“But . . .” I stopped, my own mind yawning open as I realized where I’d seen it before. “My mother had this exact mural on her bedroom wall that her mother, Olive, painted for her. I never saw it, but this is how she described it to me in such detail. It’s almost as if I had actually seen it before.” I stared at the mural, at the signature that seemed right and wrong at the same time as all the pieces in the puzzle slowly circled in my brain, each trying to slot itself into the correct space.
Our eyes met in mutual understanding. Cooper put his hand on my arm as if to anchor himself. “It would seem that Harry Pratt and Augustus Ravenel are one and the same.”
I recalled Harry Pratt’s sketches that Cooper had found in the small chest in the attic, the sketches of Olive wearing the ruby necklace, and the air began to thrum between us. “The woman in those sketches, the woman wearing the ruby necklace. She was my grandmother. Her name was Olive.” I paused, wondering how to tell him the rest. “My grandmother . . . ,” I began.
“And Harry were lovers.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if he’d already figured it out.
I nodded. “But it didn’t end well, I don’t think. Harry disappeared and Olive married my grandfather, a baker named Hans Jungmann.” I touched the spot on my blouse under which the ruby necklace lay. “She never forgot Harry, though. Because she painted this same mural on my mother’s nursery room wall. And she kept this necklace.” I pulled it out of my blouse. “Harry’s sister, Prunella, said my grandmother stole it, but I don’t think that’s the truth. My grandmother cherished it, gave it to her daughter, Lucy. My mother. And she gave it to me.”
He sent me a piercing look. “Lucy? And what did you say her maiden name was?”
“Jungmann. But she changed it to Young when she came to work for my father’s law firm. Lucy Young.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his cheeks noticeably paler. “On my father’s deathbed, he dictated a letter to me to a Lucy Young in New York, to the attention of the law firm of Cromwell, Polk and Moore.” He paused, weighing his words. “It was a love letter, telling Lucy that he’d never stopped loving her or wanting her. That she was the love of his life.”
“The letter . . . did you send it?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I planned to mail it right after his funeral. But I left it on my dressing table and my mother found it and destroyed it. I realized how much my father had hurt her, which is why I never tried to find Lucy on his behalf. It would have been a betrayal to my own mother. I never imagined . . .”
He stopped, unable to finish, but he didn’t need to. I knew exactly what he was going to say. Something about probabilities and fate, and the vagaries of a chaotic world that had brought us together.
He looked away, seemingly oblivious to the sounds of the orderlies, the ringing phone and chattering nurses. It was all so removed from us and the small cocoon of time his words had created. He took a step forward, staring at something in the top right corner of the mural. It was a small crowd of people wearing medieval clothing, a dark raincloud painted behind them and making the colors of their garments stand out. “Look,” he said, pointing toward the middle of the cloud, where swirls of the paintbrush seemed to blend the fog and spectators together.
I leaned forward, too, staring at where he indicated. “What am I supposed to see?” And then I did. Hidden among the group of people and nearly obscured by the gray smokelike fog was a woman. A woman who looked exactly like me, and whose face had been re-created in a small oil miniature and handed down through three generations of men in the same family. I stepped back, my hand pressed against my chest, the solid feel of Cooper behind me.
“Do you see it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, then stopped, realizing that it wasn’t just the woman he was showing me. Cooper’s fingers traced over her arm toward her hand. “She’s pointing at something.”
The background of the mural seemed to shift in front of me like an optical illusion, the leaves of trees in the surrounding forest seemingly transforming themselves into something else entirely. Something that looked astonishingly like a square made of painted bricks, a design that resembled a heraldic coat of arms. A design I was very familiar with.
Without a word Cooper took my arm and propelled me to the elevator, his limp hardly evident. Neither one of us spoke as he slid open the gate and then closed it again before pressing the button for the sixth floor.
“Cooper, really, this isn’t a good idea. Whatever happened between our grandparents and parents has nothing to do with us, don’t you see?”