the door. She said, “There’s a man here who’d like permission to join your party.”
Yale stood. His adrenal glands did strange and unwelcome things.
But the man stepping into the room was not Frank. It was someone Yale had never seen before—a tall, older black man brushing snow from his trench coat and looking horribly peeved.
“Herbert!” Bill said, and rose to shake his hand, a big, manly shake.
And while everyone was turned that way, Nora tapped Yale’s arm. “For Fiona,” she said. The necklace.
Yale nodded and rose to greet Herbert Snow. “This is our general counsel,” he said to everyone, to himself, to the universe.
* * *
—
Yale and Bill and Roman whooped and sang all the way back to Egg Harbor.
At the inn, Yale called Charlie.
“That’s good,” Charlie said. “I’m really happy for you.”
“You’re really happy for me? Come on, this is huge! That’s like what you say when you see your ex on the street, Oh, you have a new boyfriend, you lost weight, I’m really happy for you. This is a huge thing! Like, the art is literally in Bill’s room. I’m taking you out to dinner. Tomorrow, because we have to stay one more night. We have Xeroxing to do, and the roads are bad. Where do you want to go? For dinner?”
“I’ll think about it.” There was a pause, and then Charlie said, “I really am happy for you. I’m just tired.”
Yale almost said something then about the house, about how there was this house he’d been wanting Charlie to visit, and this was the sign, this was the right time—but that could wait. He’d bring it up tomorrow, when they’d had some wine.
He called Fiona next, and she shrieked gratifyingly. He told her he had something for her, told her to come by the gallery to see the art. She said, “Oh, Yale, this was supposed to happen, don’t you think?”
* * *
—
On the ride back the next morning—art packed and padded in the trunk, sheaves of Xeroxes on the backseat, papers signed and dated and witnessed—the three of them talked at full speed.
“I do feel bad for the family,” Yale said. “We’re not terrible people, are we?”
Bill said, “That man would take the pieces to the wrong restorers, the wrong appraisers, he’d get ripped off, and nothing would ever get authenticated, let alone into the catalogs. A lot of the world’s great art has been lost thanks to folks exactly like Frank.”
“And this will make the gallery,” Yale said. “I mean—I’m sorry, the gallery’s already in tremendous shape—”
Bill laughed to reassure him. “But we don’t yet have four Modiglianis.”
Roman spoke from the middle of the backseat: “This is a hell of a first week.”
* * *
—
It hit Yale halfway home: If Nora weren’t donating everything, she might well have willed a piece to Fiona. A single sketch could have paid Fiona’s way to college. And certainly Fiona knew it. And she’d never said a thing.
2015
When Fiona got back to Richard’s, Jake Austen was on the couch talking to Serge. She wanted to be angry at the invasion, she let herself be angry, but maybe she was a little relieved too. No one would ask her, yet, how her day had gone. Still: She hadn’t imagined this guy would embed himself. His eyes were red, his shirt undone one button too low.
She put her purse on the counter, slid her shoes off. Both men waved, and Jake pointed dramatically to his phone, which lay on the coffee table. He was recording. Fiona made herself tea as quietly as she could.
Serge was saying, “He finds the space between the action and the resting. He doesn’t want the photo of action, and he doesn’t want the photo of rest, okay? Yes? He looks for the moment between.” Fiona was unclear about whether Serge worked as a publicist for anyone else anymore, or if giving interviews about Richard had become his life.
Jake tapped his phone, and the two men relaxed. “How’d it go?” Jake said. “They, ah, they filled me in, I hope you don’t mind. Is everything okay?”
“Christ,” she said. “I don’t know.” Well, there went her little fantasy of looking like a normal person on a normal trip. Poof.
Fiona hadn’t had dinner yet, but she wanted to go straight to bed. She should call Damian, though, and not forget to ask after Karen with something like concern. She ought to call Cecily and tell her that yes, Kurt was definitely in Paris, even if Cecily wouldn’t want