by Gwyn Cready
“Yeah, well, he kind of inspired it.”
“Is he an art collector?”
“Mmm. I don’t know for sure. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I just wondered if he collected paintings or drawings or art-related letters, that sort of thing?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. He’s a real art fan.”
Anastasia nodded, her bob swinging brusquely. “He looked different when I saw him.”
“Different?”
“Sexy.”
“Peter?” Cam forced a laugh. It was exactly the same thought she’d had at Ball’s, right before her world imploded. He wore the clothes of the twenty-first century as if he belonged here.
“Have you thought about sleeping with him?”
“Jeez, Anastasia, first you’re practically shoving me into Jacket’s arms, and now you’re asking if I’ve thought about sleeping with Peter?”
“Have you?”
Only every night since Guy Fawkes. “No.”
“Good. I know you value fidelity. Once you’ve entered into a relationship, even at the very, very start, you would never do anything to jeopardize it. You’ll laugh, but I admire that about you. You know me. I’ve always been a bit of a slut.”
Like calling K2 a bit of a hill.
“But you… You’ve always honored that connection you have with your partners. You’ve always been honorable and faithful and true—”
“Yes, yes, yes, we’ve established I’m the Mother Teresa of the dating world. What is this all about?”
“Nothing.” Anastasia stood and brushed a speck of dust off her wide, tasseled sash. She spotted the dry cleaner’s bag hanging on the back of the door, and her eyes popped. “What’s this?”
“Evening clothes. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. They have them in Stalingrad, I believe.”
“I don’t mean the outfit. I mean the color. I’ve attended over a dozen museum parties with you, and I’ve never seen you in anything more daring than black. And now you’re wearing olive and white? What gives?”
Cam flushed. “I-I was told I look nice in olive.”
“You do. You definitely do.” Anastasia walked by the dress, considering. “Now, about tomorrow. The board meets at one. One of us is going to walk out of there the director. I think it’s me. Which isn’t to say you’re not the most qualified candidate—apart from me, of course. But I have a friend who’s chummy with three or four of the members. He hears things he passes along to me. The tide has turned in my favor. The selection will be finalized tomorrow.”
Cam drew her finger along her lashes with a bold swipe. Anastasia was prone to exaggeration. “They may change their minds when they see the Van Dyck. It’s exceptional.”
“They may. But they’ve known about the acquisition for three months now. You’ve already gotten whatever credit you’re going to get out of it. The only thing it could do for you now is lose you points.”
“Lose me points? How?”
“I don’t know. Not being as good as they expect. You’ve sold it as a blockbuster, Cam. What if it’s not quite everything it’s cracked up to be?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I forgot how trend-intensive seventeenth-century paintings were. Last season it was lace-up Rembrandt still lifes. This season it’s plum-colored Vermeer portraits.”
“Cam, I’m trying to be a good older sister here. Mom said you’re always landing in shit.”
“That was the petting zoo when I was five, and you were the one shoving me out of the way to get to the feed dispenser.”
“There was a billy goat about to attack.”
“There was a guy from Mt. Lebanon Magazine with a camera, and you were afraid you weren’t going to be the girl in the picture.”
“Cam, all I’m saying is it’s not going to turn out as you expected. Wouldn’t it be better to come up with a graceful bow out?”
Cam gazed into her sister’s steely gray eyes. Crap, how was it fair Anastasia got their father’s poker face and Cam, her mother’s “I even lose at Go Fish” eyes?
“I don’t think so,” Cam said. “I’m sticking with it to the end.”
“You’re sure?”
“I guess I’m just going to have to listen to my heart.”
Anastasia nodded. At the door, she paused. “Then listen to it, Cam. You know what it’s saying.”
Forty-three
Mertons landed in the small studio and straightened his coat. Peter, he noted, hardly looked up from his painting. It seemed to be all the man ever did.
“The Guild has asked me to make a final plea.”
“No.”
“Peter—”
“We’re not done here.”
“‘We.’ Ha. Do you ever get tired of having the rest of us focused on your needs?”
“It’s not about my needs. It’s about Ursula.”
“That’s a lie. It’s about revenge. You’re hurt, and you want to hurt her in return.”
“No. No. I wanted to stop her. I didn’t tell the reporter her name. I would never have hurt her willingly.”
“Really? Then maybe you’ll want to look at this.” He dropped a sheaf of papers on the table.
Peter regarded them suspiciously.
“I told you messing about in the future was dangerous. The most recent calculations have come through. You’ve changed Campbell’s future—and I don’t mean your paintings. I mean something important.”
“What?”
“A child.”
Peter stilled.
“That’s right. There is supposed to be a marriage and a child in her future.”
“Of course there is. She’s a young woman. ’Twould be natural to expect such things.”
“But that marriage is gone now, Peter. Don’t you see? That child is gone. The original calculations on her future, the ones I ran after I found you here, showed them.” He tapped the papers. “Today’s do not. That’s what this nonsense has gotten you. Is that what you were planning? To take away her future?”
Peter sunk into his chair. “No.”
“You of all people should know what that’s like. You must leave this place. You must leave before you hurt her more.”
Forty-four
Cam moved the little name cards around the diagram of tables distractedly. Today had been a Calamity Deathmatch. What was going to bring Cam to her knees first—Helga: The Swimsuit Issue or Anastasia Zhivago, Russian tormentor from hell? Cam had a vision of herself as Catwoman, sliding perilously down the side of the crevasse, nails dug like knives into the edge to keep from falling, with Anastasia, standing over her in a far better Catwoman suit, tapping the toe of her boot on Cam’s fingers, and shouting for Cam to throw her the keys to the director’s office in order to save herself. And somehow Jacket is dangling below Cam, clutching her foot, trying to save her or pull her down with him, Cam can’t tell which.
“Cam?”
She jumped. “What?” Jeanne had arrived unnoticed with an armload of mail.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just wanted you to know I was here.”
“Got it.” She returned to the seating chart. Micki Catterman regularly got drunk enough to spill full glasses of wine into her purse or fall into her dinner companion’s lap. A little self-control, Cam lectured silently as she tapped the sticky note that held Catterman’s name. We’re talking a museum gala here, not a fraternity rave, okay? It was probably not a good idea to seat her next to Sister Rose McNair. Cam picked up Catterman and let her hover over the empty seat next to Dick Bolton, the insufferable bore who was making her friend Seph’s life miserable over at Pilgrim Pharmaceuticals, Poetic justice? A little more of that in this world would certainly be appreciated. Where was the handsome, artistic Batman to rescue her? “Who are you moving?” Jeanne dumped the mail on the corner of her desk.
In her mind, Cam flung the keys and caught Batman’s gloved hand, all in one graceful movement. “Oh, Catwoman.”
“Catwoman?”
Cam frowned, the spell of her daydream broken. “Catwoman? Why did you say that?”
“Because you said it.”
“I did not.”
Jeanne made a deep sigh and rolled her eyes. “Could you please sleep with one of them again? I think your brain is turning into mashed potatoes.”
“Is that the sort of thing you’re learning in that online biology class of yours?”
“Yes, the teacher has asked us all to come to the next webcast dressed as naughty little lab assistants. Do you think that’s a problem?”
“I think you’re going to have more fun than I am tonight.” Cam pressed the Catterman square next to Bolton, then picked up Ball and put him and his wife on either side of Sister Rose. Sister Rose was the city’s biggest Pitt Panther fan. She and Ball could talk college football to their hearts’ content.
Cam rubbed her eyes and reached for the mail. A large manila envelope slipped off the top of the stack. Probably another book. She grabbed a corner and tore. It was an ancient copy of The Burlington Magazine, a much-revered British fine arts monthly. This was the issue from 1932 that had the image of Peter and the four Ursulas. She prayed the picture would be clearer than the tiny blurred scan she’d received. The painting, long held by a wealthy private collector, had not been seen in public for several generations. Cam herself had never seen it, even in print. This would provide her first real look at one of the most revealing of Peter’s paintings.
She pushed the table diagrams to one side and slipped a finger under the cover carefully. The yellowed paper crackled. The cover had no picture, only the words “The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Illustrated & Published Monthly” in a turn-of-the-century font and, below that, a table of contents, which she scanned for a reference to Peter.
The author of the article was a viscount, likely the man her research said had owned the painting in the thirties, and the title nearly made Cam fall off her chair: “Lely’s Love Story.”
Cam flipped to the first page of the article, leaned back in her chair, and began to read. By the time she reached the end, everything she thought she knew had changed, and the one thing she did know was that she had to find Peter.
Forty-five
Peter flung the brush down in disgust. The painting he’d begun the day before was flawless from a technical standpoint but lacked the spark that would lift it from the realm of craft to that of beauty. The word his teacher had used was hout—“wood” in English. No life. And he knew why. He was wracked with guilt. No matter what Campbell had done or was about to do, she hadn’t deserved what he’d just done to her. He hadn’t been the one to expose her to the reporter. That was her doing. It was clear her life was something akin to a platter full of spinning tops, perennially ready to explode into chaos. But her life was also her own, and if what Mertons said was true, Peter had changed it for the worse.
Was losing a child you had never known the same as losing one you had? Was there a gradient to such a loss? He kicked himself. Who was he to judge?
Peter had told himself he’d come to this time to protect Ursula, but he had also come to protect his reputation. And he’d been willing to go so far as to put a woman’s good name at risk for it. He looked at the small sketchbook and the letter it contained. In truth, he had been willing to do more than that. And now, no matter what he had been willing to do or not, he’d changed her future. The realization sickened him.
He couldn’t change the past, no matter how fervently he might wish to, but he certainly had no business playing God with Campbell’s future. He must return to the Afterlife and accept his fate.
But before he left, he had one final deed to perform. He must beg Campbell Stratford’s forgiveness. He picked up his coat and scarf, grabbed the sketchbook, and left.
Forty-six
A block from my building? Cam looked in disbelief at the address on the paper clutched in her hand. Peter’s been living a block from my building all these weeks?
Desperate to see Peter after finishing the article, she’d driven halfway to Shadyside before she’d been able to raise Mr. Ball on the phone and had only scored Peter’s current address after reassuring him she was traveling without a weapon. She’d written down the address, aghast, at a stoplight, and had turned around and driven to Mt. Lebanon in her gala outfit.
She swung the car into the first space open on Alfred Street, hopped out, locked the door, and hurried toward Washington Road, holding her long skirt above the sidewalk. She knew the number but wasn’t sure in which direction the number was, so she started south. She made her way past the frozen yogurt shop in the quaint faux medieval building, then realized this was the address and stopped. She almost laughed. He not only was staying just a block from her, he was staying in the only building in Mt. Lebanon that was crenelated like a castle.
She doubled back to the residential door to the left of the shop windows and, with a sigh, began to scan the names next to the bells. Ball had not given her an apartment number and, in fact, had only been able to come up with the address by rifling through the papers on his desk to find the delivery slip from the company he’d hired to transport the paintings to his house.
Three bells, three names. “Joshua Smith,” “M. Curran,” and—Oh, very funny—“K.T. Holmes.”
Jerk, she thought then bit her tongue in guilt.
She rang the Holmes bell and waited. No response. She was just about to walk away when the door swung open. Peter was throwing a wool scarf around his neck. He started when he saw her.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“That’s odd. I was just coming to talk to you.” He tucked the scarf in his coat meekly and followed her out onto the sidewalk.
The December wind blew down the street, lifting the curls of hair over his ears. He slipped his hands in his pockets and moved automatically between her and the gusts. “What is it?”
How could she have missed it? That fathomless depth that was always present in his eyes wasn’t laughter or mocking or even desire. It was pain. She should have recognized it. She’d had opportunity enough to examine such a thing, after all.
“I found an article about you,” she said.
The depth disappeared, like the lens of a camera, hidden behind a protective cover.
“Oh?”
She felt her own vulnerability rise, a frightening combination of sorrow and culpability. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
It was as if a whoosh of vacuum had sucked all the noise and wind and traffic from the street, leaving only a blurred silence and the two of them. The lens lifted briefly, and she saw that he understood. He looked down at his shoes. Cam felt her throat cramp, so afraid was she of the next word.
“One doesn’t easily fit ‘My lover died in childbirth’ into a conversation,” he said.
She threw her arms around him. “Oh, Peter. And your son.”
“And my son.”
She could feel him quake, and she was crying too, thinking of her brother and the son he’d never see grow up. The world seemed to be filled with such cruelty.
“My brother,” she cried into his coat, “lost his wife and son in a car accident. I’m so sorry.” And she was—for Peter, for her brother, for anyone who’d ever lost anybody.
Peter hugged her tighter. “You mustn’t cry,” he said through his own tears. “’Twas many years ago.”
She cried harder and felt a fool.
“Come inside,” he said. “Let me make us some tea.”
* * *
“For the longest time,” he said, “I didn’t know she was with child.”
He ran a hand through his hair and spoke distractedly as Cam drank. She held her tongue and let him speak.
“I know it seems foolish now. We were, after all”—he flushed—“quite actively in love. But I liked her plump and didn’t notice.”
The article Cam had read in The Burlington Magazine was not about Peter and his painting of the four Ursulas, though that picture had been included. It was an analysis of a portrait by Peter of a woman of “haunting beauty” whom the author believed to be Ursula. The woman’s head covering, informal pose, and domestic negligee suggested to an art expert the author consulted that “the painter was evidently in love with her.” The author went on to say that the position of the woman’s hands, holding saffron-colored fabric bunched across her lap, suggested she was “enceinte”—pregnant, in the indirect parlance of the day—a fact the author believed was supported by the almost frightened expression in her eyes, which he pointed out was “quite compatible with that condition of expectancy.”
Cam had studied that picture for a good ten minutes. The sitter wasn’t the seductress of Cam’s imagination. She was a woman in her thirties. Beautiful, yes. A goddess, no. And Cam had agreed with the viscount: the drape of fabric and position of the hand were common painterly devices for hiding a pregnancy.
“And when she told me the news…” Peter smiled, the faraway look in his eyes suggesting an oft-recalled happiness. “Ah, how we celebrated.”
“And you painted her.”
“I always painted her, but, aye, then too. The way her face had changed. It was as if the sun had risen inside her. I couldn’t even capture it on canvas. It was remarkable.”
Cam watched his thumb and forefinger go to the emerald.
“And the birth…It started so easily. I was on top of the world. It was evening. The studio was closed. By morn I would have a son—or a daughter. What did I care? We would have more, as many as she wanted. But not long after the strike of two, she began to bleed. A surgeon was called, but he couldn’t stop it. There was nothing to be done. Not, that is”—his voice grew hollow, and Cam bit the inside of her mouth—“until it was over. Then he would bring his awful blade to bear on her and—”