He sighs, then yawns, then marches out, then marches back in again, wrapping the blanket from Jane’s bed around himself. He weaves his way through the saws, umbrella parts, and umbrellas to the striped sofa Jane has pushed against the back wall, then settles himself down. For the next couple of hours, he alternates sleeping on her sofa with waking grouchily to the noises of her saws and asking intelligent questions about umbrella-making. “How do you keep the ribs from rubbing through the canopy after repeated openings?” he mumbles, then grasps his hair. “Christ. I keep dreaming about that damn Panzavecchia baby. Little Leo, you know?”
“I insert a small piece of fabric between the joints and the canopy as a buffer,” Jane says, focusing hard on the work of her fingers. “It’s called a prevent.”
He’s already half-asleep again. Jane notices, through her absorption, that his cleverness fades from his face when he’s sleeping. She wonders if she’s wrong to believe that he’s ignorant of the Patrick stuff.
“And yeah,” she says, speaking to herself. Speaking to the house, which groans back at her. “I dreamt about him too.”
*
Ravi is still asleep on Jane’s sofa when her stomach informs her that it’s time for breakfast.
Not knowing the breakfast routine in this house, and not really wanting to come face-to-face with someone alarming like Patrick or Philip, she texts Kiran, who’s likely to be protective. “Breakfast?”
Kiran texts back. “Be there soon. Go to banquet hall.”
Jane closes Ravi into the morning room so she can get changed. Aunt Magnolia? What do I wear on a day like this?
She pulls on a ruffled dress shirt the red-orange color of a weedy sea dragon, black-and-white-striped jeans like a zebra seahorse, and her big black boots. She rolls her sleeves up to the elbows so her tattoo tentacles are visible. Feeling a bit more courageous, but with fists clenched tight, she heads down to the banquet hall.
Colin, Lucy St. George, and Phoebe Okada sit at the far end of the long table, silently drinking coffee and eating poached eggs and toast. Jane slides into an open seat, studying Phoebe, who’s heavily made-up again, her eyes rimmed with smoky grays and her lips a deep purple. Phoebe stares back at Jane with an aggressively pleasant expression, until, losing her nerve, Jane’s eyes drop to her plate.
Colin reads a newspaper, an actual, physical newspaper that makes Jane wonder how newspapers are delivered to this house. Behind the smooth curtain of her honey-brown hair, Lucy reads a book, The House of Mirth, with occasional glances at her phone whenever it vibrates. Various strangers keep stomping through the banquet hall, shouting to each other, carrying cleaning supplies, buckets and vases, stringed lights, a ladder, dropping things. The gala is tomorrow. She’s surprised that the houseguests seem limited to this small group.
“Who comes to these parties?” Jane asks. “Rich New Yorkers?”
Colin looks up from his newspaper. “Yes,” he says with a sympathetic smile. “But not just from New York. Up and down the eastern seaboard, and always people from abroad too.”
“How do they get here?”
“In their own boats, mostly, though Octavian also charters a couple of boats for any of the guests who need it. There’s a seasonal staff too, as you can see.”
“Where’s Octavian, anyway?” Phoebe asks, turning her implacable gaze on Colin. “We haven’t seen him once since we arrived. He wouldn’t go away on a gala weekend, would he?”
“I think he’s lurking around,” says Colin. “Ravi said something about him being depressed.”
“Ah,” says Phoebe. “That’s too bad, though not surprising, with Charlotte missing.”
“Charlotte’s missing?” says Jane, startled.
“I thought you were Kiran’s friend?” says Phoebe, raising one eyebrow. “She didn’t tell you her stepmother is missing?”
“We talk about other things,” Jane says defensively.
“Kiran can be very closemouthed,” says Colin, “even with those she’s closest to. Charlotte went away unexpectedly about a month ago. She left a cryptic note for Octavian, but then she never wrote again, and no one’s heard from her.”
“But, where was she going?” asks Jane. “Hasn’t anyone searched for her?”
“She didn’t say,” says Colin. “Octavian hired investigators and everything, once a few days had gone by and it started to seem like she’d truly vanished. But they didn’t turn up much, just some discrepancies about her background and the suggestion that her mother might have been a crook.”
Jane’s ears are uncomfortable. “What kind of crook?” she asks, swallowing hard.
“Some sort of con artist,” says Colin.
Jane, rubbing her ears, is trying to figure out how this might connect to the weirdness from last night. A missing stepmother and Philip going on a mystery journey. The Panzavecchias, also missing, and the sculpture missing too. And a con artist in the family?
“How did you sleep?” Jane asks Phoebe abruptly, willing her to say something about nighttime parlays, and guns.
“Badly,” Phoebe says as a flash of some feeling—unhappiness, or worry—crosses her face. Very suddenly it makes her softer, accessible, and Jane sees that her makeup is a camouflage so she’ll seem bright and awake. In fact, her eyes are lined, her face heavy with exhaustion.
“I slept badly too,” says Lucy St. George, looking up from her book. “This house wakes me up. I hear it moaning and sighing, as if it’s lonely here on this island, far away from other houses.”
Yes, Jane thinks. Someone else here has an imagination.
“My Lucy is ever a poet,” says Colin.
“Your Lucy?” Jane says. “I thought you had a Kiran, not a Lucy.”
“I’m pleased to report that I have one of each,” says Colin, smiling. “Kiran is my girlfriend and Lucy is my cousin.”
“Oh! Are you a St. George, then, too?”
“Alas,” says Colin, “I’m a Mack. The poor Irish relation.”
“Oh, Colin,” says Lucy St. George. “Please don’t start talking about the potato famine.”
“And why shouldn’t I talk about the potato famine?”
“It’s tacky,” says Lucy. “You went to all the most expensive boarding schools and universities.”
“My education was financed by Lucy’s father, my uncle Buckley,” Colin says to Jane with a smirk. “He was training me up to be useful.”
“Oh, here we go.” Lucy rolls her eyes.
“I see,” says Jane. “Are you useful?”
“Very,” Colin responds. “At least to Uncle Buckley. He’s a fine art dealer. I find him art to buy, and then I find him rich people to sell it to. It’s Ravi’s job too.”
Jane wonders how much training is needed for a job like that, if it’s something any person could do, if they learned enough. “I think I’d like a job that relates to art,” she says cautiously, “someday.”
“Would you?” says Colin. “Do you have an eye for art, or for design?”
“I guess.”
“Are you artistic?”
“I guess,” Jane says again.
“You could focus it in some practical direction, like architecture,” says Colin. “Have you ever taken a drafting class? I hope you’re thinking about ways to differentiate yourself from everyone else. Are you being strategic about it? Do you have any unique interests or skills? What’s your brand?”
Jane feels a sudden compulsion to shield the existence of her homemade umbrellas from Colin’s questions. “I’m not that artistic,” she lies.
“Too bad. No new news about the Panzavecchias,” Colin says, turning another page in his newspaper.
“Nothing online either,” says Lucy. “I wonder if any of my contacts know anything.”
“Contacts?” Jane says.
“Lucy’s a private art investigator,” says Colin.
“What’s private art?”
“She’s a private investigator,” Colin says with a small smile. “Collectors hire her to find their stolen art when the cops come up empty. She’s very good, despite anything you might hear about a recent mishap with a Rubens.”
“Oh, Colin,” says Lucy calmly. “Do I have to listen to stories of my own mishaps at breakfast? Besides, Jane doesn’t want to hear about chasing art thieves.”
“I kind of do,” says Jane, thinking of the missing Brancusi sculpture, and wondering if this might elucidate anything.
Lucy looks at Colin with a weary indulgence, then returns to The House of Mirth. It’s a clear dismissal.
“In the movies,” says Colin, turning back to Jane, “it’s always some rich collector who wants to steal the Mona Lisa or something. Right?”