*
Alone again, Jane stares at the ruined umbrella. This is her Aunt Magnolia Coat umbrella, and she’s lost hold, entirely, of what that means.
She can’t quite bring herself to go into the bedroom and check out the state of the photos. She can hear a fire crackling brightly in the fireplace, so she has a feeling she knows what she’ll find.
Did Aunt Magnolia even take the pictures?
Did she die because she was a spy?
Outside noises touch Jane’s ears: the squeak and rattle of a ladder being placed into position. The wet protest of a cloth against glass. Idly carrying her sandwich and some grapes to the glass wall, she leans, looks down, and can just barely see the edges of Ji-hoon, man of mystery, washing the house’s outside windows in preparation for the gala. He too is apparently not what he seems.
Everything around me is a lie.
“Except you, Jasper,” she says to the dog, who’s watching her anxiously.
After a while, a knock sounds on the bedroom door. The notion of having to talk to someone is exhausting. It’ll either be someone she has to lie to or someone who’s lied to her. She drags herself through the bedroom and swings the door open.
Ivy stands there rubbing the back of her neck, looking a bit nervous.
“Hi,” she says. “Are you okay?”
“Seriously?” Jane says. “You’re really asking me that?”
Ivy raises her eyes to Jane’s and they’re so full of unhappiness that Jane is instantly furious.
“What do you have to be so upset about?”
“Plenty, actually,” says Ivy, with a touch of sharpness.
“Whatever. What do you want?”
Ivy lets out a short sigh. “Mrs. Vanders says you have to have dinner in your rooms. We’ll bring you food.”
“She doesn’t trust me with the other guests now,” says Jane; a statement, not a question.
“She’s pretty mad that you told Ravi to go look at the Vermeer.”
“It’s true, then? It’s forged?”
“Yeah,” says Ivy with a weary sort of indifference. “Turns out that in the middle of all this other stuff, someone stole the Vermeer.”
“So, what, she’s not glad to know for sure?”
“Well, yeah. But Ravi’s in hysterics, which is pulling Mrs. Vanders away from things she needs to be doing. And now it’s even harder to justify not calling in the cops. A lot of cops in the house will make it even more tricky for us to move the kids.”
“Oh,” Jane says, understanding, with a prick of guilt that makes her mad at herself, and then at Mrs. Vanders, that this would, of course, be true. “Right. It doesn’t mean I’m going to start telling people about the Panzavecchias at dinner, though.”
“I know,” Ivy says miserably. “I’m really sorry.” She examines the ratty end of her blue sweater. “I’ve been trying to imagine what this must be like for you.”
Jane finds herself laughing, quickly, once. “Maybe when you figure it out, you can fill me in.”
“Look, Janie,” Ivy says. “I was born into this work. I’ve never known anything else. And I’ve been wanting to get out of it for a couple years now, and finally I’m about to. This is my last op.”
“Really?” Jane says, curious, despite herself. “You’re allowed to stop?”
“As long as I clear it with headquarters.”
“There’s a headquarters?”
“Espions Sans Frontières is an international organization,” Ivy says. “We’re just one of the branches. It’s based in Geneva. I’ll go there and have an exit interview, then I’ll make plans to leave this house. I’ll do something else, something that doesn’t give me nightmares. This house gives me nightmares!”
Now Jane is trying to imagine what Ivy’s life has been like. “Are all the servants here born into this life?”
“Pretty much. I was, and Patrick, and so was the Vanders family,” Ivy says. “It’s been going on for generations. My parents died doing this work.”
“What?” says Jane, startled. “I thought it was some sort of travel accident.”
“I guess it was, technically,” says Ivy. “It was four years ago. They were trying to help an agent get to—someplace safe, far away from here. The same way we’re trying to help the Panzavecchias get someplace safe. That time, we were trying to fake the agent’s death. That part worked. But other things went wrong and they were shot.”
“My god, Ivy. I’m sorry.”
“Well,” Ivy says. “You lost your parents unexpectedly, and then the person who was basically your mother too. You know what it’s like.”
Jane examines her own boots for a moment. “The thing about learning that someone isn’t who they said they were,” she says, “is that you start to wonder if you ever really had a relationship with them in the first place. You try to picture them, and instead, there’s this empty space. The only thing you’re sure of is that they were a person who lied.”
“Oh,” Ivy says with conviction. “You knew your aunt. She was yours more than she was anyone’s.”
“But I don’t even know what she did,” Jane says. “In my mind, she was underwater with the animals. She was waiting, and observing, and not pushing herself in.”
“I know a little about what she did,” says Ivy. “Not a lot. But a little.” She pauses. “Do you want me to tell you?”
“What’s the point? I should’ve heard it from her, not someone else. Hearing it from you will just—” Hurt, Jane thinks. It’ll just make it even more plain that my life is a lie.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Don’t defend her to me,” Jane snaps.
“But what if it helps explain things?” says Ivy. “I mean, wouldn’t it at least give you a more solid target to be pissed off at?”
“Now you sound like a therapist,” Jane says, but she sees Ivy’s point. “Okay, fine,” she adds. “Tell me.”
“Well,” Ivy says quietly. “I know she was an underwater nature photographer, for real. But she also salvaged the wreck of a North Korean submarine once, and an Iranian sub, and that Russian aircraft carrier that sank a few years back, remember? And sometimes she tapped undersea cables. Sometimes she cut undersea cables and set it up to look accidental.”
This is impossible. Jane is laughing again. There is no way for her to recognize the person Ivy is describing, a person who salvaged submarines full of nuclear missiles, full of secret information, full of the bloated corpses of drowned soldiers. Aunt Magnolia took pictures of beautiful animals. She was trying to save the oceans. “That’s enough.”
“Okay,” Ivy says. “I only ever met her a couple times. She had a great wardrobe, and sort of a steady, reassuring temperament. She seemed—eccentric, but also practical, no-nonsense. Kind of like you.”
Ivy’s words make Jane wish, suddenly, for a mirror. She wants to find the parts of her face that are like Aunt Magnolia’s. “Was the Antarctica trip actually a spy trip?”
“As far as we know,” Ivy says, “Magnolia was really going to Antarctica to take pictures of penguins and whales.”
Is it better or worse, Jane wonders, that she died as a nature photographer, not as a spy?
“You know not to trust anyone in the house, right?” Ivy says. “Especially don’t get involved with that guy who’s pretending to be a cleaner, the one who calls himself Ji-hoon. He could be dangerous.”
“He actually is a cleaner,” Jane says. “I mean, he is cleaning things, whatever else he’s doing.”
Ivy smiles slightly. “I still wouldn’t trust him. Even to clean.”
“Why is he so dangerous, anyway?” Jane asks. “Who is he?”
“Mrs. Vanders would strangle me if I told you.”
“Is he, like, armed?”
“Oh, no question he’s armed,” Ivy says. “He wants to get to Grace. She has something he wants.”
“Grace!” Jane says, thinking of the girl, huddled up and crying, angry. Small. “What could Grace possibly have that armed people want?”
Ivy hesitates. “She’s got something in her mind. Information.”