“Oh, no. It’s fine.” She hit the space bar on her computer to pause the music and wondered how long he had been standing there. It was early afternoon, and she had been trying to get through her usual post-lunch slump by bopping along to a ’90s hits playlist, which she now realized might have looked less than professional. “Was I too loud?”
“Well. I did enjoy your Whitney rendition.” When she didn’t reply, he held out his hand, palm facing her, as if he were approaching a skittish raccoon. “I’m kidding. I mean, I did hear you. But only because I was down here anyway, and I thought I would ask if you needed help with anything.”
Kate didn’t like when he was nice. It made her feel worse about sneaking around the house and reading his mother’s diary. Although, she reminded herself, she wouldn’t have had to do that if he had shown her the diary in the first place.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks, though.”
“What are you working on?”
She couldn’t tell if he was testing her or if he was just curious. She had to look down at the table to remember what she had been doing before he came in.
“Oh,” she said. “Your sketchbooks.”
“My sketchbooks?”
She lifted one up off the pile and showed him the inside cover. Theo Brand, it said in a child’s wobbly letters. He looked surprised.
“Good cursive,” Kate remarked.
He came forward and stood next to her. He smelled good, she thought, and was immediately horrified with herself. It was probably just his soap. Dr. Bronner’s peppermint. Which she only knew because she had searched his entire bathroom. She wanted to sink into a hole in the floor.
Instead she said, “I like your drawings.”
“I was terrible,” he said, smiling.
“All kids are terrible.”
He ran his finger down the coil of one spine. “My parents wanted me to be a prodigy. They thought their powers combined would create some miracle. But I had no sense of color. No artistic spirit.”
“Oh, come on,” Kate said.
“Hand to heart. Their exact words.”
Kate opened her mouth, then closed it. Frowned. It was such a cruel thing to say to a child. True, Miranda had a reputation for brittleness, but her pictures, even the violent ones, were so sensitive to light, to the weight of her forms. They showed tenderness. Theo was making it sound like she had been kinder to her photographs than to her own son.
“There was something I wanted to ask you about,” she said, changing the subject. “Here, let me find it.”
She put on her gloves and went to one of the boxes she had been transferring photographs into. She lifted each one out until she found what she was looking for. It was a print of The Threshold. She had found a few by now. On the back, Miranda had written three lines. In red pen:
MB 1990
And then, in black Sharpie, as if it had been added later:
All I ever wanted was a life that meant something.
I thought wanting it would be enough.
Miranda had written on other prints, too. Not names or places, but mysterious phrases that did not describe the photo’s contents. Gray tendrils, heavy salt, she had written on the reverse of an image of dried seaweed. On a self-portrait: I am time, I refuse myself.
“Are the words supposed to be part of the art?” Kate asked Theo. “Or are they just notes to herself?”
He studied the writing. His good humor faded, leaving his face severe. He reached out to touch the edge of the picture, and although her instinct was to flinch the paper away, she let his finger graze it. It belonged to him, after all.
“I don’t know,” he said at last, dropping his hand. “I guess we’ll have to wait to see what Hal says.”
“Hal Eggers?”
“Yeah. He’s the one in charge of selling the stuff. He was my parents’ dealer.”
“I’ve seen his name.” Kate studied the print. “This must be worth a fortune. It’s in perfect condition. Plus the inscription. What’ll it sell for? Six hundred grand? Seven?”
“Why?” Theo asked. “Are you planning to steal it?”
Kate was so taken aback she almost dropped the picture.
“Of course not,” she said. “I would never do that. Even if I could get away with it, which I couldn’t.”
She set about returning the photograph to its box so that she didn’t have to look at him. Who the fuck was he, thinking everyone was out to get him? She had spent so much