She didn’t recognize the steel in her own voice, and she felt a shiver of pride run up her spine. You’re stronger than you think, Bernard had told her all those years ago, in a truck headed to Paris to reclaim her life. Maybe he’d been right after all.
She only had a second to enjoy this new, confident version of herself, though, before the man turned, and she had the sudden sense that she knew him, though she couldn’t place who on earth he was. Though the wind was picking up outside, the snowflakes whipping around like angry bumblebees, one could have heard a pin drop in the gallery.
“You’re the artist,” he said, but his eyes didn’t hold any malice, only deep sadness and regret. The words weren’t a question but rather a resigned statement.
Elise nodded stiffly, her eyes drifting down to his sweater, which had a few drops of pale blue paint near the collar, and then to his fingers, where the same shade of paint was caked under his nails. “You’re a painter?” she said, startled. She looked back up at his face. There was a flake of pale green clinging to his left temple, too.
He blinked a few times in surprise. “I am.”
“And you would do such a thing to another artist?”
He looked pained. “Ma’am, I know you have no reason to believe me. But I had absolutely no idea. My business partner—”
“Constant Bouet,” she filled in coldly.
He nodded. “It never occurred to me to question whether the artist was real, or whether Constant had concocted the story of Anicette Rousselle. The explanation made sense, since I knew he had been the primary dealer for several other prominent French artists. The irony is that Constant persuaded me to work with him by showing me photographs of your carvings. I was very moved by them. To know that it was all a lie…” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I should probably introduce myself. I’m Jack Fitzgerald. I co-own this gallery, which is something I was proud of until yesterday. Now, I feel only shame.”
She studied him. His eyes were honest, kind. “Elise LeClair,” she said, shaking his hand. His palm was warm against hers as he looked her in the eye.
“LeClair,” he repeated slowly as he pulled his hand back. “Not Olivier LeClair’s widow?”
No one had referred to her that way in a long time, and it sent a jolt of sadness through her. There were so many things lost, so many pieces of the past that were long gone. “Yes.”
Mr. Fitzgerald’s face went red. “Constant stole from his most famous client’s wife? After his client died?” The shock and disgust in his tone was palpable, and it was enough to convince her he hadn’t been in on Constant’s scheme.
“You really didn’t know.”
He shook his head. “Hand to God. Mrs. LeClair, I don’t know what to say. I’ll make sure you’re paid back, every single penny. I had no idea, I swear to you. I would never have—”
“Elise,” she interrupted. “Call me Elise. I’m so tired of being nothing more than my husband’s wife. And I believe you, Mr. Fitzgerald. Constant Bouet fooled me, too. But this—I don’t understand it.” She gestured around the gallery. “You seem like a… very different kind of man than he is. How on earth did you go into business with him?”
He gave her a weak smile. “Please, call me Jack. And you’re right. I never cared much for Constant. But my own gallery was failing, and he came along at exactly the right moment. I opened this space with him on the condition that I could put in the artists’ studios upstairs. It felt like the right decision at the time, even if I never had a good sense about him.”
“Artists’ studios?”
He pointed up at the ceiling. “Eight of them upstairs, free of charge. Every artist should have a place to find themselves, don’t you think?”
“I do.” She was quiet for a moment, thinking.
“Listen, I don’t know how I can ever make this up to you, but I’ve already begun to put out inquiries to clients about getting your pieces back, and I can involve the police if you think—”
“No.” She felt a peace settle over her. “Art is meant to be shared, isn’t it? These people who bought my work, they must have felt something. The way you said you did. I—I don’t want to take that back. I have to reclaim what is mine, but I don’t think that means taking my pieces from people. I think it means learning to live with myself. As myself. I’ve spent too long being erased, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
“Please, it’s Jack. And I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind trying to erase you, Elise.” He held her gaze long enough that she had to look away.
“So these studios upstairs…” She felt like she was standing at the edge of a precipice, looking out at sea and sky. Should she jump? Did she have the courage to be a new version of herself, perhaps someone more like who she’d been before Olivier intervened and she’d let him mold her like clay? “Are any of them available?”
“Available?”
She took a deep breath. “Yes. To me. Maybe—maybe I need to start again. Maybe I need to come back to life—my life.”
“You want to work here? After all that we’ve done to you?”
“Well, it’s the least your gallery owes me, isn’t it?”
The color rose to his cheeks again, and he looked away. “Indeed. Honestly, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Then don’t. Give me a place to work while I’m in New York. Tell me you’ll never deal with Constant Bouet again. And the rest, we’ll figure out.”
“You don’t want to shut us down?”
“A few minutes ago, I certainly did. But then I walked in the door and saw the paint under your nails, and the look on your face, and I remembered that things aren’t always exactly as they appear.”
“I’m not sure I deserve your understanding.”
“We all deserve a second chance.” She thought of Olivier, the choices he’d made that had blown her life apart, the way she’d stood by him even when she knew better. “Especially when the mistakes we make begin with trusting the wrong people.”
He stared at her. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll show me the studios.”
He smiled slowly and nodded to himself. “Follow me.”
In the hallway upstairs were eight closed doors and one other at the end of the hall. A few of the rooms had supplies or drying canvases propped outside. “Room number eight is yours, if you want it,” Jack was saying, but she was no longer paying attention to him or the door he was unlocking, because right beside it were two canvases, one large and one small.
She bent to stare at them, her heart thudding, and Jack seemed to fade into the background. The smaller canvas was simply a dancing little girl, the wind catching her skirt as she twirled, but the background, clearly a street in Paris judging by the architecture of the building behind the spinning figure, looked exactly like her street. That was impossible, wasn’t it?
But it was the larger painting that left her breathless. It was dark, filled with anguished gashes of black and gray, the image partially obscured by what looked like a thin layer of smoke. Pages of paper were suspended in the air, and the world burned, a single hole in the ceiling open to an incongruously blue sky above. In the center of the image were two little girls leaning against each other, their hands clasped. And though Elise couldn’t see their faces, their little silhouettes were achingly familiar, and she recognized the backdrop, too—the leaning bookshelves, the Babar book lying facedown, its pages blown out. She’d been in this room before it had been destroyed, had stood in its eerie replica just yesterday.
“What is it?” Jack asked, and she could feel his arm brush against hers as he came to stand beside her, trying to figure out what she was seeing.
“I—I think this is my daughter in the paintings. My daughter and her friend.” She wiped her tears away. She wondered if she was losing her mind. “But that can’t be possible. Can it?”
Jack looked as confused as she felt, but there was a great sadness in his eyes. “Your daughter?”
She looked back at the painting. “She died seventeen years ago, during the war.”
“My God. Elise. Of course. I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head. “Jack, who painted this?”
“The artist is a young woman from Paris, though she’s lived here in the States for many years. Her mother owns the bookstore just down the block.”
Elise put a hand over her mouth. “This was painted by Lucie Foulon?” Her grief and confusion twisted more tightly together. She’d been right about the image, but what did that mean?
“You know her?” He looked surprised.