“He told me we were through and not to contact him. I’m not going to crawl after him.”
Anne swung the refrigerator open and then closed it without taking anything out. She did the same to a cabinet door, as if hiding her expression from me. I must have seemed the most horrible person in the world. Finally, she placed her hands on the counter in front of me. “He truly loves you,” Anne said. “I believe that.”
How much I wanted this to be true. “I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken.”
Anne reached for the shaker. I watched her tip it over her empty glass, then bang it down on the counter.
“What do you really want from me, Anne?”
She fiddled with her scarf. “Before he disappeared from our lives William mentioned some prints he’d made. He’d said you had them.”
“He mentioned them?” I sat down in the chair at the counter bar.
“Yes. It was months ago. He told me about the argument you had, how you’d seen the photographs, how he thought you might have, well, taken them.”
I knew Anne, upset about Mary Rae’s disappearance and her death, had wanted her journals. I didn’t think her interest in the photographs was in any way related to William’s. I believed we might have a common interest.
“I do have them,” I said. “With me, actually.”
I went to my bag and pulled out the portfolio and brought it back to the kitchen island. Anne grabbed her glasses and came to stand beside me. She went through the prints slowly, looking closely at each one. She was unsteady, and my head spun from the martinis. The glass doors leading out to the backyard were black, and the cold seeped through. They were big, glass sliding doors and my gaze was drawn to them, waiting for someone to appear. Anne looked up at me, her eyes magnified behind the lenses of her glasses.
“Where did you get this?” Anne seemed disappointed in me, as if she knew I’d stolen them.
“It’s all of them—Alice, Lucie, Kitty, and Jeanette.” I pulled the portfolio over and leafed through the prints so Anne would see, but she wasn’t even looking.
“Mary Rae was jealous of the girls,” she said. “She didn’t understand the photographs. William wanted her to be a part of the series, and she told him emphatically no. Silly, isn’t it?”
“It takes a certain trust to fall asleep with someone watching,” I said. I paused at the photograph of Alice, her bare leg entwined with the sheet. “I don’t think they’re faking.”
Anne closed the portfolio. “No, they aren’t.”
She went over the stove top and stood looking down at the Wellington. “I’m not so hungry,” she said.
She came around the island counter and placed a hand on the portfolio. “I gave him my sleeping pills. The girls were fine taking them. They all agreed. They thought it was a hoot. They loved the idea of it, loved their bodies. They loved William, too.”
Beyond the sliding glass doors the snow had covered the terrace. Anne’s hand on the portfolio trembled slightly.
“The more Mary Rae protested, the more he wanted her to pose.”
Had William given me Anne’s sleeping pills that night at Del’s?
“Don’t you think pills are a bit extreme?” I said.
“You know how it is with him,” she said. “His work is everything. And look how these turned out. They’re beautiful—you have to admit it. Exceptional. I set up a show for him—a solo exhibition at a gallery in Chelsea. It’s a well-known place, one that’s made the careers of many artists. He felt the pressure of that, I think. He claimed the camera knew when the girls weren’t fully asleep—and of course none of them could fall asleep at the drop of a hat.”
She took the portfolio in her arms and held it, and I had a strange feeling that she had gotten what she wanted from me. The meal, everything else was forgotten.
“Mary Rae did pose,” I said.
Anne shook her head. “No, she didn’t. She’s not among these prints.”
I held out my hands for the portfolio, and she seemed reluctant to give it to me. I took the sleeve of negatives out of the back. “See.”
Anne took the plastic sleeve with a shaking hand and held it to the light. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, this just doesn’t seem right.”
“You can see more clearly with a light table,” I said. “I have my loupe.”
“The studio,” she said, her voice thin and anxious. She told me to follow her.
We went back through the living room, grabbed our coats, and left by the front door. Anne led the way toward the dark garage, her bright scarf flapping in the darkness. Snow covered the driveway’s gravel, and the pretty bulbs that had come up would all be frozen now. Anne went up a set of stairs along the side of the building, and I waited below, unsure.