She shrugged. “I went to say kaddish.”
“Oh,” Max said, and that tiny word seemed to hang in the room, heavying the air. “That’s good,” he added.
“It made me feel better,” Lizzie said, although better wasn’t quite the right word for it. She thought of that worn bare room, the dankness, the sound of the voices chanting. She remembered the feeling of standing for the prayer. It seemed impossible to rise to her feet, but when she did and saw the few others around the congregation standing too, it felt like a bodily acknowledgment of all that she wanted to forget. Her father was gone. There was no pretending. But she was here. She was his child, and she would endure.
“Well, then you should go again.” Max had waited awhile before responding, but he said it firmly. “I want you to know something, though: I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, and I’m sorry.”
“Max—” She didn’t want to hear explanations, not today.
“No, let me finish.” He was wiping off the counter, though to her it looked perfectly clean. “You were right. I care about you so much. I want to try this.”
“Wait,” Lizzie said. “What?” Had she heard him right? Were they talking about the same thing? “You do?”
“I do.” A small smile tugged at the edges of his beautiful mouth and his eyes crinkled. He nodded at her with intent, and she felt a rush of happiness. “Truly,” he said. “I was being foolish, but I am not a fool.” His voice was scratchy, low near her ear.
“Is that right,” she said, and now his lips were grazing her neck and she was laughing a little, amazed. She did not care that he was her father’s best friend, she did not care about the age difference. Why did she ever try to deny her feelings? For once she did not doubt herself. She only wanted to be here, with him.
He took her by the hand, led her toward the bedroom. “I can’t,” she said.
“Sure you can,” he said, and he gave her that slow smile that would be the end of her, and soon her synagogue plan was all but forgotten.
Afterward, she said to him: “Can I ask you a question: Do you still have records from your parents’ gallery?”
“Some,” he said. “Why?”
“I just wondered; I’ve been thinking about how The Bellhop got here, from Europe. Do you have any idea who your parents bought it from?” Lizzie was out of bed, retrieving her scattered clothes as she spoke. She had wanted to ask Max this for a while, but after last night—well, she wanted to think of something other than what Bob had said.
“No,” he said. “Not really. But there’s a decent chance they bought it in New York. They purchased a lot of artwork there, in the early years of the gallery, the fifties and sixties, and I do know that they held on to the Soutine for quite a long time.”
“Why?”
“They did that sometimes. With lots of pieces,” Max said, maddeningly vague.
“You know, I really would love to know who they bought it from,” she asked again. She didn’t want to be a nudge, but who could she ask, if not him? She pulled her shirt over her head. “Where are these records?”
“I have a few boxes in the garage. But don’t hold your breath. They weren’t so great on the record-keeping front, especially early on. But I could look.”
“Would you, please?” Maybe the answer was right here, in Max’s house. Why had she waited so long to ask him? She leaned over, gave him a deep kiss at the edge of the bed.
“You realize that even if we do have a record, it’ll only be a name,” he said softly into her hair. “That’s all it’s going to tell you.”
“That’ll be enough.”
“Will it?”
“Yes,” she said guardedly. “What do you mean?”
“I just mean—the painting was stolen twenty years ago.” He gave a twist of an uneasy smile. “I wish you could put it behind you.”
Did he not think that she wanted to? What did he know about that night? She stood, arms across her chest. “I have,” she said. “I mostly have. Why would you say that to me?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have,” he said softly. “I know how much you loved the painting. Come here.” He pulled her into an embrace. “Forgive me.”
She let him, but reluctantly, her arms at her sides. Did he really think there was something wrong with the fact that she couldn’t let go? “I’m not the only one with questions,” she said, pulling back.
“Yes?” He said it lightly enough, but he tightened his lips and for a moment he looked like no one she knew.
“Last night, I was having dinner with Rose and a friend of hers, and—” She stopped. What was she trying to protect him from? It felt wrong to go on, disloyal to even give rise to the suspicions, but stranger not to. “When the paintings were stolen,” she continued, “do you know if the police ever questioned my father?”
“Of course. Many times,” he said evenly enough. “Most of the information they had came from him.”
“Was ever he considered a suspect?”
“A suspect?” Max said, scooping up his keys, his phone, his money clip from his bureau—the armaments he needed for the day. “A person of interest, sure. He was at first. It’s the obvious choice. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right one. They spoke to him at length, and then they moved on.”
“To what?”
He sighed. “I don’t know, exactly. They spoke to dozens of people. There were so many possibilities. There still are. Your father, bless him, was not exactly modest about his possessions. He was proud of the art he owned; he told lots of people. And so many people came through your house; think about it. Just those dinner parties alone: guests and friends of guests and the caterer and the waiters and bartenders. All those people in and out. Someone could have been casing it, saw the party, jumped on the opportunity. To say nothing about all those babysitters and drivers you guys had to take you girls around; or more probably, the boyfriend of one of those people, or, most likely, an art thief you did not know at all.”
Max was right; there were so many people in Joseph’s orbit, any one of them could have done it. But that familiar feeling of unease slid over her. There must have been something she could have done.
“You know what I’ve learned as a defense attorney?” Max was still talking. “Guilty clients always have an alternative story, but the innocent ones? They never do. They’re hard to believe because they don’t know who did it. You know why? Because they didn’t do it. How would they know what happened? An absence of evidence doesn’t point anywhere. You know that.”
“I know,” she allowed, and the sickly feeling was receding, she already felt on more solid ground. “I know; it was just this friend of Rose’s, he said it so easily, tossed it out as if it were obvious—”
Max shrugged. “Of course. Twenty years after the fact. Colonel Mustard in the library. What was Rose’s reaction?”
Lizzie allowed herself a small smile. “She nearly ripped his head off.”
“Ah,” Max said. “A woman after my own heart.”