“This is . . . unique.”
Diego chuckled. “Viv kinda went overboard, but she wanted it to look as different from home as possible.” I didn’t know what a typical house in Colorado looked like, but it probably wasn’t this. “Viv? You home?”
“Valentín? Is that you?”
“Valentín?”
“Don’t ask.” Diego led me into the kitchen. The counters were loaded with cut vegetables, and Diego’s sister stood by the sink, shucking corn. She was tall and curvy, with a devious gleam in her eyes. She and Diego looked so different from each other, and yet there was no mistaking they were siblings.
“Viv, this is Henry. Henry, my sister, Viviana.” Diego stole a cherry tomato from a ceramic bowl, and Viv smacked his ear.
Viviana smiled and offered me her hand, which was damp but strong. “Nice to meet you, Henry Denton. Valentín never shuts up about you.”
“Why do you keep calling him Valentín?”
“That’s his name.”
“My name is Diego.”
Viviana rolled her eyes as she checked a pot of something on the stove. She moved like an acrobat but spoke like a car salesperson. “Your middle name is Diego.” Her face tightened, and a look passed between them. “May I have a moment alone with my brother?”
“You can hang out in my room.” Diego motioned toward the living room. “It’s down the hall. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I’d stumbled into something I didn’t understand. Maybe I should have stayed home, where I could have hidden in my room and pretended it was any day other than Thanksgiving, but I was already there, so I walked back through the living room and down the hall, peeking into each room. There was a tidy bathroom decorated with peach seashells, a bedroom with a four-poster bed that I suspected belonged to Viviana, and two rooms at the end of the hall. Both doors were closed, so I chose the one on the right.
It was definitely not Diego’s bedroom. The smell of paint and turpentine blanketed the air, and diffuse light streamed through the windows. The room lacked furniture, but countless paintings hung on the walls. So many that hardly any naked wall remained. It was overwhelming and beautiful, and I stood in the center of the room, trying to absorb it all.
An oil painting of a raven clawing its way out of a young boy’s chest caught my attention. The boy was sprawled on a frozen lake, his eyes white and blind, his mouth open in a last word. What clothes he wore were shredded and soaked with blood and saliva. The bird emerging from the boy’s chest looked toward the sky. Its wings were spread as if preparing to fly, and its hooked talons pierced the boy’s heart. But it wasn’t the gore or broken ribs or the frozen heart that disturbed me. It was the last word. The raven was going to strand it on the boy’s lips. It seemed beyond cruel to leave the word behind where no one would ever hear it.
“I see you’ve found the museum.”
I turned around, too awed to feel guilty. “I didn’t mean to snoop.”
Diego leaned against the doorway, his hands in his pockets. “What’s the point of going to a stranger’s house if you’re not going to poke around?”
Even though he didn’t seem upset, I was still embarrassed. “This is brilliant.” I pointed at the raven painting.
“Yeah, it’s okay.” Diego motioned toward a smaller painting on the adjacent wall. It was crowded by the work surrounding it, and I wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t pointed it out. “This one’s my favorite.”
It was a portrait, but the subject had no skin. No, that’s not accurate. Some frayed ribbons of skin were still stuck to the muscle, as if the subject had been flayed hastily by someone who hadn’t cared enough to do it properly. A gaping hole yawned where the nose should have been, and the bulging eyes gazed heavenward and to the left at something or someone off the edge of the canvas.
“Self-portrait,” Diego said after a moment of quiet.
I had to tear my eyes from it. “That’s you?” Diego nodded. “That’s what you see when you look in the mirror?”
Diego said, “It was when I painted that.”
“Who tore your skin off?”
“I tore it off myself.”
“Why?”
Diego sighed, and I wasn’t sure he was going to answer, but then he said, “Snakes get to shed their skin, why shouldn’t we?”
“But why would you want to shed your skin?” I couldn’t stop staring at the painting, looking for any detail that would give me insight into the real Diego Vega. If his paintings were any indication, then there was more to him than I imagined.
“Because sometimes it’s easier to start over with a clean slate than to drag the baggage of your past with you wherever you go.”
“What do you see when you look in the mirror now?”
Diego pointed at a charcoal drawing. It was larger and more prominently displayed. The background was unfinished, and it wasn’t exactly a portrait. It was just a portion of a shoulder and the back of Diego’s head as if he were walking out of the painting. “I painted that on the happiest day of my life.”