Reaching the safety-deposit box involved an elevator taken straight from an old film noir. As we descended lower and lower at a snail’s pace, I noticed George-Harrison admiring the elevator, studying the ornate wood marquetry, the grate, and the wooden crank, most likely imagining all the steps it would take to create an exact replica.
The safe-deposit vault was vast and impressive. Mr. Clark asked us to kindly wait outside with his secretary. The old woman gave us a warm smile, the first we had seen from her. Mr. Clark returned a short while later carrying an art portfolio with a protective cover. He laid the portfolio down on a table at the center of the space and backed away from it.
“I’ll let you open it. I’m merely the custodian.”
We cautiously approached, as though there were some sort of sacred relic hidden within. In a way, there was.
George-Harrison untied the strings sealing the portfolio, and I lifted the flap to reveal the Girl by the Window in all her timeless beauty. The light streaming onto her face was so realistic, it seemed like daylight itself had been captured upon the canvas.
The sight reminded me of another young woman looking out of a different window as her father smoked cigarettes with a young American liaison officer. All of it came back to me at once, just as though it were part of my own past: the harrowing escape through the mountains, all those who helped them along the way, the warmhearted English art dealer who took a chance on a young protégée. I could see the claustrophobic view out of the window of their tenement on Thirty-Seventh Street dissolving into the stunning view from their apartment window on the Upper East Side. The arrival of my mother, their adopted daughter, and the birth of their son . . . all the many lives whose fates were bound to the Hopper masterpiece, Sam Goldstein’s very favorite work of art.
After a moment, Mr. Clark and the secretary discreetly approached to admire the painting as well. They both seemed equally in awe as they took in the young girl captured on canvas.
“Do you plan to take it today?” whispered Mr. Clark.
“No,” I replied softly. “It’s far safer here.”
“In that case, let’s keep this simple. I’ll transfer the contract to your name and add today’s date; that way you can leave with a copy in hand. If you’d be so kind as to wait in the lobby just a few minutes, my secretary will bring it to you.”
We came back to ground level via the same elevator and said goodbye to Mr. Clark. He climbed back inside the ornate elevator, and this time took it all the way back to the top floor.
After ten minutes or so, the secretary arrived carrying a sealed envelope. As she handed it over, she urged me to never lose the document, explaining that it was the very first time Mr. Clark had taken such extraordinary measures in all his long career, and she doubted he would ever break the rules again. The kind old woman then smiled at us a second time, and took her leave to go back to work.
We chose Sailor’s Hideaway for lunch—not as some intense pilgrimage for our mothers’ sake, but more to revisit the location of our “first date.” During the meal, George-Harrison asked what I planned to do with the painting.
“I plan to give it to you. You’re the rightful owner. You’re the only one with Sam and Hanna Goldstein’s blood running through your veins. My mother was adopted, remember?”
“I almost forgot—but I couldn’t be more thrilled about it!”
“I didn’t realize you were so eager to get your hands on that painting.”
“I’m not. It’s an absolute masterpiece, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t give a damn about all that. As far as I’m concerned, adopted or not, your mother was still their daughter, and she was the rightful heiress.”
“I’m lost. So, why is that such great news?”
“Because it means you and I are not related, in any way. Which is great news for both of us, because there is no way in hell I’m letting you go back to England, unless you want to take me with you.”
I had no plans of leaving him, although I had to admit I would have gone so far as to board the plane just to make him beg me to stay.
“I know,” I replied, a slight tremble in my voice.
“Sure you do. You know everything,” he said, seeing right through me. “Except for one thing, the one mystery we may never crack: Just who is our poison-pen?”
As we climbed into the pickup, I reached into my pocket and drew out the document that Mr. Clark’s secretary had given me. My eyes immediately locked on to my own name, handwritten on the front of the envelope. The handwriting . . . full of rich curves and delicate edges, as though it had been written a century ago. No one wrote like that anymore, yet I was sure I recognized it.
Just like that, the final pieces fell into place. I began to laugh and cry at the same time. We stopped at a red light, and I handed the envelope to George-Harrison.
“Morrison was wrong! Hanna didn’t commit suicide. Her car, remember? It was her car our mothers sank off the pier, to get rid of the evidence . . .”
“You lost me.”
“The poison-pen was Hanna, and Hanna . . . is Mr. Clark’s secretary!”
40
Mr. Clark’s office, one hour earlier