I didn’t even pause before peering inside. It was mostly clothing—not recently cleaned judging from the odor that drifted out of the opening. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I was fairly certain that it would be relatively easy to find in a bag full of soft clothing. I stuck my hand into the bag and began shifting everything like a spoon stirring a soup pot. I lifted out a canteen, a book—Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—a hardened package of Wrigley’s chewing gum, and a Dopp kit.
I was about to give up when my fingers brushed against something hard. I knew it was a picture frame before I held it up to the light and saw the tinted photograph of a woman who looked a lot like Carole Lombard.
She was beautiful, with icy blond hair and clear gray eyes, but whereas one could picture Carole Lombard laughing in one of her screwball comedies, the woman in the photo didn’t appear to be one who smiled easily. Her hair was dressed for evening, her head poised looking over her shoulder, her left hand lifted. And on her third finger sat a giant round diamond she seemed to be holding up like a trophy.
Victorine, I thought, even as my fingers quickly undid the clasps at the back of the frame. I slid the photograph out from behind the glass and turned it over, my breath held as I looked for the name I was sure had been written on the back, most likely in an elegant script and as unlike my own pigeon scrawl as possible.
But it was blank. I flipped it around to the front, thinking maybe I’d missed a signature or endearment, but all that was there was the name of Estes Photography Studio embossed in the bottom-right corner.
Feeling oddly despondent, I reached my hand inside the bag one last time, digging in the corners just in case I had missed something. My fingernail clipped something solid and light, something that had been carefully wrapped in an article of clothing, then tucked in place rather than being haphazardly thrown.
Carefully, I pinched the object between my thumb and forefinger and brought it out of the bag before placing it faceup in the palm of my hand. A fine linen handkerchief—the monogram CJR hand-embroidered in a corner—was wrapped around the object. I studied the handkerchief for a moment, briefly wondering if Victorine had lovingly stitched his initials, then pulled it away from the small square object so I could see it.
It was a miniature oil painting, set in a gilded frame, of a woman with dark hair and green eyes who stared up at me. Her expression eluded me, the emotion displayed there unknown to me. If I’d been a poet, I would have called it passion, or perhaps lust. Or maybe even love.
I remembered all the journeys to art galleries and museums my mother had taken me to, the lectures and art lessons, and for the first time in a very long while I wished that I had paid more attention. There was something eerily familiar about the paint strokes, about the way the colors blended together when one stared closely, the features of the face discernible only when held at arm’s length.
The woman appeared to be nude, her long dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, her only accessory a filigree gold necklace about her slender, pale neck, a perfect large ruby dangling from the center.
I stared at the miniature for a long time, the air thinning around me. It wasn’t the woman’s expression, or the necklace, or even the fact that this had been found with Cooper’s possessions. What stole the breath from my lungs was the simple fact that the woman in the portrait looked exactly like me.
Eleven
DECEMBER 1892
Olive
An enormous gilt-framed mirror hung above the mantel of the Pratt dining room, expertly scattering the light from the brilliant electric chandelier, and Olive kept catching her reflection as she hurried past with the serving dishes. She couldn’t seem to recognize herself. Who was that ruddy-cheeked young woman with the lacy white cap and the dark hair and the frown occupying the space between those harried green eyes? No one she knew.
She bent next to the thick black shoulder of August Pratt—the younger, not the older—and presented to him the bowl of creamed peas. He was deep into a loud and good-natured argument with his father, brandishing his wineglass to illustrate a point, and didn’t notice her. “Sir,” she said. “Mr. Pratt. Would you care for the creamed peas?”