“Her eyes are closed.” She looked up at me. “Did you take this picture?”
“Yes.”
“While she was sleeping?”
“Yes. Do you know her?”
“No.” She stared down at the photograph. “She means something to you, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“So who is she?”
The front door opened. “Mom?”
She put down the photograph and started toward the voice. “Eric? Is everything okay? You’re home early.”
I followed her down the corridor. I recognized her son from his eulogy at the funeral. He looked past his mother, his gaze boring into me. “Who’s this?” he asked. His tone was surprisingly hostile, as though he suspected that I’d come here to hit on his mom or something.
“This is Professor Fisher from Lanford,” she said. “He came to ask about your father.”
“Ask what?”
“Just paying my respects,” I said, shaking the young man’s hand. “I’m very sorry for your loss. The entire college is.”
He shook my hand and said nothing. We all stood in that front foyer like three awkward strangers who hadn’t yet been introduced at a cocktail party. Eric broke the deadlock. “I couldn’t find my cleats,” he said.
“You left them in the car.”
“Oh, right. I’ll just grab them and head back.”
He rushed back out the door. We both watched him, perhaps with the same thoughts about his fatherless future looming in front of us. There was nothing more to learn here. It was time for me to let this family be.
“I better be going,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”
“You’re welcome.”
As I turned toward the door, my line of vision swung past the living room.
My heart stopped.
“Professor Fisher?”
My hand was on the doorknob. Seconds passed. I don’t know how many. I didn’t turn the knob, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. I just stared into the living room, across the Oriental rug, to a spot above the fireplace.
Delia Sanderson again: “Professor?”
Her voice was very far away.
I finally let go of the knob and moved into the living room, across the Oriental carpet, and stared up above the fireplace. Delia Sanderson followed me.
“Are you okay?”
No, I wasn’t okay. And I hadn’t been wrong. If I had questions before, they all ended now. No coincidence, no mistake, no doubt: Todd Sanderson was the man I saw marry Natalie six years ago.
I felt rather than saw Delia Sanderson standing next to me. “It moves me,” she said. “I can stand here for hours and find something new.”
I understood. There was the soft morning glow hitting the side, the pinkness that comes with the new day, the dark windows as though the cottage had once been warm but was now abandoned.
It was Natalie’s painting.
“Do you like it?” Delia Sanderson asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “I like it very much.”
Chapter 17
I sat on the couch. Delia Sanderson didn’t offer me coffee this time. She poured two fingers’ worth of Macallan. It was early and as we’ve already learned I am not much of a drinker, but I gratefully accepted it with a shaking hand.
“Do you want to tell me what this is about?” Delia Sanderson asked.
I wasn’t sure how to explain this without sounding insane, so I started with a question. “How did you get that painting?”
“Todd bought it.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Please,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Could you just tell me when and where he bought it?”
She looked up, thinking about it. “The where I don’t remember. But the when . . . it was our anniversary. Five, maybe six years ago.”
“It was six,” I said.
“Again with six,” she said. “I don’t understand any of this.”
I saw no reason to lie—and worse, I saw no way to say this in a way that would soften the blow. “I showed you a photograph of a sleeping woman, remember?”
“It was only two minutes ago.”
“Right. She painted that picture.”
Delia frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Her name is Natalie Avery. That was her in the photograph.”
“That . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. I thought you taught political science.”
“I do.”
“So are you some kind of art historian? Is that woman a Lanford alum too?”
“No, it’s not like that.” I looked back at that cottage on the hill. “I’m looking for her.”
“The artist?”
“Yes.”
She studied my face. “Is she missing?”
“I don’t know.”
Our eyes met. She didn’t nod, but she didn’t have to. “She means a great deal to you.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes. I realize that this is making no sense.”
“It isn’t,” Delia Sanderson agreed. “But you believe that my husband knew something about her. That’s why you’re really here.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Again I saw no reason to lie. “This will sound insane.”
She waited.
“Six years ago, I saw your husband marry Natalie Avery in a small chapel in Vermont.”
Delia Sanderson blinked twice. She rose from the couch and started to back away from me. “I think you better leave.”
“Please just listen to me.”
She closed her eyes, but, hey, you can’t close your ears. I talked fast. I explained about going to the wedding six years ago, about seeing Todd’s obituary, about coming to the funeral, about believing that maybe I was mistaken.
“You were mistaken,” she said when I finished. “You have to be.”
“So that painting. It’s a coincidence?”
She said nothing.
“Mrs. Sanderson?”
“What are you after?” she asked in a soft voice.
“I want to find her.”
“Why?”
