Chapter 4: The Sketch in the Sketchbook

The Penhallow Gallery had been closed since six, and my aunt Beatrice unlocked the glass door herself.

She was sixty-two, with short gray hair, round glasses, and a long charcoal cardigan that hung to her knees.

She looked at me for one second, then pulled me into a hug so hard my bandaged hand ached.

"My brother's girl," she said into my hair. "In a borrowed jacket."

"It's his," I said.

Beatrice looked past me at Ethan, who stood on the mat with his hands loose at his sides.

She studied him the way she studied a canvas, from the top of the frame to the bottom.

"You're the guard," she said.

"Ethan Rudd, ma'am."

"Rudd." She said it again, slowly, as if she were tasting it. "Well. You carried her paintings off the curb. A neighbor sent me that video too."

"Someone had to."

"Not someone," Beatrice said. "You."

He did not answer, but his eyes had gone to the long wall behind her.

A black-and-white photograph hung there, of two men in shirtsleeves laughing on the steps of a small office.

One was my father.

I did not know the other, and Ethan looked at him for a beat too long.

Beatrice walked us through the dark gallery to a stairwell in the back.

"Your mother thinks she took your studio," she said. "She took a room."

"Come up."

The third floor was an attic with a slanted ceiling and a skylight the size of a door.

The light was good, even at night, with the city glowing through the glass.

There was an easel, a long table, and a bed in the corner.

"It is yours as long as you want it," Beatrice said. "No lease. No papers. Margo does not know it exists."

I stood in the middle of the room and my eyes filled up for the first time that week.

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