Memory and Dream

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

“So,” Alan prompted her when she hesitated again.

Rolanda took a deep breath. “It’s just ... do you know a girl named Cosette?”

Everything went still inside Alan. Only in my dreams, he wanted to say, but all that came out was

“Cosette?”

“She’s about fifteen or so, maybe older. Red hair. She—actually, she looks just like that painting by Isabelle Copley that’s hanging in the Foundation’s waiting room. You know, the one with all the roses.”

“The Wild Girl,” Marisa offered from where she was leaning against the counter.

Rolanda nodded. “Cosette looks exactly like the wild girl. She says she was Copley’s model, but of course that’s impossible.”

She looked from Alan to Marisa as though expecting one of them to contradict her, but neither of them made a comment. Alan thought of that early-morning visitation on Isabelle’s island that he had convinced himself had only been a dream. His Cosette had looked exactly the same as Isabelle’s painting as well.

“What about her?” he asked finally when Rolanda didn’t go on. “She says she knows you.”

“I’ve ... met her. Or at least I’ve met someone calling herself Cosette who looks just like the girl in Isabelle’s picture.”

Rolanda appeared relieved at that. “Did you notice anything, well, strange about her?”

“Everything was strange about her.”

“I’m in the dark here,” Marisa said, joining them at the table. “Who are you talking about?”

Alan sighed. “It was when I stayed over at Isabelle’s place the other night.

On Wren Island,” he added, for Rolanda’s benefit. “I woke up just before dawn and she Cosette, that is—was sitting in the windowseat of the guest room just looking at me. We had a mostly one-sided conversation that didn’t make any real sense at all, but before I could get her to clarify anything, she opened the window and took off across the lawn.”

“That’s the only time you’ve met her?” Rolanda asked.

Alan nodded.

“She told me you were her boyfriend.”

“I don’t think anything she says can be taken at face value,” Alan said. “Well, she also told me that her feelings for you weren’t reciprocated.”

“What did Isabelle have to say about her?” Marisa wanted to know. “Nothing,” Alan said. “I never told her about it.”

Both women regarded him with surprise.

“But why not?” Marisa asked.

“I thought I was dreaming. I did ask Isabelle if there was anyone else living on the island and she told me there wasn’t. It was all very weird. Isabelle herself seemed jumpy that morning—I think she’d been up all night drawing—and I was afraid of getting onto the wrong foot with her again.” He turned to Rolanda. “She was going to illustrate the omnibus.”

“Was?” Rolanda asked. “She’s changed her mind?”

“Not exactly. Have you seen the news today?”

Rolanda shook her head.

“Margaret Mully was murdered last night.”

Rolanda’s eyes widened with surprise. “Maybe we should have a celebration,” she said. “I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but that’s one woman the world can certainly do without.”

“You won’t hear any argument from me.”

“But what does Mully’s death have to do with your publishing the omnibus?” Rolanda asked.

“It’s going to complicate things, as in—just to give you one example—what’s her estate going to do in terms of the appeal Mully filed a couple of days ago?”

Rolanda frowned. “So she’s going to stand in our way even after she’s dead. God, how I hate that woman. It’s hard to believe that she could have had a daughter with as big a heart as Kathy’s.”

“And that’s not the only problem,” Alan said. “The police think I killed her.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Very serious,” Marisa said. The coffee maker made an odd burbling noise, indicating that the coffee was ready. “We were just coming back from the precinct when we ran into you,” she added as she rose to fill their mugs.

“Now I know what you meant by ‘No comment,’” Rolanda said.

Alan nodded. “The media was waiting for us when we left the precinct. It was a zoo.”

“Well, if they’d wanted a real story, they should have been at the Foundation this morning,” Rolanda said.

Marisa brought the mugs over to the table, along with the sugar bowl and a carton of milk.

“What happened?” she asked as she poured a generous dollop of milk into her coffee.

“I’ll bet it had something to do with Cosette,” Alan said.

Rolanda nodded. She took a sip of her coffee and then told them about her own experiences with Cosette.

“She said that?” Alan asked. “That Isabelle made her?”

“‘Brought her over’ was the way she put it, but I definitely got the idea that she thinks Isabelle created her by making a painting of her.”

Alan closed his eyes. He could see the small red-haired girl again, perched on the windowsill. Could hear her voice.

I’d suggest that you simply use monochrome studies to illustrate the book ... but I have to admit I’m too selfish and lonely. It’ll be so nice to see a few new faces around here.

It seemed like something right out of one of Kathy’s stories, but as soon as Rolanda had come to that part of her story, Alan had found himself remembering the fire. How all of Isabelle’s paintings had been destroyed. How her art had changed so drastically after the fire. How she couldn’t—or wouldn’t, he amended now—explain why her art had changed so drastically. This even explained why she’d been so adamant that the finished art she did for Kathy’s new book had to always remain in her possession.

At the same time that all those disparate puzzle pieces were coming together for Alan, he saw that Marisa was shaking her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t buy any of this. It’s just not possible.”

“You weren’t there,” Rolanda said. “I saw her draw that Xacto blade across her palm. She didn’t bleed. And then she literally vanished from my room. They’re still talking about how she appeared out of nowhere downstairs in the waiting room.”

“In front of the painting,” Alan said.

Rolanda nodded slowly. “Where I first saw her. Do you think it, I don’t know, draws her to it somehow?”

“It would be her anchor, wouldn’t it? If what she says is true.”

“Oh please,” Marisa said. “You can’t be taking this seriously.”

“I know what I saw,” Rolanda said.

“And I know what I felt,” Alan added. “There was something unnatural about that girl. I felt it right away. That’s why I found it so easy to pass it off as a dream. It just didn’t feel real to me. And what Rolanda’s telling us goes a long way to explaining Isabelle’s strange behavior after the farmhouse burned down and all her art was destroyed.”

“I don’t get it,” Marisa said.

But Rolanda knew. “If the paintings give these ... whatever they are. If it gives them life, then if something happens to the painting, if it should get destroyed—”

‘—then the beings she created with those paintings might die as well. After all, there is a connection between them, like in that Oscar Wilde story.” Rolanda shivered. “This is so weird.”

Marisa looked from her to Alan. “This is so ridiculous. We’re talking real life, not fairy tales.”

“I know how it sounds,” Alan said. “But you haven’t met Cosette. You don’t know what it was like in the old days with Kathy and Isabelle. There was always a kind of magic in the air.”