what he wanted her to know, hadn’t he? But what if her turning away from John was what had changed him? What if it wasn’t so much that numena were either monsters or angels, but that they became what we expected them to be? That they could be transformed, monster into angel, angel into monster, by our expectations. If there was only one John—and really, how could there be another, identical version of him walking around?—then she couldn’t even protect herself from him because his painting had already been destroyed, burnt in the fire along with most of the rest of her work.
At that thought her gaze went to the window seat, where she’d been sitting when Jilly had arrived earlier. Except she’d always believed that
Jilly’s gaze followed Isabelle’s to the small painting. “Oh wow,” she said, hopping down from the counter. “I haven’t seen this in years.” She picked it up to admire it, then turned to look at Isabelle. “But wasn’t it one of the ones that was destroyed in the fire?”
“That’s what I thought.”
Jilly looked confused. “But then ...”
“What’s it doing here? I don’t know. I was picking up some things that had been left for me by an old friend and that was part of the package. I never thought I’d see it again, yet here it is, as though it was never hanging in the farmhouse when the place burned down. I mean, obviously it wasn’t, though I can remember it hanging beside the fridge in the kitchen—right up until the night of the fire. What I
“So who’s had it for all these years?”
Isabelle shrugged. ‘just this guy who works at the bus terminal.”
For some reason Isabelle felt uncomfortable in sharing the communications from Kathy that had recently found their way into her hands. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jilly to keep a confidence, but that their arrival was still too fresh, their message too private for her to share. She wanted to deal with them on her own first. Letter and painting and the mysterious book that was still wrapped in brown paper on the window seat.
“Just this guy,” Jilly repeated.
Isabelle nodded.
“This is so mysterious. So how did you meet him?”
“It’s kind of a long, weird story ....”
Jilly sensed her discomfort. “Which you’re not ready to share quite yet.”
“I just don’t know where to start. I ...”
“You don’t have to explain,” filly said as Isabelle’s voice trailed off. “Nosy, I might be, but I’m patient, too. Just promise you’ll tell me all about it when you’re ready to talk about it.”
“That I can promise.”
Jilly admired the painting for another couple of moments before laying it back down on the window seat.
“But I do have to know something,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Did you borrow some paint and brushes before you left this morning?” Isabelle waved a hand at her unpacked boxes. “The one thing I don’t need is more art supplies.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Why? Have you lost something?”
“The only thing I care about is my favorite brush, but there’s also a couple of tubes of paint gone missing. A piece of hardboard, some turpentine. I can’t figure it out at all.”
Isabelle thought of her surviving numena. It would be so like Cosette to have “borrowed” the art supplies that Jilly was missing.
“That kind of thing happens to me all the time back on the island,” she said. “I think I must have brought one or two of the local Good Neighbors along with me.”
Jilly gave her an interested look. “Really? You’ve seen faeries on the island?”
July, Isabelle realized, was probably the only person she knew who would take something like that at face value. And it wasn’t really a lie—many of her numena were very much like the little mischievous sprites and hobgoblins that inhabited folk and fairy tales.
“I don’t see them,” she explained, “but things are often rearranged or borrowed for extended periods of time. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Well, they’re welcome to share,” Jilly said. “I just wish they hadn’t taken that brush.”
“Why don’t you leave out a note, asking for it back?”
Jilly gave her a quick smile. “Maybe I will. But that doesn’t help me at the moment. It’s back to the art shop for me. Will you be coming by this afternoon?”
Isabelle nodded. “I shouldn’t be here too much longer. Rubens isn’t giving you any trouble, is he?”
“Rubens,” Jilly announced, “is an absolute angel, just like he always is.”
Isabelle waited until Jilly had left before returning to the windowseat. When she was sitting down again, she picked up the other parcel, the one that felt like a book, but first she looked out the window, not at the view of the river, but down below at the street, searching for a dark-haired man in white shirt and jeans. But if John Sweetgrass was skulking about Joli Coeur, trying to catch a glimpse of her the way she was of him, he was being surreptitious about it.
After a while she sighed and began to open the parcel. The book inside had no title, or byline. But three- quarters of the pages were filled with a familiar handwritten script that she immediately recognized as Kathy’s, and although the entries were undated, it was obviously a journal.
Yet another mystery, Isabelle thought, for Kathy had never held with the business of keeping a journal—or at least not in all the time that they’d lived together.
“If people want to find out about me,” she’d said once, “they can read my stories. Everything I want anybody to know about me is in them.” Apparently, she’d changed her mind.
Marisa felt guilty taking Alan’s bed from him while he slept on the sofa, but as usual, once he’d made up his mind there was no arguing with him. His gentlemanly quota was as high as ever—a feature of his personality that she found both endearing and frustrating. Just for once she wished he wouldn’t feel the need to always do the right thing. If he could just have put aside his sense of decency for one night and come to bed with her—it didn’t have to be a lifetime commitment; just for tonight. Much as she cared for him, she wasn’t so sure she was ready for any long-term commitment ever again anyway. All she wanted was to be held through the night, held by someone who cared about her. Who understood her.
But that wasn’t Alan, and she hadn’t been able to quite muster enough courage to ask him, so she found herself lying in his big bed on her own, listening to the sound of his washing up in the bathroom, followed by the creaking of the sofa’s springs as he shifted from one position to another, trying to get comfortable.
She didn’t think she’d ever fall asleep. Her head was too full of a bewildering jumble of worries and emotions. Questions prowled through her mind without respite. What was George going to do when it finally sank in that she’d really walked out on him? What was going to happen to her? How was her relationship with Alan going to be affected? What did she even want out of their relationship? When was she going to take control of her own life for a change?
Leaving George was a step in the right direction, she knew, but it had left her in a state of limbo. If only Isabelle hadn’t come back into the picture. If only she’d had the courage to leave George earlier—even a week ago would have been time enough. Or was that it at all? Perhaps she’d been waiting for this situation to arise, for Alan to be taken, before she could make the move on her own. That seemed to be perverse enough to fit into the constant mess she made of her life.
When she finally fell asleep, it was to dream of a face looking in at her through the bedroom window.
She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, friendly or hostile; if it was some anima risen up from her subconscious, panicking at what she had done, or a night muse looking in on her with approval, eyes dark with the promise of what was to come. All she knew for sure was that when she woke in the morning, she was alone in the bed and there was no one at the window.
She rose, still wearing Alan’s shirt, and went into the living room, where she watched him sleeping for a few
