Chapter 8: Student Sale

I took a picture of the invoice with my phone.

Then one of the gull.

My hands were steady, which surprised me.

Behind me, out in the gallery, Cate was laughing at something again.

I walked out the front door past the club wives and nobody stopped me.

It took me two days to find the girl who painted the river.

She wasn't a girl anymore. Neither was I.

She taught art at a public high school in Pilsen and posted pictures of her students' work and none of her own.

I sent her a message.

She wrote back in four minutes, all capitals.

"NEVE CAHILL. I THOUGHT YOU DIED."

We met at a diner on Halsted that Saturday.

She had paint on her sleeve and a kid's drawing of a horse sticking out of her bag.

She hugged me for so long the waitress gave up and left the menus.

"You just vanished," she said. "Winter of senior year. Gone."

"My mom died."

"I know. I'm sorry. I sent a card to your house."

"I never opened any of them."

I showed her the picture of the invoice on my phone.

She read it twice.

Then she put her hand over her mouth and laughed, high and shocked, the way she'd laughed about the gull.

"Two hundred and eighty thousand dollars."

"Do you remember who bought it?"

"Neve, I remember everything about that sale. It was the only painting I ever sold for real money. I paid two months of rent with it."

She dug through her wallet and pulled out a soft, folded square of paper.

The yellow carbon copy of a sales slip.

One painting, River, Wells Street. Eight hundred dollars. Paid cash.

"I kept it," she said. "I thought it'd be funny when I got famous."

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