“On the other hand,” Jane says, “they did decide to get married. Some things happen because we choose them.”
“Right,” says Kiran. “Go ahead, say it. I’ve chosen to be unemployed and useless.”
“Kiran,” Jane says, remembering Colin’s words to Octavian. “You’re not useless. You just haven’t found your path. I mean, welcome to my world. I don’t have a path either. I’m a way bigger moper than you are.”
“You’re not moping,” Kiran says. “You’re grieving.”
Kiran has a way of saying words that send a beam of light through the bullshit. I’m grieving. It’s like pushing my will through molasses.
“Come walk with me,” Kiran says, “and I’ll tell you the mystery of Charlotte.”
A heating pipe clangs somewhere and the air moves in the hall, whispering a word that she doesn’t quite catch. Charlotte.
Jane rubs her ears, trying to decide. She wants to know more about Charlotte, sure.
But she also needs to ask Mrs. Vanders about Aunt Magnolia—though it’s not as if finding out that her aunt was best buddies with Mrs. Vanders will bring Aunt Magnolia back. Jane suspects that beyond her urgency to know lies a crash into disappointment.
So maybe Jane should follow that Grace Panzavecchia look-alike who vanished into the depths of the house? What if that girl really is Grace Panzavecchia? And what if that’s the answer to the Okadas and Patrick, to the gun?
Of course there’s a part of Jane that wants to follow Ravi wherever he’s gone; really, wherever he goes. Ravi makes Jane feel like she’s been asleep and she might finally be able to wake up.
And what’s going on with the dog? The ridiculous dog, who’s whining on the second-story landing, watching Jane with the single most tragic expression ever seen on the face of a dog.
A bell rings somewhere in the depths of the house, almost too distant to hear, but sweet and clear, like a wind chime. “Choose, choose,” it seems to say.
Mrs. Vanders, the little girl, Kiran, Ravi, or Jasper?
The left side of the plane or the right.
Aunt Magnolia? Jane thinks. Where should I go?
The Missing Masterpiece
Jane decides.
“You know what, Kiran?” she says. “I need to talk to Mrs. Vanders first. I think she knew my aunt. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”
“Okay,” Kiran says, shrugging, disappointed. “Text me.”
“I will.”
Kiran wanders away.
When Jane reaches Jasper on his landing, he jumps up, circles around her, then runs at the back of her legs in his usual way. She scrambles past. “Geez, Jasper!” she says. “Come with me, you’re invited,” but when she turns back to check on him, he’s gone.
Jane finds Mrs. Vanders at the far end of the second-story east corridor, standing on one leg, studying a painting. The flat of Mrs. Vanders’s bare foot is balanced against her inner thigh and her hands are in a praying position. Jane assumes it’s some sort of yoga pose.
“Hello, Mrs. Vanders,” she says as she approaches.
“You,” says Mrs. Vanders, not looking at her, not moving. She’s got a walkie-talkie clipped to the back of her black yoga pants.
“Yes,” says Jane. “I heard that you knew my aunt.”
“You’re not Ravi,” she says.
“No,” says Jane. “Ravi went to visit someone. His mother, I think? Is she in the house somewhere?”
Mrs. Vanders’s response is a dismissive humph. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Ivy,” she says. “What have you two been discussing?”
Jane is fed up. “Did you not know my aunt, then?” she says, choosing sarcasm. “Am I wasting my time?”
“My question about Ivy is relevant to your question about your aunt.”
“How could that possibly be? Did they know each other?”
“Do you travel much?” counters Mrs. Vanders.
“No!” says Jane. “Why? Did you travel with her or something?”
“We have one of your aunt’s travel photographs,” Mrs. Vanders says. “A little yellow fish, peeking out of the mouth of a bigger fish. Your aunt had a way of . . . finding what was hidden.”
“Oh,” Jane says, astonished. One of her photographs, here? Jane begins to swell with pride. How appropriate that Aunt Magnolia’s work should make its way into the artistic jumble of this house. “So, is that how you knew her? Did you buy the print from her?”
Mrs. Vanders sighs shortly. “Yes. That’s it.”
“I see,” says Jane, feeling that this makes sense, except—except for the parts that don’t. “But what does that have to do with Ivy?”
“I only wondered how much she’d told you.”
“Right, but why would it matter? Is the photo a secret?”
“Of course not. It’s hanging in the west wing,” says Mrs. Vanders, flapping one hand toward the west wing and finally stepping out of her one-footed stance. She brings her face very close to the painting before her.
“Did she come here?” says Jane. “My aunt? Did you know her?”
“We communicated about the photo,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“In person? Mr. Vanders seemed to know things about her, like, how she dressed.”
“Oh, hell,” says Mrs. Vanders, her nose only inches from the painting.
“What?”
“Forgive me,” she says. “Does this picture look right to you?”
Jane, who couldn’t care less about the picture, bites back an impatient retort and takes a look. It’s a lovely, smallish painting of a woman writing at a desk. A frog sits on the checkerboard floor behind the woman, its dusty blue skin touched by sunlight coming through the window. The frog has a secretive expression on its face and the woman is quite intent on her work.
“Right, in what way?” says Jane.
“Like the Vermeer it is,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Lady Writing a Letter with Her Frog.”
“I have no idea what that painting is supposed to look like.”
“Johannes Vermeer,” Mrs. Vanders says. “A woman with a pearl earring? A woman with her frog?”
“I know about Jan Vermeer,” Jane says. “He’s famous and all that. But how am I supposed to know if this one looks right? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Well, what do you think of the light?”
Jane peers again at the painting, which has soft, bright parts and deep, dark parts that she can, in fact, appreciate. The scene seems lit with true sunlight. “Incandescent?” she ventures.
“Hm,” says Mrs. Vanders. “I’m telling you, that lady looks peaky to me. She’s not as incandescent as usual.”
“Are you saying someone’s altered the painting?”
“Altered it or forged it,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“Forged it!” says Jane. “Seriously?”
“Or replaced it with a version by a different Jan Vermeer,” Mrs. Vanders adds darkly.
Jane is beginning to wonder if Mrs. Vanders’s physical balance is inversely proportional to her mental balance. “How much is the painting worth?” she asks.
“Vermeers are rare, and rarely change hands,” says Mrs. Vanders. “It could certainly fetch a hundred million dollars at auction.”
“Good grief,” says Jane. How strange that a painting can be more valuable than the entire house it hangs in. Like a wooden box containing a diamond ring, or a ship containing Aunt Magnolia.
“Listen, I can see it’s important,” says Jane. “But you should talk to Ravi about it, or Lucy St. George, not me. Can you tell me more about my aunt?”
At that moment, Ravi appears at the top of the hall, walking toward Jane and Mrs. Vanders with his remaining slice of toast in one hand.
“I’ll thank you to say nothing outright about the Vermeer to Ravi,” Mrs. Vanders mutters sidelong to Jane.
“Why?”
“Because I want to handle it,” says Mrs. Vanders.
Ravi carries a framed painting of lily pads under the other arm. It’s recognizably impressionistic, certainly a Monet. Except that as he approaches, Jane notices that there’s something . . . off about the frogs sitting on the lily pads. Their eyes are intelligent, but . . . dead. And the lily pads seem like they’re hovering, like, actually floating around the painting. Almost. It’s pretty strange.