing chair against the east wall, spiraling remnants of wallpaper cascading down on either side of him. Thomas’s eyes opened and closed slowly, those of a lizard king in a drugstore comic. He was dressed entirely in black except for the scarf around his neck, a plaid of dirty colors, and though Finch was used to his appearance, today it stuck in his craw. Damned annoying affectation. It certainly wasn’t cold in the room; the heat and smells of liquor and sweat washed over him in waves, and he looked for someplace to sit down.

‘Denny! Come in. Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you? Don’t hover in the doorway like some sort of salesman.’ Thomas’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward in his chair as if trying to satisfy himself of something. ‘You don’t look well.’

‘I’m fine. Couldn’t be better. But I can’t stay long, I’m afraid. I’m having dinner with Lydia. Some new bistro she and my son-in-law have discovered.’ Finch despised lying in others as much as in himself, but he offered this up without a pang of remorse. Much easier to lay the groundwork for taking his leave sooner rather than later. He chose one of the small chairs and instantly regretted it, first hearing the squeak of springs and then feeling an uncomfortable pressure against his backside.

‘How is your daughter?’

‘Lydia is fine, thank you, although she fusses over me to no end. It’s almost like having a babysitter.’ He paused, realizing how disloyal he sounded. ‘I’m lucky to have her.’

‘Indeed you are. I question whether anyone really knows their own good fortune before it’s too late.’ Thomas gave Finch a rueful smile. ‘Too late to enjoy it or exploit it, one of the two.’

Thomas appeared at odds with himself. His hands worried the fabric at the ends of the chair arms, and Finch found himself growing nervous. He couldn’t remember the artist ever seeming so distracted, so undone. Thomas muttered something under his breath and looked up at Finch, as though surprised to see him still standing there.

‘Tell me the truth, Denny. You’ve envied me my solitude at times, no doubt. No more than I have envied you the companionship of a daughter. And the bosom of family to rest your weary head upon, eh?’ He gave a barely perceptible wave of his hand, before frowning. ‘Well, what’s to be done about it at this point?’

Had he ever wished for Thomas’s solitary life? Finch tried to imagine his home of so many years void of its past activity, absent its sounds and smells of family, the briefly lingering childhood traumas, their daily interactions that had turned, almost unnoted, into habits. His wife brushing his daughter’s hair in the afternoon at the kitchen table, her hand following flat behind the brush, smoothing any errant hair into place. The three of them, a family of readers, curled into small pieces of furniture on Sunday mornings, faces half-hidden behind a newspaper or a book. Claire tucked up next to him in bed, her body a sweet comma pressed against his. Lydia in his study in the evenings, her cinnamon breath warming his neck as she leaned over his shoulder and asked about the work he was studying. This and so much more had been his life. He could not bring to mind a moment when he had wished any of it away.

‘You know, Denny, the older we get, the better I like you and the less fond I become of myself.’

‘You’re sounding positively maudlin. You must be out of gin.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘In that case you’ve proven what I’ve always surmised. The most successful artists are filled with self-loathing. This revelation on your part must indicate you’re entering a new period of productivity, my friend.’

A thin smile broke across Thomas’s lips and he closed his eyes briefly before responding. ‘We both know I’ll never paint anything again.’ He rose from the chair and walked over to the credenza to pick up a decanter. ‘Join me in a drink?’

Finch patted his coat pocket. ‘I’ll stick with my pipe, if you don’t mind.’

‘Each to his own agent of destruction.’

Finch could feel his mood deteriorating from its already low state. The atmosphere in the room was oppressively dismal. ‘So, Thomas. Something is on your mind.’

Thomas laughed, a dry rattle that turned to a cough and reverberated across the room. ‘Always one to dispense with the niceties, Denny. I appreciate that. Yes, there is something on my mind.’ He hesitated, and Finch drummed his fingers against the worn fabric on the arm of the chair. ‘What would you say if I told you I had a painting I wanted you to see?’

‘An artist you’re interested in?’

‘The artist I’ve always been most interested in, of course. It’s one of mine.’

Finch was certain he’d misheard. ‘I’ve seen everything you’ve done, Thomas. You know I’m one of your most ardent admirers, but you haven’t picked up a brush in twenty years. You told me so yourself.’

‘Twenty years. Time passes so slowly and then suddenly it doesn’t. At which point one becomes aware of how much of it’s been squandered. Twenty years. Yes, that’s true.’ He walked back to the chair and stood behind it, as if for protection. ‘What if this wasn’t something new?’

Finch felt his tongue thicken as his mouth went dry. ‘But all of your work is cataloged in my books. And in the catalogue raisonné. Every one of your paintings, Thomas, examined in minute detail.’

‘Perhaps not every one.’ Thomas emptied his glass and drew an unsteady hand across his chin. ‘I know what a perfectionist you are. How thorough in your work and research. I had my reasons for holding back. And now, well, I wanted you to see it first. I owe you that, don’t I?’

His voice took on a hypnotic note, and Finch’s head began to swim. Another Bayber. It simply wasn’t possible. Anger flashed warm in his veins and he dug his nails into the flesh of his palms, recalling the years he’d spent working on the catalogue raisonné. The hours away from Claire and Lydia, locked up in his cramped study, his neck angled stiffly over one photograph or another, deciphering the meaning in a brushstroke, assigning reason to a choice of color. The envy he barely tamped down at the recognition that this prodigious amount of talent had all been dumped into the hands, into the mind, into the soul of just one person. One insulated, selfish person. And now, another Bayber? This withholding seemed untenable, especially in light of the years they had known each other; the presumed friendship; the insinuation of trust, of favored status. The rent Finch paid out of his own pocket, the small monthly allowances sent to Thomas to keep him fed, although it was far more likely the money was keeping him well-lubricated. An omission such as this made his position all too clear.

Thomas cleared his throat. ‘There’s something else, Denny. The reason I’ve called you here, obviously.’

‘Obviously?’

‘I want you to arrange to sell it for me.’

‘Me? Forgive me, Thomas, if I find this insulting.’ Finch stood up and paced the circumference of the room, marking a path free from furniture. ‘Why me? You could just as easily call Stark, or any one of a hundred dealers for that matter.’

‘I have my reasons. I don’t want this sold through a dealer or through a gallery. Besides, my arrangements with Stark ended a long time ago.’ Thomas walked over to Finch, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I want this to go straight to auction. You still have connections, Denny. You can arrange that for me, can’t you? It needs to be done quickly.’

Finch’s head was on fire. The pain that had started in his back spread across his body. He could torch the entire room simply by laying a finger to it.

‘You could have asked me to do this years ago.’ Finch could feel steam rising off his skin. ‘Look at you. Look at the way you live. This isn’t just a quirk or some strange artistic temperament. You live in squalor. And I’ve paid for a good deal of it. Why now?’

‘You’re angry. Of course you are. I should have expected that. I know things haven’t been easy for you lately.’ Thomas drew himself up and took his hand away from Finch’s shoulder. He walked across the room to one of the large floor-to-ceiling windows hidden behind heavy drapes and pushed the curtain aside with his finger. ‘Would it be so strange I would want back what I once had, just as you do?’

‘You’re the one who stopped painting. You let your reputation slide away, you didn’t lose it. Kindly don’t patronize me. And don’t make assumptions about my life.’

‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

The words stung his ears with their familiarity, and a wretched knife turned in his gut. I don’t expect you to understand. So this was what Claire had felt. This was how he’d hurt her.

Thomas studied his fingers, then turned from the window. ‘In truth, Denny, I was thinking of you. It will be worth so much more now than it would have been when I painted it. I’ll be able to pay you back tenfold, don’t you see?’ He emptied his glass and walked to the credenza again, pouring himself another. He raised the glass in Finch’s direction. ‘Just imagine the publicity.’

Unfortunately, Finch could imagine it quite easily. That shameful desire he was unable to submerge, the longing that persisted on the fringe of his consciousness, the unspoken wish for a speck of what Thomas had frittered away: the money, the swagger, and the talent; his ability to transport those who saw his work to a place they hadn’t known existed. Finch had almost convinced himself the books were purely for scholarship. Other than insubstantial royalties, there was no personal gain. He was not the artist after all. He was an art history professor and a critic. He could pretend to understand what he saw, to divine the artist’s meaning, but his was the paltry contribution. A frayed dream rose up and swirled in his head. The first to see another Bayber, to discover it, after twenty years. His disappointment in finding himself tempted was as palpable as his wife’s voice in his head, their conversations continuing, unabated, since her death. Enough is enough, Denny. He pushed Claire away, shutting out those same melodic tones he struggled to summon each day, letting her be silenced by his racing thoughts. His pulse quickened. He rubbed his hands together, feeling a chill.

‘Let’s see it.’

The sly smile. As if he was so easily read, so quickly persuaded.

‘Not just yet, Denny.’

‘What do you mean? I can’t very well talk about something I haven’t seen.’

‘Oh, I imagine if you put the word out, there will be the appropriate level of required interest, sight unseen. And I don’t have the painting here, of course.’

Thomas’s body may have been in some state of disrepair, but his ego was as healthy as ever. ‘Until I see it,’ Finch said, ‘I’m not making any calls.’

Thomas appeared not to have heard him. ‘I was thinking you might ask Jameson’s son to take a look at it. Pass judgment on its authenticity. He’s at Murchison, isn’t he? And struggling a bit since Dylan died, from what I hear.’

‘Stephen? Stephen Jameson? Surely you’re joking.’

‘Why?’

Was it Finch’s imagination or did Thomas seem insulted his suggestion was met with so little enthusiasm? ‘The young man has a brilliant mind—frighteningly so, really. He’s certainly gifted, providing one manages to overlook his … quirks, shall we say? But they’d never send him. Cranston wouldn’t let him out alone. Not to see you.’

Thomas interpreted his emotions with little more than a passing glance. ‘You feel sorry for him.’ He smiled. ‘You’re right about Cranston, of course, wretched piece of puffery that he is. But if you called Jameson, Denny. If you gave him the opportunity …’

How could Thomas have known? Dylan Jameson had been a longtime acquaintance, someone Finch liked and respected, the sort of friend artists long for: a champion of the unknown and overlooked, a man whose gallery was warm with the sound of laughter and kind praise, and whose opinion was delivered thoughtfully and with great seriousness. When he was alive, he’d run interference for his son, softening Stephen’s spells of verbosity, tempering the impatience and the arrogance others perceived in him. As people were genuinely fond of the father, a degree of latitude was afforded the son. Stephen was in his early thirties now, drifting since his father’s death, an odd duck, socially inhibited and overly sensitive. He possessed a near-photographic memory as far as Finch could tell, and an encyclopedic bank of knowledge. If rumors were to be believed, he had squandered his opportunities with an unfortunate affair.

Finch had taken Stephen out a few times after his father died, repaying old debts, he told himself, but the truth was he enjoyed having something penciled in his agenda. The man’s company could be invigorating in spite of the fact that he often vacillated between morose and brooding, or became obsessive when arguing a point. After a glass or two of Bushmills, Stephen would wax rhapsodic over something he’d seen in Europe, or goad Finch into a debate on the merits of restoration versus conservation.

‘Look at India. Those laws hamstringing resources in the private sector. It’s obvious public projects require talent unavailable to them. The work can only be done in-house, yet most institutions don’t have the necessary resources, so their art languishes in museum basements,’ Stephen had said, slamming his glass on the bar and pulling his hands through his hair. ‘The humidity, the poor storage facilities, all the pieces I’ve seen with tears and pigment damage. It’s criminal. As good as treason. I can’t understand why they won’t move forward.’

‘I’m sure they’ll be happy to take your opinions under advisement, Stephen, especially considering the benign manner in which they’re offered.’

Their confrontations rarely ended in consensus, as that would have required compromise and the younger Jameson seemed overly fond of his own opinions. But Finch relished their exchanges nonetheless. His meetings with Stephen kept him on his toes; they also gave him a reason to get out of the apartment, shoring up the remains of his dignity by allowing him to turn down a few mothering visits from Lydia without having to invent assignations.

How Thomas would have gotten wind of any of this was beyond Finch. He assumed little in the way of a social life for the artist, imagining him confined twenty-four hours a day to the dark, brooding apartment from which Finch now longed to escape.

‘Jameson doesn’t have the authority to take the piece. You know that.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why involve him?’

‘I’ve heard he’s good at what he does.’ Thomas turned his back to Finch and asked, ‘Or should I be using the past tense?’

‘You already know the answer, or you wouldn’t have suggested him. Why don’t you just deal with Cranston directly if you’re committed to selling the piece? And why Murchison & Dunne? What aren’t you telling me, Thomas? I’m not in the mood for games.’

‘I want a party who will devote the appropriate amount of attention to the work. And who can be completely impartial.’

It was Thomas’s questioning of his impartiality that drove Finch to the door. What a relief it would be to be done with all this, to finally put this chapter of his life behind him, where it belonged, and move on to something else. But Thomas trailed after him.

‘You aren’t looking at this objectively, Denny. Wouldn’t it seem strange if after all this time, what with my living conditions being as they are, you were the one to ‘find’ another painting? If you were the one to authenticate it, after resolutely documenting my life’s work?’

‘All your work I knew of.’

‘Precisely my point. This way no one can question your motives, cast aspersions on your reputation. I’ll be the guilty party for a change, Denny. We both know I’ve had too much practice and taken too little credit in that department.’ Thomas’s hand rested on his upper arm, the weight of it light, tentative. ‘I’ve long ago depleted my bank of favors. Whether you believe me now or not, I wouldn’t trust this to anyone else. I need your help.’

Claire would have cautioned him. It’s not that you’re gullible, Denny; you just prefer to trust the best part of a person, no matter how small. even when there may not be any best part left to merit your trust.

Finch was exhausted, every one of his sixty-eight years weighing on him. He had never heard Thomas sound so nakedly in need of something. He looked at the man, the sucked-in hollows of his cheeks, the rattle with each inhale of breath, and capitulated. ‘Fine.’

‘Your word?’

Finch nodded. ‘I’ll call Jameson. But if this isn’t legitimate, Thomas, you won’t be doing him any favors. There’d be plenty of people happy to see him fall and not get back up.’

‘Burned some bridges, has he?’

‘Socially, he’s a bloody bull in a china shop. Cranston hasn’t made it easy for him, not that he’s obliged to. He did give him a job, after all.’

Thomas sniffed, as if he’d gotten wind of a noxious aroma. ‘I imagine that fool’s getting more than his money’s worth. But I wouldn’t want to cause the young man further difficulties. Tell him to bring Cranston along. And thank you, Denny, for your promise to help. I’m indebted to you, more so than I ever intended.’

Finch squirmed under the word promise, a string of unease threading itself into his skin.

Thomas seemed to sense his discomfort, and smiled. ‘The best way to slow the march of time, Denny, perhaps the only way, is to throw something unexpected in its path. I believe it will be a most interesting meeting. For all of us.’ And with that, Thomas Bayber shuffled back into his bedroom, laughing.











Chapter Three (#ulink_d31f521a-4160-5d91-814f-dc6d10b113f8)


Stephen Jameson shook the rain from his umbrella, stepped into the ancient elevator, and punched the button for the twenty-second floor with his elbow while carrying a thermos cup of coffee, his briefcase, and several manila folders. The doors closed, and he was enveloped in humid, clotted air, thick with the smells of mold and other people’s body odor and a trace of something sweet and slightly alcoholic, like a rum drink. The car lurched. As it headed up, he gazed wistfully at the button marked ‘57,’ where the executive offices of Murchison & Dunne, Auctioneers and Appraisers of Fine Art and Antiques, were located.

His office—the only one on the twenty-second floor—was directly adjacent to the elevator shaft, which meant the hours of his day were punctuated by the creaks and groans of transportation, as the elevator ferried those individuals more highly prized than himself to higher floors. Clutching his briefcase against his chest, he fumbled with the knob while pushing the warped office door open with a thrust of his hip. He elbowed the light switch on and glanced around the room on the off chance that some miraculous transformation might have happened overnight. No, it was all still there, exactly as he’d left it the night before. A rope of twisted phone wire emerged from a small hole in the upper front corner of the room and exited through a slightly larger hole that had been gouged in the drywall at the upper back corner; popcorn-colored insulation puffed out from one of the acoustic ceiling tiles; and there was the small but constant puddle of stale-smelling water on the floor next to the radiator.

Framed diplomas, awarding him graduate degrees in art history and chemistry, hung on the wall opposite a walnut desk, the varnish of which had peeled off in large patches. There was a catalog wedged beneath one of the desk legs where a ball foot was missing. His attempts at decoration were limited to a ‘Go Wolverines!’ pennant he had pilfered from a neighboring student’s wall following a 42–3 blowout between Michigan and the University of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers, and a crisp philodendron entombed in a pot of cement-like soil, its skeletal leaves papery against the side of the file cabinet.

He dropped the folders on top of the cabinet and plopped himself behind his desk, the leather of the chair cracked and pinching beneath him. The message light on his desk phone blinked frenetically and his cell vibrated in his pocket. He ran the tip of his finger over each button on the desk phone three times, left to right, right to left, then left to right again, but made no attempt to retrieve his messages. Instead he chewed on a hangnail as he opened his bottom drawer. From there he retrieved a bottle of Maker’s Mark, generously dosed his coffee, and loosened his tie before folding his arms on the desk. He buried his head. God, he was miserable.

His eighteen-year-old self had imagined a far different future for the man of thirty-one he was now. There should have been a wife by this point. Some children would have been appropriate, to say nothing of several milestones illuminating the trajectory of his career. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger to ward off a sneeze. The air ducts delivered a steady stream of dust and other noxious particles into his office, and in the two and a half years he’d been at Murchison & Dunne, he’d developed full-blown allergies as well as occasional migraines. A tickle haunted the back of his throat, giving him a hesitant intonation as he tried not to wheeze.

His desk phone rang, and after glaring at it with an intemperate eye, he mustered what remaining energy he had and raised his head.

‘Stephen?’

‘Speaking.’

‘It’s Sylvia. I left a voice mail for you earlier. Didn’t you get it?’

He sat up in the chair and straightened his tie, as if Cranston’s executive assistant was scrutinizing him from the opposite side of a two-way mirror instead of speaking to him from thirty-five floors above. Sylvia Dillon took a perverse delight in making his already wretched existence more so. She was a small-mouthed, crab-faced, M & D lifer with wispy blond hair that did little to cover her patchy pink scalp. As executive assistant to the president, she controlled all access to Cranston, giving her an unfortunate amount of power and an imagined degree of authority, the latter of which she did not hesitate to exercise. Her typical expression was crafted from suspicion, disdain, and disgust, and she favored Stephen with it often. Unless she was speaking with Cranston, she ended her phone conversations by abruptly hanging up on whomever she was talking to, minus the standard offering of good-bye, thanks, or even ta.

Those in the know made efforts to stay in her good graces: obsequious compliments, elaborately wrapped boxes of candy at the holidays, even the occasional potted plant. Stephen had silently mocked them for being stupid and toadying but now wondered if his lack of deference caused her to single him out. Either that, or it was a not-so-subtle reminder that she, like everyone else, knew exactly why he’d left his previous position four years ago.

‘Sylvia. I just walked in. Just now. I stopped to look at a painting. On my way in, that is.’

‘What painting was that?’

Bloody St. Christopher. Why hadn’t he offered up a dental appointment or a traffic delay due to some minor smashup involving a pedestrian? He’d never been a good liar. A good lie called for a degree of calmness, a quality he did not seem to possess. He pictured Sylvia sitting behind her desk, her shoulders pinched toward each other with a military discipline, shaping her nails into talons with calculated strokes of an emery board.

‘Bankruptcy case. I mean, insurance claim. Around a bankruptcy case. I wanted to have another look before putting a final valuation to the piece. Now about your message …’

She sighed loudly, as if their brief interchange had already exhausted her. ‘Mr. Cranston would like to know if you’ve finished the appraisals for the Eaton estate.’

Eaton. Eaton. He rubbed his forehead and worked his way backward as was his habit. Eaton rhymed with Seton. Seton Hall. Seton Hall was in New Jersey. New Jersey was the Garden State. His favorite gardens were at Blenheim Palace. Palace Place—4250 Palace Place. The Eatons’ address! The image he reeled in from the corner of his brain was of a withered eighty-seven-year-old, propelling his wheelchair down a marble-floored gallery, gesturing with a frozen finger at one painting, then another. He remembered the man’s bald pate, the fascinating birthmark in the shape of Brazil that covered most of his head. Unfortunately, this Eaton was the same man foolish enough to believe his twenty-eight-year-old, third wife had married him for love. Now he was gone and she was wasting no time liquidating the estate’s assets.

There was nothing extraordinary about the collection save for some Motherwell lithographs and an acrylic by Mangold that would bring a fair price at auction. Some nice furniture, most of it Louis XIV: a pair of inlaid marquetry side tables, an oak bonnetière, a Boulle-style, burl mahogany bronze clock that might bring fifty thousand. But most of the pieces were of lesser quality, collectibles purchased by a wealthy, bored man whose primary interest was in one-upping his neighbors.

Stephen remembered inventorying and photographing the collection more than eight months ago. The camera flash bouncing off all that blinding white—the walls, the marble floor, the sheer curtains in the gallery’s Palladian windows—had given him a throbbing headache. But when had Cranston asked for the appraisals? And where had he put the file? Nothing had been transferred to his computer yet; a quick glance at his directory showed an empty folder marked ‘Eaton.’ He pushed his chair back and flipped through the folders on top of his desk, on top of the filing cabinet, on top of the bookcase. Nothing. If he couldn’t locate it, he was done for. Cranston wouldn’t be inclined to give him another chance.

‘Stephen?’

‘Yes, Sylvia?’

‘The Eaton estate?’

‘Right. Just finishing up with it.’

‘Good. He wants to see you at four this afternoon to go over the paperwork.’

‘Uh, that would be difficult. I already have an appointment at four.’

‘I checked your online schedule. It doesn’t show you being out today.’

The woman was practically purring. He pictured himself tearing the phone out of the wall and hammering her with it until pieces of her chipped off, then reconstructing her à la Picasso: an ear attached to her hip, an arm shooting out from her head, lips springing from her big toe.

‘In fact, Stephen, I don’t show you with anything on the books for the next several days.’

‘My fault, I suppose,’ he said, sifting through a stack of conservation reports and greasy sandwich wrappers on the corner of his desk. ‘I haven’t synced my calendar. I was planning to do it this morning. So today would be difficult.’

‘He really needs this done.’

Stephen tried to visualize Cranston standing in front of her making this plea. I really need this done, Sylvia. Unlikely. Maybe she’d taken it upon herself to put this on Cranston’s agenda in an attempt to undermine his credibility. But Stephen detected a distracted quality in her tone that indicated her attention was flagging. Perhaps another unfortunate had crept into her field of vision. Please, please, please, shit, please. He bit down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood.

‘If there’s no way you can do it today, I suppose I could fit you in tomorrow morning.’

‘Let me just check.’ He flipped through the empty pages of his agenda. ‘Yes, that would be better for me, Sylvia. I’ll plan to see him then. Good-bye.’ He hung up the phone, waiting for a second before taking the receiver off the hook and stuffing it in his top desk drawer. He penciled a brief note on the legal pad on his desk: ‘Buy potted plant.’

Four years paying for a mistake that had taken him less than a minute to make. Stephen had obliterated his oh-so-promising career single-handedly. Perhaps not single-handedly. He hadn’t known Chloe was married; at least, he hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on the possibility. He certainly hadn’t known who she was married to. She hadn’t acted like a married person, though looking back he wasn’t sure how he’d thought a married person would act, aside from the obvious assumption of fidelity. Rather an unhappy omission, he’d told her on his cell phone, standing outside of his ex-office building waiting for a cab, his possessions crammed into a cardboard box.

He’d been in her husband’s office—her husband being the recently appointed head of acquisitions for Foyle’s New York, as well as his new boss—flipping through a portfolio containing photos of the material slated for the coming week’s auction, when he’d looked up from an image of a pair of Sèvres blue-ground vases, circa 1770, to see Chloe’s face regarding him sternly from a framed photo on the credenza.

That’s Chloe, he’d said.

You know her? the man had asked.

She’s my girlfriend, he’d responded automatically, unable to contain the satisfied smile that followed. At the man’s astonished stare, he’d ignored the nagging buzz in the back of his brain and fumbled on, unknowingly digging the trench deeper. He had assumed it was not the image but the frame that was the treasure—a Romantic Revival, circa 1850; brilliant gold leaf over gray bole; an oval of flowers and leaves with a deep scoop and a concave outside edge; in immaculate condition aside from one hairline crack in the scoop. A piece he might covet if not for the fact he already had what lay inside the frame. So he’d opened his mouth and sealed his fate.

Seeing the picture of Chloe had made him understand both the necessity of the superlative and the fateful pride associated with acquiring something of beauty. He could feel the soft swell of her cheek under his thumb, brush a finger over the freckles dotting her nose. He could smell the exotic scent she wore, frangipani, which made him slightly queasy, like being at sea. In Australia, they call it ‘Dead Man’s Finger,’ she’d told him once, before pressing her body against him under the starched hotel sheet that skimmed their shoulders. He’d shivered at the sweep of her dark hair across his chest. How had he defined happiness before her?

He’d watched other men’s eyes follow her when they made their way to a table in a restaurant, had seen the subtle turn of a head on the street, followed by the gaze sizing him up. They were wondering how he’d gotten so lucky. He’d wondered himself. When he’d asked her why she was with him, she’d simply said, ‘You’re smarter.’ If he’d thought to ask, ‘Than whom?’ he’d just as quickly squelched the idea, not caring to know whether the ‘whom’ in question was generic or specific. It was enough to be with her. He became more attractive by proxy.

But when they were apart, the feeling dogging him was a murky stew of incredulity, suspicion, and the numbing sensation of being struck dumb by his good fortune. So struck, or so dumb, his first thought hadn’t been to wonder why Chloe’s picture was on his boss’s credenza.

‘How the hell could you?’ she’d demanded, in a tone that alarmed him.

‘How could I? Can I just remind you, of the two of us, you’re the one who’s evidently married here? The man asked me a question. Was I supposed to lie? Besides, you’re missing the more important point. I’ve been let go. Fired. Three years building my reputation at one of the best auction houses in the country, gone.’

‘No, you’re the one who’s missing the point. Of course you were supposed to lie. Anyone else would have known that. How could you tell him I was your girlfriend?’

‘Well, clearly I didn’t realize who I was saying it to, for one thing. But now he knows. Is that a terrible thing? I hate to point out the obvious, but you are, after all, my girlfriend.’

The silence before she’d answered provided him horrible clarity. ‘Don’t you understand what you’ve done, Stephen? How could you be so unbelievably thick?’

At least that was explainable. His entire life he’d been blessed with an exceptional gift for misunderstanding, especially when women were involved—their desires, their needs, their way of thinking. Even his mother, on more than one occasion, had given him a studied look, as if he wasn’t her child but an alien species deposited in her house. ‘Why in the world would you think I meant that?’ she’d ask. Those were the times he wished for a sister instead of being an only child, longing for someone who might help him to decode the inexplicable language of women.

He dismissed the whispers that trailed after him, hissed at a decibel just loud enough to be heard—Used him. Knew someone like that would humiliate her husband. She was getting even—and focused on those memories that couldn’t be warped, in hindsight, into calculated, duplicitous acts: Chloe weaving her fingers through his as they walked in Central Park at midnight; Chloe biting down on her lower lip as she straightened his tie, a look that ruined him every time; Chloe stuffing his pockets with throat lozenges before they went into the movie theater, sequestering themselves in the back row, where his hand could wander across the top of her thigh, unseen.

The sacking (as he had come to refer to it) and subsequent breakup were followed by an equally humiliating nine-month period when he looked for work wholeheartedly, then halfheartedly, then not at all. As a patron of the arts, of local politicos and any cause célèbre, Chloe’s husband had no problem calling in favors. Stephen quickly found himself blacklisted from any job, or any future, he might have deemed worthy. There would be no significant curatorial position at a major museum, nor would he be overseeing acquisitions for any Fortune 500 company. There would be no managing of conservation personnel, no addresses delivered to the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. And though he could not picture himself lecturing behind a podium considering his general dislike of people in groups numbering more than five, his academic prospects were equally dim. Worst of all, he no longer worked at the most prestigious auction house in the city, at least, the most prestigious since scandal had tarnished the reputation of both Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

Giving up his apartment, he camped out on the futons of various colleagues, quickly wearing out his welcome and exposing those relationships for what they were—the shallowest of acquaintances, not durable enough to withstand the weight of one party polishing off whatever alcoholic beverage was in the refrigerator, even if it was a wine cooler, leaving chip crumbs to gather in the crevices of the sofa cushions, and bemoaning his future state in a tone that vacillated between whining and suicidal.

When nothing materialized in the way of gainful employment, he took to brooding at his father’s gallery, shuffling invoices from one pile to another to pass the time. He might have worked there—Dylan had offered—but Stephen assumed the offer was motivated more by pity than by any real desire for his company. The gallery was already being managed by someone genial and sincere, with more enthusiasm than Stephen could have summoned, and had he accepted the offer, he would not have been the gallery’s owner, or even co-owner, but an assistant to the manager. If the lack of a title hadn’t been enough to dissuade him, his father’s near-palpable disappointment was.

‘Best get back on the horse, boyo, and stop muckin’ around feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not the first man to make such a colossal blunder.’

‘This is an odd pep talk.’ Stephen sorted through flyers, unable to meet his father’s eye.

‘People forget, son, but you’d make it easier for them if you were just a little less …’

‘A little less what?’

His father only shook his head. ‘Never mind. You’re today’s news, but that won’t last forever. Some other poor unfortunate will take your place soon enough, and he’ll likely have less talent than you have, Stephen. Thank God, talent doesn’t go away just because you got caught with your pants down. Though, geezus, I wish it hadn’t been with somebody else’s wife.’

‘Dad.’

‘I only mean I wish it had been with somebody you could’ve brought home to meet your mother.’ Stephen felt the weight of his father’s hand hovering just above his shoulder. He prayed for it to come down and rest there, but it did not. He looked up, and the pain and disappointment he saw in his father’s face worked on him like a slow-acting poison.

His father took a step back. ‘You think I’m being hard on you?’

The distance between them seemed cavernous. ‘Was it my fault Chloe kept her marriage a secret? No. Am I to blame for the unhappiness in their relationship? Hardly. Yet I’m the one who’s being punished here.’

His father studied his knuckles. ‘Really? And what about her husband? You think he’s not been punished?’

The way his father asked gave Stephen a twinge of panic. He sensed Dylan knew more about such a situation than Stephen wanted to imagine.

‘She should have left him,’ Stephen said. Meaning she shouldn’t have left me.

‘People who are married learn to make accommodations,’ his father said. ‘That’s the only way they manage to stay married.’

Stephen looked squarely at him, suddenly seeing an old man. Age had turned his father’s face into a study in tectonics—deep valleys and soft folds of skin butting up against each other, shallow divots, old scars, a peppering of brown spots; the tallies of crosshatched skin at the corners of his eyes, his frizzled, electric brows; the mouth that had become thin and pickled, losing some of its enthusiasm as well as its definition.

‘Honestly, I don’t care about his feelings.’

‘I hope you don’t mean that.’

Stephen turned away. He couldn’t stand to think of the situation any longer, or his part in it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I really do.’ Stephen tipped more whiskey into what was left of his coffee and reached for a tissue as he sneezed, then blotted at the papers strewn across the top of his desk. It had been a comeuppance of near-biblical proportions. When he was still a rising star at Foyle’s, his days had been spent traveling across Europe on the company’s dime, and oh, what days! He visited auction houses, private homes, and museums. He marveled at Old Masters and contemporary giants, advised on the restoration project at Lascaux, skimmed his fingers across Aubusson tapestries from the hands of Flemish weavers, examined expertly crafted furniture, even humbly proffered his opinion as to the value of a Meissen thimble decorated with the coat of arms of an Irish aristocrat. Now, four years later, he was trapped at Murchison & Dunne, occupying the lowest rung on the ladder, doing nothing but appraisals while interest piled up on his credit cards, his rent crept steadily upward, and his position grew increasingly precarious.

It was no coincidence they’d stuck him here, on the twenty-second floor. Simon Hapsend, the employee who’d previously had the office, was responsible for developing the company’s website and promoting the firm’s capabilities for forensic valuation work, an assortment of services running the gamut from expert witness testimony and valuations for insurance purposes to prenuptial assessments, bankruptcies, and trust and estate work.

But Simon had been abruptly fired when an FBI task force traced attempts to hack into the systems of several major financial institutions back to his computer. That the task force’s computer evidence had itself been hacked and could not be located was the only thing that kept Simon from an orange jumpsuit and a new address at Rikers. So Stephen inherited the office, along with the odd remnants of Simon he stumbled across: lists of passwords and user names stuffed into a gap at the back of a drawer, e-mails from an unknown sender requesting that Stephen delete the files that mysteriously appeared on his computer, and an olive drab T-shirt, the source of a rank smell, with a picture of a snake and the word Python in black script that was finally, and fortunately, discovered wadded up behind the file cabinet.

Stephen stared at the wall, wondering how long he could subsist on ramen noodles and beer. His confidence regarding his talent was receding at the same rate as his bank account. He studied his wavering reflection in the stainless-steel thermos. It seemed unlikely he’d age well. His black hair was already dashed with white around the temples. At six-three he’d been blessed with height in spite of having two parents of less than average stature, but a doughy paunch hugged his middle, the gym membership having been one of the first things to go. His eyes were bloodshot from a lack of sleep and an excess of bourbon; his skin had acquired the grayish tinge of a soiled dishrag. And he was sadly aware the primary reason he was kept on was his father’s reputation.

Dylan Jameson had owned the small gallery in SoHo for most of his life. Stephen’s childhood was spent running through those beautifully lit rooms, hiding behind oversize canvases; his playthings had been panel clips and L brackets, and exhibition catalogs that he stacked like pillars. He learned about perspective sitting astride Dylan’s shoulders as his father walked closer to, then farther away from the paintings in the gallery, introducing Stephen to a mathematical vocabulary: vanishing points and horizon lines, degrees and axes and curvilinear variants. His fingertips followed the flat sections of paint on a canvas, the channels where firm brushstrokes had tongued out the heavy oil, lipping it to one side or the other. He peered through a magnifying glass as his father quizzed him: glazing or scumbling? Alla prima or underpainting? Wet into wet or fat over lean?

But in spite of his father’s offer, working at the gallery, regardless of the lack of title, would have been a mistake. The airy rooms were colored with disillusion, the cheerful demeanor of the gallery manager an insidious reminder of his own lacking personality. Instead, at the beginning of the summer, Stephen had taken his meager savings and fled to Europe in a state of disgrace, slumming his way across the Continent, staying in fleabag hotels and cheap pensions, scooping the hard rolls and bits of sausage remaining from his breakfast into his knapsack for lunch, drinking cheap wine that gave him a headache, and smoking cigarettes that stained the tips of his fingers yellow. Everywhere, he imagined Chloe beside him. The steady pressure of her fingernails against his palm when she wanted him to stop talking and kiss her. The sound of her heels, pacing, as he studied Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love in the Galleria Borghese. Her fleeting look of disappointment once she’d drained the last from a glass of pinot in a sidewalk café. And the rare expression he caught before she had the chance to substitute it with one more pleasing—a calculating hardness that froze him in his place.

In Rome, he hadn’t bothered answering the call from his mother when he’d seen the number displayed, certain she was calling with her wheedling voice, attempting to lure him back. He’d turned his phone off. Four months in Europe and there were still plenty of wounds to be licked. Then, days later, he’d turned his phone back on and seen the number of messages that had accumulated. It was late autumn, everything already skeletal and bleak, when he flew home for his father’s funeral. There he was, back in New York, more miserable than when he’d left; a pair of his father’s cuff links his most concrete evidence of ever having been Dylan Jameson’s son.

His father’s knowledge had been coupled with a poet’s soul, a deep appreciation for beauty in all its guises. Dylan’s understanding of what an artist hoped to convey, matched by a genuine desire for that artist’s success, won him legions of fans—new artists whose work had yet to be seen, established artists coming off a bad show or hammered by negative press, auctioneers who knew his father would have the inside track, appraisers who valued a second opinion.

Stephen, on the other hand, was intrigued only by methodology. What drove someone to create didn’t interest him, but the techniques used, and the idea that skill could be taught and passed on, did. How to distinguish between teacher and exacting pupil, to tell the true from the false? Establishing a work’s provenance was crucial to authentication, and often difficult to achieve. When absolute provenance could not be established, there were other avenues available, and this was where Stephen’s talent lay. He had the broad knowledge of an art historian combined with the hunger of an authenticator to prove the unprovable.

He was happiest engaged in solitary activities: studying pigments, performing Wood’s lamp tests, conducting graphology analyses. Hours sped away from him while he hunched over the signature on a painting, relishing the beauty in the pattern of ascenders and descenders; scrutinizing bold, heavy strokes as carefully as faint, trailing meanderings; deciphering that final touch of brush to canvas. Had it meant pride? Triumph? Or, as he often suspected, merely relief at having finally finished?

It was nothing more than coincidence that he’d been standing next to Cranston at an estate sale two and a half years ago; nothing beyond a fluke that they’d both been staring at the same unattributed painting. And when Stephen started talking, the words that came forth were meant for no one but himself; it was a habit too difficult to break, this reciting of facts as he divined them. The work always gave the artist away, no different than the tell of a gambler. But when the call came from Cranston with the offer of a job, Stephen knew it was not providence but the hand of his father, prodding him to pick up the pieces of his life and move on.

The phone buzzed from where he’d hidden it in the desk drawer. He hesitated, imagining Sylvia’s abrasive voice again insulting his eardrum. But when he looked at the display, he saw the call wasn’t internal. It was Professor Finch.

The last thing he wanted was an evening out with Finch, though Stephen’s options for companionship were few. Finch had limited contacts outside the world of academia, but he made up for it with his general knowledge of art history, and his very specific knowledge on one particular subject: Thomas Bayber. In addition to heading the committee who had authored Bayber’s catalogue raisonné, the professor had written two volumes on Bayber’s work, both lauded and favorably received. Stephen had met him years ago, at one of his father’s gallery parties. No one else at Murchison & Dunne was willing to parcel out the time to listen to Finch’s stories or take him out for the occasional Bushmills, to endure the pipe smoke and the dribble of brown spittle that inevitably formed in the corner of the professor’s mouth. But Stephen had to admit he found the professor’s company enjoyable.

‘Stephen Jameson.’

‘Stephen, it’s Dennis Finch.’

‘Professor Finch, I can’t talk just now. On my way out the door to a meeting. An appointment. An appointment for a meeting, I mean. Another time?’

‘Of course, Stephen. Although, if you could get back to me at your earliest convenience, I’d appreciate it. I wanted to speak with you about another Bayber.’

The air around him grew heavy. Stephen no longer heard the elevator as it groaned past his office, or the hiss of the radiator. Everything was still.

‘You said another Bayber?’

‘I did. I was wondering if you might be interested in authenticating the piece.’

Thomas Bayber was a recluse who had stopped painting twenty years ago and one of the most brilliant artists alive. One hundred and fifty-eight cataloged works, all in museums except for three in a private collection in Spain, one in Russia, and four others privately owned by parties in the United States. The possibility he might be the one to authenticate another caused Stephen’s hands to tremble. A find like this would all but erase any past mistakes. There would be interviews and promotions, expensive restaurants; he’d be taking the elevator to the top floor, if only to offer his resignation. The myriad possibilities caused him to break out in a sweat, and his nose ran. Then doubt began swirling in his head. Of all people, Finch would know whether a Bayber was authentic; he’d devoted his life to studying the artist’s work. Why not call Christie’s or Sotheby’s? A sour germ of suspicion curdled Stephen’s insides. Someone was setting him up. His tattered reputation would not survive a second humiliation.

‘Why me?’ he asked flatly.

‘Thomas asked for you, specifically. Since I’ve already compiled the catalogue raisonné and this is a piece unknown to me, he feels it would be better for someone less—shall we say, prejudiced?—to examine the work.’

‘He’s afraid you’d be inclined to denounce it, since it wasn’t included earlier?’

There was a pause. ‘I’m not certain of his reasoning, Stephen, but I agree with him. Having someone other than myself look at the piece would be best.’ The professor’s voice sounded strained. ‘There’s something else. Assuming you confirm the work as Bayber’s, Thomas wants it put up for auction immediately. He wants Murchison & Dunne to handle the sale. You may need to bring Cranston along.’

Stephen didn’t relish the idea of involving the president of Murchison & Dunne without first knowing the situation. On the other hand, if Cranston found out he’d examined the work on his own, he’d suspect Stephen of acting as his own agent instead of in the best interests of the firm. Better to talk to Cranston right away. If they both saw the piece at the same time and it was a fake, Stephen could expose it as such, saving Murchison & Dunne any humiliation. If the piece was a Bayber, it would not be lost on Cranston that Thomas Bayber himself had asked Stephen to authenticate it.

‘When?’

‘I was hoping tomorrow afternoon. If you can make yourself available, that is.’

Stephen ignored Finch’s rather pointed dig. ‘We can be available.’ They set a time, and Stephen copied the address on a scrap of paper before hanging up the phone. His hands shook as he punched in the numbers of Sylvia’s extension, and he wiped his palms on his trousers while waiting for her to pick up the phone.

‘Sylvia.’ His voice reverberated with strange authority. ‘I will meet with Cranston this afternoon, but not in regards to the Eaton estate. We’ll be discussing something else. Something confidential. Book a conference room.’ He hung up without saying anything more, and pictured Sylvia’s shocked expression, her mouth like that of a beached fish, opening and closing in a stunned, breathless sort of O.











Chapter Four (#ulink_3413fe9c-bd6e-5e0a-8f28-5a057f4f40ef)


The following afternoon at exactly 1:15, Stephen found Cranston pacing the marble floor of the lobby, the heft of his belly riding over his belt, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his camel’s hair coat. Beyond Cranston’s grousing about the rain, little conversation was exchanged during the car ride, for which Stephen was grateful. Cranston had made it clear the previous afternoon he thought it unlikely anything would come from this meeting, but on the slim chance Bayber and Finch weren’t attempting to pull off some sort of scam, the firm had an obligation to assess the situation before contacting the authorities and reporting the two of them for attempted fraud. Despite his declarations to the contrary, Stephen could see Cranston was imagining the possibilities should there be any truth to the story. Murchison & Dunne had never played at this level; the thought of what an acquisition like this would do for the firm’s reputation, for future business, and for the guaranteed good fortune of Mr. Cranston himself was not lost on the man.

‘Before we go any further, let’s be clear. I’ll do the talking, Mr. Jameson. I’m still not sure I understand why the query came directly to you, but since it has, I feel it only fair you be there. Strictly in the capacity of an observer, of course.’ The car pulled over. The sidewalk was obscured by several bags of trash and the shell of an old television set. Cranston sniffed. ‘Let us hope for your sake, Mr. Jameson, this turns out well.’

Stephen groaned inwardly and nodded. Cranston’s tone made clear his tenuous position. Since Finch’s call yesterday, Stephen had suspected something was up, wondering if he heard the catch of deception in Finch’s halting speech. But even this wariness couldn’t dampen his enthusiasm for meeting Bayber. That the two of them would be in the same room at the same time had guaranteed him a giddy, sleepless night.

They picked their way up the front stairs, avoiding the bits of garbage twisted around the bases of the stair railings, and were buzzed in promptly when they rang the bell; no one asked for their identity. The elevator was tiny, and Stephen, holding his tool case to his chest, was forced to stand between Cranston and a stooped woman carrying a thinly furred cat, a long leash dangling from the collar around its neck.

Finch answered the door while Stephen was still knocking. The professor grabbed his hand before Cranston’s, shaking it firmly and pulling him across the threshold.

‘Come in, but mind where you walk. Thomas keeps it dark in here. I rolled over a pencil earlier and saw my life flash before my eyes.’

There was a quick nod of acknowledgment to Cranston as he shuffled in, then Finch closed the door behind them, striding across the room and claiming his spot—a badly frayed bergère with a high back and sagging cushion.

Stephen looked around in astonishment. It was like a movie set, a strange splicing of horror film with twentieth-century period piece. Heavy, floor-length curtains shut out most of the light. The walls were a dull blood red with strips of paper spiraling away from the corners as if trying to escape, the ceiling moldings flocked in dust. The air blowing from the register ferried smells of old food and whiskey. Chairs were scattered around the room in no discernible arrangement, and Oriental carpets, all of them frayed and worn, several with bare patches interrupting the pattern, had been laid at odd angles. It was a drunk’s nightmare—an indoor field sobriety test composed of a maze of furniture and hazards at differing heights.

Bayber was nowhere to be seen, but Stephen heard repeated sounds of rustling and periodic crashes in one of the back rooms, as if an animal was trapped in too small a space. The thought that a man whose talent he had long admired could be so close, that he might actually be shaking his hand in a matter of moments, caused his throat to go dry. He tried to compose something to say by means of an introduction to indicate he had at least a modicum of intelligence when it came to the man’s body of work.

‘I’m glad you could join us, especially with so little advance notice,’ Finch said.

‘We could hardly ignore such an invitation.’ Cranston gave Finch a tight smile, but Stephen could see he was on his guard. A previously unknown Bayber surfacing now, appearing to be consigned to Murchison & Dunne to dispose of, viewed in the dim light of a derelict apartment. It made no sense. Cranston had the uneasy look of someone who suspected he was the mark in a game of three-card monte.

But Stephen could barely contain his enthusiasm. No matter the outcome, the day had already surpassed any of those he’d muddled through in the past thirty months. For whatever reason, the fates were dangling an opportunity for deliverance in front of his nose.

‘Is he here?’ he asked Finch, gesturing toward the rooms at the back of the apartment.

‘He’ll join us shortly. In the meantime, can I offer you gentlemen a drink?’

Stephen clutched the glass of whiskey Finch handed him as if it were something sacred. Cranston demurred. ‘Need to keep my wits about me,’ he said, frowning at Stephen, who noted his superior’s expression, but nonetheless downed the whiskey in short order.

‘Perhaps,’ Cranston started, ‘while we are waiting, you could provide some background. Mr. Jameson did not seem to have many details to offer.’

Finch’s face remained placid, and Stephen marveled at his calm demeanor. Surely he must be upset? On the phone, he’d claimed not to have seen the painting, nor did he know anything of its subject matter, when it had been painted, or where it had been. Stephen thought him remarkably restrained considering the catalogue raisonné he had spent years compiling was no longer complete or valid, the omission by his friend appearing to be intentional.

‘I’ll allow Thomas to provide additional illumination, since my knowledge pertaining to the piece is limited. I can only say that yesterday the existence of another Bayber was made known to me. Per Thomas’s wishes, I contacted our colleague Mr. Jameson here.’

Cranston flashed him a quick glance and nodded slightly. Stephen was unsure whether the look was one of admiration or merely a reminder that as chief representative of the company, Cranston would do the talking.

Ignoring Finch’s reticence, Cranston continued his queries. ‘This piece, a study, perhaps? For a work already in the catalogue?’

Finch’s eyes narrowed before he turned toward the bar to refill his glass.

‘No, not a study. A rather large oil from what I understand.’

‘I see.’ Cranston rubbed his thumb across his chin. ‘You can understand my surprise, Professor, although I hope you will not take it as any lack of interest on the part of Murchison & Dunne. Past auctions of Mr. Bayber’s work have been through larger houses, and I admit to having some curiosity as to why we, alone, would be the fortunate party to be considered.’

‘I imagine Thomas has his reasons. Artists. Eccentrics all of them, yes?’ Finch paused and tipped his glass toward Cranston. ‘You don’t feel unsure of your ability to get a good price for the piece, do you?’

‘Not at all. Should we decide to accept it, the auction would receive our utmost attention. No detail would be overlooked.’

Stephen bit the inside of his cheek. As if there was any question they would accept the piece.

Finch shot Cranston a hard look, unfazed by his disclaimer of caution. ‘I’m sure that will set his mind at ease.’

The heavy curtains hanging from an archway leading to the back rooms parted. Stephen saw first the hand that held the drape aside—the long fingers, the speckled skin against the deep red fabric of the drapes. Then the rest of Thomas Bayber entered the room. He was as tall as Stephen, only slightly bowed with age, and he moved deliberately, not as if the act of walking required specific effort, but as though strategy was associated with each step. His eyes darted among the company gathered as he navigated his way toward a chair next to Finch. He settled into it without a word and held out a hand, into which Finch promptly placed a glass. For the first time, Stephen pitied the professor. He performed the role of lackey seamlessly, and Stephen understood that he and Cranston were witnessing behaviors finely honed from years of repetition.

The air in the room was stifling. Unable to control the tickle at the back of his throat, Stephen coughed emphatically, his face flushing as he tried to find the glass he’d set down earlier.

‘Perhaps, Mr. Jameson, it would be prudent to switch to water at this point,’ Cranston admonished after thumping him hard on the back.

‘Yes,’ Stephen said, running his thumb between his shirt collar and his neck. ‘That would be prudent. My apologies.’

Finch and Bayber looked at each other and to Stephen’s profound humiliation, began laughing. He felt the flush in his face deepen as whatever confidence and enthusiasm had shored him up earlier ebbed away.

‘I apologize, Mr. Jameson, but it’s as true now as it ever was. Another’s misfortune is always the easiest way to break the ice. Regardless, I am delighted to finally meet you.’

Bayber’s voice carried the resonance of a well, and in spite of Stephen’s resolution to remain indifferent he was entranced by the man staring at him intently. He knew Bayber was in his early seventies and had assumed, perhaps because he’d been out of the public eye for such a long period, that the artist’s physical stature would have diminished. But aside from his complexion, which was deathly pale, and a degree of hesitation in his movements, he was much as he was in the pictures Stephen had seen: tall and lean, his head erect, his hair now a thick crest of white. His manner was imperious but at the same time charming.

‘I knew your mother through the gallery, Mr. Jameson, though not your father. He was a rare man, I believe, someone worth admiring. The world would be a kinder place for artists, indeed, for people in general, were there more like him. Allow me to express my sympathies.’

It was unexpected to hear his father mentioned at the precise moment Stephen was thinking of him, his fingers rubbing the cuff links he kept in his jacket pocket. His father would have been thrilled to be in such company: his friend Finch, the pompous Cranston, and Bayber, a man whose talent he had lauded in spite of the artist’s renowned moral lapses. If only he’d allowed me that much latitude, Stephen thought, quickly ashamed of himself. Bayber was studying him. To think the man had been in his father’s gallery and Stephen had never known.

Bayber cleared his throat. ‘Pleasantries aside, let’s get down to business, shall we, gentlemen? I have a painting I want to sell. I’m assuming it’s a painting you will be happy to sell for me, yes?’

‘Once we have an opportunity to examine the piece and verify its authenticity, we would be delighted,’ Cranston said.

Bayber held his hands together as if in prayer, the tips of his fingers resting against his lips. Stephen realized he was attempting, poorly, to hide a smile.

‘Of course, Mr. Cranston. I would expect nothing less. And here we have with us, in this very room, two men who should be able to provide you with a definitive answer as to the authenticity of the piece, do we not? Mr. Jameson, would you mind?’

Bayber gestured to the corner of the room, where a pile of tarps covered the floor. Stephen walked over and gingerly lifted a corner of the top tarp, only to find another beneath it. He rolled back five in total before the faint gleam of a gilt edge made him catch his breath.

The room was silent. Stephen shook his head and fixed himself firmly in the moment, shutting out all but the work in front of him. Fighting the desire to pull the entire tarp away from the painting, he focused initially only on the frame, and gently nudged the tarp to the side until the entire vertical edge of it was exposed.

‘Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet,’ he recited half under his breath. He began every examination with some rhyming nonsense to quiet his mind and aid his concentration. Finch had been right, it was a large piece. The frame itself was a thing of beauty: a cassetta frame in the Arts and Crafts style of Prendergast, featuring a hand-carved cap with a gently coved panel and reeded ogee lip, furnished in water-gilt, twenty-two-karat, genuine gold leaf.

‘Eating her curds and whey. Along came a spider …’ The gold had been agate burnished over dark brown bole on the cap and lip and left matte over green bole on the panel. The corners of the frame were punched and incised with an acanthus leaf motif, and the gilding had been given a light rub to expose the bole. The joinery appeared solid, and the overall condition of the frame was good. With its size, the frame might be worth ten to fifteen thousand or more.

He glanced over his shoulder. The other three watched him intently. He pushed the tarp away from the painting and pulled a pair of cotton gloves from his jacket pocket. After removing his watch, he waved a second pair toward Cranston, saying, ‘Your watch will need to come off, and your cuff links, as well.’ He looked up at Bayber.

‘Where?’

‘Here, I think. Against the wall.’

Cranston nodded at Stephen, and the two of them lifted the painting cautiously and carried it to the far wall, where a small bit of sun spilled into the room. They gingerly rested the painting there, then stepped back and stood alongside Finch, and Bayber, who had risen and was clutching the back of the chair. Stephen wondered if he felt any anxiety, or if insecurity had long ago left him. But the man looked more pained than anxious, as if his memories of the piece were not happy ones. The three of them looked at the painting and with raised brows, looked at Bayber, studying him quickly before turning to look at the painting again.

A tarnished plate on the bottom edge of the frame read, ‘Kessler Sisters.’ The scene was of a living room in what appeared to be a large cabin—rough-paneled walls, wood floors, a high ceiling with a sleeping loft. A late summer afternoon. Open windows ran across the back of the room, and the curtains had been painted to suggest a breeze. Stephen could almost feel the breath of it on his neck. A fringe of ivy softened the window’s perimeter; a sliver of water was visible in the far distance. Diffuse light dully illuminated various surfaces: a slice of the faded Oriental carpet covering part of the floor, the face of a grandfather clock, the open pages of a book on a coffee table. The room was crowded with objects, each limned with an eerie glow, no doubt from the underpainting, as if everything carried an equal importance.

Three people anchored the center of the painting: a young man, perhaps in his late twenties, and two younger girls. Stephen’s skin prickled. The young man was clearly Bayber. Whether it was the expression on his face or the way the girls were positioned next to him he couldn’t decide, but Stephen felt a flare of discomfort as he studied the canvas.

The artist had captured his own youthful arrogance, rendering himself in an honest if unflattering light. In the painting, Bayber lounged on a love seat, one pale ankle balanced on the opposite knee; there were scuff marks visible on his boat shoes. He wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows and the neck unbuttoned, and well-lived-in khakis, the wrinkles and shadows of wrinkles so expertly wrought that Stephen had to fight the urge to reach out and touch the fabric. Bayber’s hair was long, with dark curls framing his face. A throw covered the top of the love seat; one of Bayber’s arms stretched out across it, the other arm rested on his thigh. His expression was certain—that was a kind word for it; smug, a less kind word. He looked straight ahead, as if fascinated by the man capturing all of this.

The girls, on the other hand, were both looking at Bayber. The older of the two had a sly smile of the sort that breaks a father’s heart. Stephen thought she might have been sixteen or seventeen, but her expression made her look older, a hard, knowing glint in her eyes. She was standing behind the love seat to the right of Bayber. Her blond hair was pulled back off her face into a sleek tail that cascaded over her shoulder and turned into curls. Small gold hoops in her ears caught the light but were too dressy for her costume—a pale green, sleeveless blouse and jeans. Her skin was the color of warm caramel, and he could tell at a glance she was the sort of girl things came to without her having to ask for them. Like Chloe, Stephen thought, remembering the pale flesh in the crook of her arm when he turned it over. One of this girl’s hands rested on Bayber’s shoulder, but as Stephen took a step closer to examine the painting, he realized she was firmly gripping him there. The joints of her fingers were slightly bent, the fingernails pale, the fabric of Bayber’s shirt puckering just beneath them. Her other arm hung casually at her side, disappearing behind the fabric of the throw.

The younger sister sat on the love seat next to Bayber. She looked to be about thirteen, all long arms and legs, brown as an Indian, Stephen’s mother would have said, her freckled limbs shooting out from frayed denim shorts and a madras shirt bunched around her waist. Stephen could almost see the downy gold hairs against the tan skin. Her legs were tucked up underneath her, the bottoms of her feet dusted with dirt and patches of shimmering sand. Her hair was loose, cascading in waves around her face, a cloud of summer blond. One of her hands rested on top of a filigree birdcage balanced on the arm of the love seat, its thin wire door ajar. Her other hand was tucked beneath Bayber’s own, resting on his thigh. She had the bored look of an adolescent. The gaze she favored Bayber with was one of curiosity and tolerance, not necessarily admiration.

Stephen was speechless. There was nothing close to a formal portrait in the artist’s oeuvre. He looked to Finch, who was frowning. Cranston, who was far less familiar with Bayber’s body of work, glanced at Stephen and raised his eyebrows.

‘Mr. Jameson? Your impression?’

‘It’s, er, it’s …’

‘Disturbing,’ Finch said. He looked at Bayber as if he’d never seen him before.

Cranston walked closer to the painting and smiled. ‘Disturbing isn’t necessarily bad when it comes to art. I’m more interested in what you can tell us about the piece, Mr. Bayber.’

Bayber seemed lost in thought, unable to take his eyes from the painting. ‘I don’t remember much about it.’ His voice came from a distance, carrying the timbre of a lie.

‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Cranston said.

‘It was painted a long time ago. I remember little of the circumstances, although I know it’s mine.’ He smiled indulgently at Stephen. ‘I’m counting on Mr. Jameson to verify that.’

‘But when you say you remember little of the circumstances …’ Cranston continued.

‘I mean just that. The sisters—Natalie was the older of the two, Alice the younger—were neighbors of mine for a month in the summer of 1963. August, I believe. Other than that, there’s not much to tell. Friends of the family, I suppose you could say.’

‘They sat for this?’

‘No. They did not.’

Stephen was relieved to hear it. He moved close to the painting, his fingers skimming the surface. ‘Little Jack Horner sat in the corner …’ Taking a magnifying glass from his pocket, he examined the surface, the brushstrokes, the pigments. He’d reviewed Finch’s treatises on Bayber in a frenzied bout of reading last night before tackling the catalogue raisonné.

There was something unusual about the girls’ outside arms, those nearest the edges of the canvas. Paint had been added to both areas. What had Bayber changed and when? He turned back from the painting and ignoring Cranston’s probing look, queried Bayber uncertainly.

‘The frame?’

‘Yes, Mr. Jameson?’

‘I need to remove it.’

Cranston started to object, but Bayber held up a hand. ‘We are all of similar motive here. Mr. Jameson, you may do what is necessary.’

Cranston turned livid. ‘We should remove the frame at our own facility so no damage comes to it. Jameson, you don’t want to do anything to impact the integrity of the work.’

‘I don’t think I will. The painting appears in good condition; the paint layer is stable, no flaking or curling, only a degree of cleavage in a few areas and some minor cracking of the paint and ground layers, most likely due to environmental fluctuations.’ He looked again to Bayber.

‘May I ask where you’ve been keeping this?’

‘I appreciate your concern, Mr. Jameson. The conditions may not have been ideal, but I don’t believe the painting has been unduly taxed in any appreciable way.’

Stephen nodded. Cranston, sputtering, threw up his hands, abandoning any pretense of composure. Finch moved over to where Stephen was standing.

‘What can I do to help?’

‘My case? The tools I need will be in there.’

Stephen cleared a large space on the floor and threw down several tarps. Finch returned with the tool case, then salvaged some padded blocks that were being used as doorstops to put beneath the corners of the painting. ‘Cranston, we’ll need you, too,’ he said.

Cranston joined them, muttering. The three of them turned the painting onto its face. Stephen ran his hands across the stretcher bars, checking to see if they had warped. All four keys were in place, the corners cleanly mitered. He noted holes that must have been for supporting hooks, although those were missing and there were no remnants of wire.

‘The piece has been hung,’ he said to Bayber. A statement more than a question.

‘Yes. But only in my studio, Mr. Jameson. I suppose I considered it a seminal piece of work at one time. But seminal is too close to sentimental, and that never serves an artist well.’

Stephen took pliers from his case and began removing the nails from the frame, holding his breath as he turned and pulled each one. ‘Oh, the grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men. I need a block of wood for this last one, Finch. Something to act as a fulcrum.’ Beads of sweat formed at his temples. ‘He marched them up to the top of the hill, and …’

‘Mr. Jameson, please!’ Cranston was sweating as well, and huffing, obviously unused to spending much time on the floor on his hands and knees.

‘He marched them down again. There.’

With the last nail out, Stephen used tweezers to coax a gap in the spline, then pulled it from the track securing the canvas. He removed the long staples holding the canvas to the frame, then rocked back on his heels, took a deep breath, and instructed Cranston to hold the frame steady. He and Finch gently pulled the canvas backward.

There was a collective sigh as the frame cleanly separated from the canvas. Finch and Cranston rested the frame against the wall while Stephen inspected the painting. Negligible frame abrasion, not enough to be of concern. Canvas stapled in the back, leaving the sides clean. The work was gallery-wrapped, the front image continued along the sides, but there were areas of crushed impasto along both vertical edges of the canvas. Stephen detected flecks of other pigments embedded in the raised strokes, as if the painting had been abraded along its sides, something pressing against it there, grinding pigment into pigment. He set the magnifying glass down and rubbed his face before turning to Bayber, staring at him.

‘Well?’ Cranston said.

Stephen didn’t take his eyes off of Bayber. ‘Where are they?’ he asked.

‘Where are what?’ Cranston said, his voice agitated and rising, his eyes scanning the corners of the room. ‘For God’s sake, Jameson, be clear. What exactly are you looking for?’

Stephen waited until Bayber gave him an almost imperceptible nod. He turned to Cranston and Finch and smiled.

‘The other two pieces of the painting, of course.’











Chapter Five (#ulink_044f6d6a-5f7b-5592-93fe-9ceb13a1c8dd)


Cranston departed in a flurry, wanting to make immediate arrangements to have the painting moved to a lab, where Stephen could use more sophisticated technology to authenticate it. ‘Late for a meeting across town,’ he said, tapping the face of his watch with a finger. ‘You don’t mind if I go ahead, do you?’ He disappeared into the backseat of the waiting car and shouted out the door, ‘I’ll leave the two of you to your plans then. Let me know what you need, and I’ll see it’s taken care of.’ The car’s departing splash soaked Finch’s shoes.

He and Stephen were left standing outside Thomas’s apartment waiting for a cab in weather that had shifted from mist to drizzle. They stood uncomfortably close to each other in order to share Finch’s umbrella, Finch straining to hold his arm in an awkward position over his head to accommodate the difference in their heights.

‘This will make Sylvia extremely unhappy,’ Stephen said, looking pleased with himself. ‘She’ll be forced to be civil to me.’

‘Who is Sylvia?’

‘Dreadful cow. Here’s hoping you never meet her. Now, about these arrangements …’

Any semblance of calm had evaporated once Thomas confirmed the existence of two additional pieces. Cranston’s normal nervous mannerisms became amplified, his fingers dancing across the air, plucking at some invisible keyboard. Stephen had begun to fidget and mutter, no doubt sensing an opportunity for redemption. Finch himself had felt an unusual level of agitation.

‘All three works to Murchison & Dunne then, Mr. Bayber?’ Cranston could hardly contain himself.

Thomas nodded. ‘Of course, Mr. Cranston. That has always been my intention. That the work be sold in its entirety. Only in its entirety.’

‘Marvelous,’ Cranston said.

Finch’s throat tightened. Of course. Never a good sign with Thomas. He felt the need to sit down, the weight of a promise he hadn’t wanted to make sitting like a stone in his gut.

‘So, Mr. Cranston. You will contact me with a plan, I assume?’

‘A plan?’ Cranston’s brows arched closer to his hairline, but he smiled indulgently.

‘A plan for finding the other two panels, of course.’

Finch put his hand to his forehead.

Cranston blanched, the color quickly leaving his face. ‘You don’t have them here?’

Thomas smiled, and shook his head.

‘But you know where they are?’ Stephen asked.

‘Well, if he did, it’s unlikely there’d be a need to find them, Mr. Jameson. Look here, Bayber …’ Cranston’s mood had abruptly sharpened, which was understandable. Finch himself was becoming less enthused by the minute.

‘Please, Mr. Cranston.’ Thomas opened his hands to them, as if offering the most obvious of explanations. ‘Don’t alarm yourself. It’s a simple matter. The other two panels were sent to the Kessler sisters many years ago. I believe they’d be happy for the income the sale would presumably bring.’

‘You’ll call and ask them?’ Stephen appeared to wait for another rebuke from Cranston, but evidently Cranston was wondering the same thing.

Thomas walked to the window, staring at the velvet curtain as if he could see through it, out onto the street and into the flat afternoon light. ‘I’ve lost track of them, I’m afraid.’

Finch coughed. The situation was clearly getting out of hand. This wasn’t anything he’d signed up for, shaky promise or not. He needed to extricate himself from the looming mess as rapidly as possible.

‘Thomas,’ he said, ‘surely this would be better suited to an investigator of some sort? A professional person who could locate the Kessler sisters and find out whether they still have the paintings in their possession? Then Murchison & Dunne could approach the owners regarding an acquisition. And Jameson could authenticate the works. I doubt anyone in this room has the particular skills required to track down missing persons.’

‘Yes,’ Cranston agreed. ‘That sounds quite reasonable.’

‘Oh, but you have the skills,’ Thomas said, pressing his fingertips together. ‘Denny, I believe you and Mr. Jameson are exactly the right people for the job.’

It became alarmingly clear that Thomas had thought the whole thing out, and that Finch and Stephen had just been tasked with a quest, their fortunes now intertwined.

‘If I might ask, Mr. Bayber, why is that?’ Stephen appeared to be completely baffled.

‘Who better to look,’ Thomas said, ‘than those who have a vested interest in the outcome? Financial, and otherwise.’

‘So, Professor, should I make the reservations, or should you?’

‘Reservations?’ Finch was distracted. Drops from one of the umbrella’s ribs funneled down the back of his neck. His wool socks were damp, driving the chill straight into his ankles.

‘For our flights. We can get to Rochester from JFK in no time. It’s probably not much of a cab ride from there.’

‘I’m not entirely convinced this is the best way to go about things. Cranston shouldn’t have left so quickly.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Stephen asked, shifting his briefcase to his other hand and waving at a taxi that slowed briefly before speeding past them. At Finch’s hesitation, he blurted, ‘You do believe it’s his work, don’t you? It was only a cursory examination, but I’m reasonably sure …’

‘You may be only reasonably sure. I have no doubt of it.’

Finch knew it was Thomas’s work the moment he saw it. Not that the portrait was like anything else Thomas had done, but Finch recognized it, nonetheless. The black, white, and yellow pigments of his verdaccio deftly knit to produce an underpainting of grayish green that toned the warm bone of the primer. He could identify Thomas’s technique as easily as he could Lydia’s childish scrawl on a piece of paper. Besides which, his reactions to Thomas’s paintings were immediate and visceral: a sudden drop in his gut, a tingling at the tips of his fingers, a knockout punch to any prejudices he harbored regarding what defined art.

This was the gift of knowing an artist’s secret language, a gift that came with age and focused study: the ability to interpret a brushstroke, to recognize colors, to identify a pattern the artist’s hand created instinctually from comfort and habit. Finch could look at Thomas’s work and read his pride and frustration, his delight in perfection, his obsessive desire. But he would be forced to leave it to Stephen, with his arsenal of toys and gadgets and technology, to officially christen the work a Bayber. That fact lodged in his craw like a rough crumb, making a home for itself in the darkness of his throat, refusing to be dislodged. He was an expert of one sort, Jameson of another. Money followed the word of only one of them.

‘Yes, it’s Bayber’s work, Stephen. I’m sure a closer examination will confirm it.’ Finch was furious with Thomas. The holidays were coming, the anniversary of Claire’s death only a few weeks away. He didn’t want to embark on some ill-defined mission. He wanted to be hibernating in his own apartment, waking only when the darkness of the months ahead had passed. But he’d given his word. That meant something to him, as Thomas well knew. He was trapped.

‘You think we should start looking somewhere else then? Not go to the cabin first? Do you want to start at the house instead?’

Finch steeled himself for the inevitable abuse. ‘I don’t fly.’

‘What?’

‘I said I don’t fly.’

Stephen dropped his tool case and started shaking violently until he finally bent over, hiccuping into his knees.

‘I don’t find it all that humorous,’ Finch said.

Stephen righted himself, dabbing at his eyes with the edge of his jacket. ‘Oh, but it is,’ he said. ‘I can’t drive.’

Finch drummed his fingers on the corner of his desk, waiting for his computer screen to refresh. Once Stephen found out he didn’t want to fly, he’d somehow ended up with the mundane task of handling logistics. Who, in this day and age, didn’t have a driver’s license? How did the man function? On the other hand, Finch could think of hundreds of people, both well-known and obscure, who chose not to fly. The laptop screen finally blinked and offered up a home page for the car rental agency; a form with questions to be answered, boxes to be ticked, numbers to be filled in, felonies to be reported; all required before they would deem him worthy to drive one of their Fiestas or Aveos. He lingered over the ‘Specialty’ class, tempted by the bright red of a Mustang before coming to his senses. Late fall, unseasonable weather, and Stephen Jameson. None of these screamed sporty roadster. He squinted and punched a key, squinted and punched, paused to review, then punched once more—‘Submit.’

He pushed the curtain aside and looked out the window. The October sky was a gray flannel, streaked with ragged clouds. There’d be frost if the rain let up. He tapped his fingers again, waiting for confirmation of his reservation. Why this nagging sense of urgency?

The painting unsettled him. There was the age of the girls, obviously. And the expression of the older sister, disturbing in its intensity. Anger radiated from the canvas, yet her expression was contained, a quality both knowing and unnerving. Kessler. The name was vaguely familiar, and he racked his brain, searching for the connection.

That Thomas had inserted himself into the piece was significant. As an artist, he always maintained a certain distance. Patrons or admirers might think they knew his work, but in truth, they would only be seeing what he wanted them to. That is the small space where I hide, Denny, Thomas had said to him once before. That thin line betweenthe painting and the public persona, that’s where I exist. That’s what no one will ever see.

But what made Finch most uneasy was the atmosphere of the painting. Everything artfully staged, with the exception of the emotions of the people in it. Those seemed overwhelming to Finch and painfully real. The sadness he’d felt after leaving the apartment and returning home lingered, and he shivered, wondering if there was anything he knew about Thomas with certainty, outside of the depth of his talent.

The talent he was certain of. It was confirmed time and again, most recently by the hush in the room when Stephen and Cranston first saw the painting, their expressions of awe and discomfort. He remembered his own reaction upon seeing Thomas’s work for the first time, the brilliant marriage of insight and imagination with untempered physicality. The discomfort came in the emotions Thomas drew from the viewer, emotions that, for the sake of propriety, were usually cordoned off or tamped down. Scrutinizing his work left one exposed, a voyeur caught in the act. Thomas’s true talent, Finch had realized long ago, was the ability to make the viewer squirm.

However, this painting made the artist uncomfortable as well. Finch had stood between them, Thomas and Stephen, the two of them dwarfing him by equal measures, and looked from one to the other—their heads tilted at the same attitude, their sharp noses fixed toward the canvas. But while Thomas’s look shifted from longing to sadness, Stephen stared at the painting with an intensity that suggested he could divine what lay beneath the pigment.

Given a spread of three or four years, Finch had a good idea when the work had been done. In spite of its subject, the colors used, the intensity of brushstroke, and the level of detail in the background objects all pointed to a certain period in Thomas’s work. He would leave it to Stephen to supply the finer details. What caught him off guard was the ache in the eyes of the young man in the painting. Finch had noticed that same ache in Thomas as the artist viewed his own work. There was arrogance, too, but that was not nearly so prominent as the brokenness of someone standing outside the bounds of love. It frightened Finch. In the years he’d known Thomas, he couldn’t recall a time he’d ever seen him want after something. He’d never wondered whether there might be something desired yet missing from Thomas’s life. Until now.

Finch had constructed a skeleton of Thomas’s history from the few bones offered up to him. The rest was obtained through diligent research, but it was an incomplete picture, nothing Thomas had volunteered to flesh out. Finch knew Thomas’s parents had been remote and disinterested. They quickly tired of what they perceived as laziness on the part of their only child—a lack of interest in contributing to the family business—and cut him off when he was twenty-eight, despite numerous accolades and his growing success, considering art no more deserving of attention than any other hobby: flower arranging, winemaking, table tennis.

Thomas was ill-equipped to deal with the world on his own. He had grown up knowing only wealth and privilege, surrounded by people his parents had hired to do things for him: feed him, transport him, educate him, work a fine grit over any inexplicable rough edges. Though his paintings sold for large sums, money circled away from him like water down a drain. Visiting his studio some fifteen or so years after their first meeting, Finch had been alarmed to find groceries lacking, the cupboards bare save for cigarettes and liquor. Noticing Thomas’s gaunt frame, he’d wondered what the man subsisted on. There were stacks of unopened mail spread across the floor: long-overdue bills, personal correspondence stuffed into the same piles as advertising circulars, notices threatening the disconnection of utilities, requests for private commissions, invitations from curators hoping to mount retrospectives. Finch had waded through the detritus of monthly accountability. For Thomas, these were the peculiarities of a normal person’s life, so he chose to ignore them, leaving the burgeoning collection of envelopes to form a sort of minefield he stepped across day after day.

‘You should look at some of these, you know,’ Finch had said, rifling through a handful of envelopes that carried a charcoal trace of footprints.

‘Why would I want to do that?’ Thomas had asked.

‘So you aren’t left in a studio with no heat, no running water, and no electricity. And before you bother with some clever retort, remember you’ll have a hard time holding a brush when your fingers go numb from the cold. Besides, what if someone’s trying to get ahold of you? Is there even a telephone here?’

Thomas had only smiled and asked, ‘Who would possibly want to get ahold of me?’

Finch made a sweeping gesture at the floor. ‘I’m guessing these people, for starters.’

Thomas shrugged and went back to painting. ‘You could keep track of it for me.’

‘I’m not your secretary, Thomas.’

Thomas put down his brush and stared at Finch, studying his face in a thoughtful manner Finch imagined was normally reserved for his models.

‘I didn’t mean to insult you, Denny. I only thought you might find it useful, while doing the catalogue, to have access to my papers. You must know I wouldn’t trust anyone else with my personal correspondence.’

In the end, Finch had made arrangements for an assistant, an endearingly patient middle-aged mother of four with salt-and-pepper hair, whose familiarity with chaos made her the ideal candidate for the job. She visited Thomas’s studio two days a week in an effort to bring forth order from anarchy. She seemed to take a great deal of delight in sorting, and before long Thomas’s affairs were more settled than they had been in years, with the assistant, Mrs. Blankenship, leaving his letters and personal correspondence in a file for Finch, and the due notices wrapped and taped around various bottles of liquor like paper insulator jackets.

‘It’s the only place he’ll notice them,’ she’d explained to Finch, when he questioned her slightly unorthodox methods. ‘And they’re getting paid now, aren’t they?’

It was true, and at some point Mrs. Blankenship had attempted to make inroads in Thomas’s apartment as well, coming over a few times a week to collect the glasses deposited on various flat surfaces in various rooms and move them all to the sink.

‘Why can’t you leave him be?’ Claire had asked.

‘He’s a friend. He doesn’t have anyone else.’

‘He uses you. And you let him. I don’t understand why.’

How to explain it to her when he couldn’t explain it to himself? He’d reached the age when his possibilities were no longer infinite; what he had now was all he was going to have. He could detach his personal satisfaction from his professional … what? Disappointment? Too strong a word. Averageness, perhaps? To his mind, the personal and professional were separate; one did not diminish the other. But Claire would see any discontent in him as some partial failure on her part, as if she could will him to greatness. Within these rooms, he was blessed to be the most important man in the world. Outside of them, his success had been limited. He was not destined for accolades; there would be no superlatives conjoined to his name.

‘If not for Thomas and the notoriety he’s achieved, we might well be eating beans from a can, my dear, instead of …’ He’d waved his fork over their meal, a beef tenderloin in marrow sauce, chanterelles with chestnuts, and the ruby sheen of a fine pinot noir coloring his wineglass.

‘I suppose your books wrote themselves, then? That your accomplishments count for nothing?’ Claire hid her face behind her napkin for a moment, and when she put the napkin back in her lap her cheeks were wet.

‘What is it?’ His mind entertained a score of disastrous scenarios.

‘Do you feel you settled? With marriage and a child, I mean. For less than what you imagined you’d have?’

His response had been immediate. He’d shaken his head vehemently, attempting to interrupt her. He might have wished for greater success, but never at the expense of his family. If he had to choose, no choice would have been easier. She’d squeezed his arm tight and he’d let her continue.

‘It’s the way you are when you come home after being with him. Anxious. At odds with yourself. You look around these rooms as though something’s changed in the time since you left and came back. As though everything’s become smaller. More drab.’

He was stunned. ‘I didn’t realize I did that.’

‘That makes it worse. More true.’ She stared at the tines of her fork.

He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed the insides of her wrists, first one, then the other, stricken by the idea that he’d planted any doubt in her mind as to how much she meant to him. ‘I didn’t settle, Claire.’

‘I don’t believe you did. I think you are exactly what you were intended to be. A man of great value. I’m just not sure you recognize it in yourself.’ She closed her eyes, then looked at him carefully. ‘And Bayber? What would you say of him?’

‘I would say he, too, is exactly what he was intended to be. A man of great talent.’

‘He’s the one who’s settled, Denny. For only his talent. And when his time comes, he’ll find himself wanting what you have more than anything else.’

He’d loved her all the more for saying it, though he doubted Thomas would be thinking of him at the end. Yet there was still a small particle in Finch, an uncontrollable element that coveted what Thomas had, not at the expense of his own bounty, but in addition to it. Thomas’s talent was the cover that kept him warm at night, the meal that sustained him, the air he breathed. His talent would outlive him for generations. Finch was honest enough to admit, at least to himself, a legacy of that sort was worthy of envy. Was it so great a crime to let some of Thomas’s sun fall on him? To feel just the outer rim of that warmth?

The rest, he had no desire for. The queue of women waiting for Thomas was as long as the span of time each lasted was short. When Thomas tired of an admirer’s company, it was expected that the woman in question would decamp gracefully, minus the drama of a scene or hysterics, to be quickly replaced. In Thomas’s opinion, no explanation was required.

But for years to go by without having the companionship of anyone of consequence? Finch tried to imagine a different life for himself, but could not. The loss of his wife had been devastating. Even now he woke in the middle of the night to find his arms stretched out to her side of the bed, encircling her missing form. Painful as this was, a life she had never been part of would have been worse. The same held true for Lydia. The lilt of her voice, the sway of her arms when she walked, the way she nibbled at the cuticle of her index finger when faced with a serious decision. All these had been imprinted on his core. Erasing them was impossible.

Sleep was also impossible. He tossed and turned for most of the night, finally giving in and getting up before sunrise. He needed to talk to Thomas alone before things went any further. He may have given his word, but he hadn’t signed up to be part of a traveling sideshow. At some point in the wee hours of the morning, he decided he wasn’t going anywhere with Stephen until he found out exactly what Thomas knew, and what he really wanted.

I married a wise man. Claire’s voice was all the sun he needed.

‘Sarcasm is wasted on those who haven’t had a decent night’s sleep, my darling. Be honest. You’re wondering why I didn’t show this much backbone years ago.’

I’m wondering what he’s up to, Denny. Same as you.

He waited until after breakfast before calling Mrs. Blankenship to let her know he’d be stopping by to see Thomas. The phone rang as he reached to dial her number.

‘You need to come quickly.’ Mrs. Blankenship sounded as if she’d been running.

‘I was just about to call you. I’m coming over to see Thomas this morning.’

‘We’re at the hospital, Professor. Mr. Bayber’s had a stroke.’



***

He hadn’t been in a hospital for almost a year. It was more grim than he remembered. All the artificial brightness, meant to be reassuring—here is order and cleanliness; surgical cure and pharmaceutical consolation; schedules kept and procedures perfected—was revealed to be otherwise by the moans issued from passing beds, by the brisk, flat-footed walk of orderlies in sneakers pushing those beds, by the janitors’ high gray laundry carts and the smells of sickness and blood embedded in the linens.

Mrs. Blankenship, so capable and exacting in Thomas’s apartment, had been transformed into a weepy mass of wrinkled clothing stuffed into a plastic chair in the waiting room.

‘He was on the floor when I came in this morning,’ she said, dabbing at her pink face with the handkerchief Finch provided. ‘I called for an ambulance right away, but it took them so long to get there. I kept telling him they were on their way. I don’t know whether he heard me.’

‘I’m sure he did.’ Finch looked for a doctor, but seeing no one, patted Mrs. Blankenship on the shoulder, then ventured over to the nurses’ desk, where he found himself ignored by three different women. When repeated throat clearing proved ineffective, he picked up one of the pens with a large artificial flower attached to the end of it and in a fit of pique, stuck it behind his ear. ‘Bayber,’ he said. ‘Thomas Bayber. I need to know what room he’s in.’

The nurse nearest him gave him a withering glance and held out her hand. He returned the pen. ‘Fourth floor. Turn left,’ she said. ‘Down to the first station on your right. They’ll be taking him there from emergency. You can talk to his doctor once they get him settled.’

‘And how long will that be?’ he asked, but she’d already turned away. Finch collected Mrs. Blankenship, and the two of them followed the signs for the elevator, crowding on with the other sleep-deprived, wan-faced visitors, then expelled along with the masses onto a sterile floor that looked the same to him as the last.

It was two hours before Finch could talk with the doctor. A serious stroke; it was too soon to tell how much speech or movement Bayber might eventually recover. He was resting comfortably. They’d monitor him continuously; there was nothing more anyone could do for the time being. Finch called Cranston with an update and told Mrs. Blankenship to go home and rest.

‘Don’t come back until tomorrow,’ he ordered. ‘When they let you see him, I need you to tell him that Jameson and I are driving to the cabin, and to the Kesslers’ old house after that. Tell him even if he’s sleeping, Mrs. Blankenship. And tell him more than once. It’s important.’

The shocks on the Sentra that Finch had rented were shot. The car bounced along the freeway, and Stephen bounced along with it, his head coming perilously close to the ceiling with each bump. Finch drove too fast and gestured as he talked, causing Stephen to press himself against the seat back and stare pointedly at the speedometer. An intermittent rain drummed on the roof, drowning out the classical music station that appeared and disappeared as they passed between a series of hills. Humid air from the vents targeted Stephen’s neck. It was like being trapped in a mobile version of his office at Murchison & Dunne.

Finch raised his chin and sniffed the air. ‘Bananas really aren’t appropriate for a road trip. The fast food I can understand, but unless it’s an apple, or a prune, fruit isn’t the best choice.’ He was secretly glad to be out of his daughter’s clutches, free to enjoy a meal of fat, sodium, and limp vegetable bits with suspect nutritional value without someone chiding him about the dangers of cholesterol and high blood pressure. ‘I should have gotten a bigger trash bag. How can someone as meticulous as you appear to be about certain things travel like this?’




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