to help Stanley unload that wheelchair.” Yale felt something unclench in his lower back, a muscle he hadn’t even felt cramping.
Bill went out to the van while Debra talked to a teller, and by the time Stanley and Bill came back through the doors with Nora and her chair, everything was in order. The whole group—Frank hadn’t arrived yet, thank God—followed the teller into the safety-deposit room.
“Our counsel is on his way,” Yale said to Stanley. They could proceed without him if need be. But then . . . but then, but then.
They started piling their coats on the long table in the middle of the room, but Bill needed it clear for inspecting the work. He handed out the white gloves they’d optimistically brought from the museum. Debra refused hers.
Nora wheeled herself up to the table. She said, “This is just ideal, isn’t it? Now we have to tell you, I’ve absolutely bought Debra off.”
Debra didn’t respond, just nervously twirled her key ring. Her fingers were red from the cold.
Nora said, “There’s more in here than art, and we’ve decided it’s time to hand some of that over. Jewelry, you know.” Yale wondered why this would be a compelling payoff when Debra could just as easily wait for Nora to die. Maybe it was a matter of everything passing through Frank, the possibility of Frank giving necklaces to his wife instead.
Yale was afraid to bring it up, but he said, “Where’s your father?”
“We killed him,” Debra said. “I smothered him with a pillow.”
Nora burst out cackling. “Well, that would solve things, wouldn’t it? Don’t scare them, dear, they’ll think you really did it. No, what Debra’s done for us is promise her father that nothing will get signed till this afternoon. A lie, but a white one.”
“I promised him too,” Stanley said.
Debra said, “He’s sleeping in.”
But it was 10:15, and Yale imagined that when Frank woke up fully, when he looked around the empty house and thought about the fact that everyone was at the bank without him, he’d show up. Or worse: He had let them leave only to wait on the front porch for the lawyer he’d asked to speed down from Green Bay. Or he was polishing his shotgun.
Debra’s hands shook as she tried to settle the key in the lock. She looked not just annoyed but terrified. Like someone who’d cut her losses and sold out her father, her rather vengeful father, for what was left of the pie. Yale was still struggling for a response when Roman touched Debra’s elbow. “You did the right thing,” he said.
Debra said, “Okay, there’s two boxes, but I can never remember which is which.”
The teller helped her slide out the first large container and carry it to the table. It held the shoebox—Yale carefully lifted the lid and took in the edges of envelopes and folded pages and white-rimmed photographs—plus some velvety jewelry boxes and a large envelope that, when Debra opened it, seemed to contain birth certificates and old deeds. Yale replaced the shoebox’s lid, resisting the temptation to paw through.
They held their breath for the second container, and when Debra opened it and reached in herself, gloveless, Bill made a noise like a frightened bird. He said, “Please, let me, let me.” Nora, at eye level to the tabletop, couldn’t have seen into the box yet. She sat still, hands folded across her lap, taking long, patient blinks. Yale wondered how long it had been since she’d seen the pieces in person. Stanley stood beside her, attentive.
The drawings and sketches were contained—dear God—in two crumbling manila envelopes. Below those, unprotected, lay the Foujita watercolor, Nora in the green dress. Yale was looking for paper quality, damage, rips. He was no expert, but things looked both appropriately old and in decent shape. The oil paintings, the alleged Hébuterne and Soutine and the two Ranko Novaks, were rolled and secured with rubber bands. Bill slid the bands off slowly, evenly, in a way that reminded Yale of a man carefully dealing with a Trojan. He called Roman to help, and together their gloved hands unfurled the canvas at an excruciatingly slow pace and held it, by the corners, to the table. It was the Hébuterne, the bedroom.
Nora said, “Goodness, this is like being pried open, isn’t it? What an odd feeling.” She leaned forward to see the work. Yale could hear her wheeze, fast and thick.
Yale couldn’t read Bill’s reaction yet, didn’t want to say the wrong thing—what