Chapter 16: The Fox Series

I told Harvey to stay home.

"Yes," he said, at the penthouse door, with his coat already in his hand. "I'll stay."

He put the coat back on the hook.

I didn't look at his face, because I knew what it would do to me.

On Saturday at seven forty-five, a black car dropped us at the Wakefield Gallery.

Clarence went first, with his cane.

Maddie went second, in a borrowed black jumpsuit and her good boots, scowling at every photographer she passed.

Rhys came last, carrying the banker's box in both arms.

I wore a plain black dress, and my hair pinned up with a pencil.

Maddie had insisted.

"You're an artist," she had said. "Look like you're about to draw on someone."

A wall of flashes went off at the door.

"Cassia! Cassia Hollander!"

"Is it true you're the bride from the chapel?"

"Did you come to confront her?"

I smiled and kept walking.

Inside, the gallery was white and gold and loud with two hundred people holding champagne.

The walls were hung with large framed drawings under small brass lights.

I stopped in the middle of the floor.

There was a heron on a post.

A red fox asleep in a bed of leaves.

A hare in a field of snow with its ears laid back.

I had drawn every one of them at a kitchen table, in a rented room, at twenty-two, with a cold cup of tea beside me.

Under each one was a small card.

Daphne Wakefield.

Maddie took hold of my wrist.

"Breathe," she said.

"I am."

"No, you're doing the thing where you don't."

I breathed.

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