“Do you think your father has something to hide?” Lucy asked practically. “Was he wanted by the law?”
Mr. Ravenel lifted both hands. “If I knew that . . . All I do know is that he was originally from this part of the world. He never said it in so many words, but . . . there were details he let slip. Mentions of Central Park, of the smell of the tanneries on the East River. Little things.” Parallel lines appeared between his brows. “And my mother said she once saw him writing a letter addressed to someone in New York.”
“About his paintings, perhaps?”
A shadow crossed John Ravenel’s face. “He hid it when he saw her coming. There was something—or someone—in his life in New York that he didn’t want her to know. I’ve wondered sometimes if Ravenel is even our name.” He gave a little shrug. “It’s the name on my birth certificate, so I suppose I’m as entitled to it as any other. But . . . it would be nice to know for certain.”
There was a lump in Lucy’s throat that had nothing to do with lobster. I understand, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t. Not to a stranger.
Instead, she said, with false brightness, “Why don’t you ask him?”
His eyes met Lucy’s. “My father passed. While I was away in France.”
“My mother died last year.” The words came out of nowhere, from deep in Lucy’s chest. She set her fork down on the side of her plate. “Consumption. She had been sick for some time. I—I wish I had known her better.”
She felt instantly mortified. Mr. Ravenel didn’t want to know her history. But he answered easily enough, “You never really think of them as people, do you? It’s hard to imagine your parents being—well, anything but your parents.”
He seemed to require a response, so Lucy nodded, even though she wasn’t sure she entirely agreed. Her mother had always had that air of mystery about her, of not quite belonging where she was. Maybe it was because her grandmother had been so very forceful, had made it so clear that the bakery was her province, had inserted herself so strongly into Lucy’s upbringing.
Her mother had fought a little less every year, had drifted back and back and back until it was as though she wasn’t there at all.
Mr. Ravenel was caught in his own memories. “By the time I was old enough to remember, we were already in Charleston, Anna and Oliver were squalling in the nursery, and my father was a household name.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Sometimes, it seems like my father just leapt into being in Cuba in ’ninety-three, as if there was nothing before then. But there must have been.” He sat up a little straighter, his expression determined. “One thing I know about painters, Miss Young. Painters paint. They’ll scribble on the walls if there’s no canvas for them to paint on. I’ve never met an artist who hasn’t had a portfolio of youthful embarrassments tucked away somewhere.”
“If they’re so embarrassing, might he not have done away with them?” Lucy toyed with the contents of her lobster shell. She ought to have been feasting on the succulent lobster, but her appetite had fled. “Filed them in the fire, so to speak?”
I’m no artist, her mother had said.
“No, I don’t believe so.” Mr. Ravenel seemed very sure. But, then, it was his father. Perhaps Mr. Ravenel senior had been the sort who couldn’t be brought to throw away a scrap of brown paper or a frayed roll of twine. He leaned forward, one elbow wrinkling the creamy tablecloth. “If I tell you something . . . can you keep it to yourself?”
“I keep everything to myself, Mr. Ravenel.” Her entire life was a lie. Remembering that she was there in her professional capacity, Lucy added virtuously, “As long as it doesn’t compromise the firm in any way.”
“Not the firm.” Mr. Ravenel turned his fork over and over in his hand, the heavy silver catching the light. “Recently, a series of paintings appeared on the market. They were unsigned—but they were unmistakably my father’s work.”
He was watching her closely, looking for a reaction. Lucy frowned at him. “How could you tell? If they were unsigned?”
“I know my father’s work the way you know your own handwriting. And it wasn’t just me. A colleague brought the first of them to my attention. The technique is unmistakably my father’s. But the subject matter is . . . different.”
“How different?” Something in the way he said it made Lucy wonder just what these secret paintings might be. Nude ladies? Scurrilous sketches?
“In Cuba,” said Mr. Ravenel, “my father became known for his realism, for painting what he saw as he saw it. These are . . . I guess you could call them allegorical. Fairy-tale scenes. Knights and ladies and Arthurian legendry.”
A knight raised his sword in the mural on Lucy’s wall. Brave Saint George, perpetually poised to rescue the maiden, eternally chained to the rock.
Lucy felt a sudden surge of frustration with it, with all of it. Why didn’t the maiden just break her chains and save herself? Why hadn’t her mother said anything, done anything?