You had a blind offer for almost twice that. He used the church to get his price, and to block other bidders. Theoretically, I mean; I hope I’m wrong. There may have been other reasons as well.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about him from the start?”
“He wasn’t involved from the start,” Matthew insisted. “Or he was, but I didn’t…When the museum sent me over, I didn’t know of any connection, except that he knew Wallace. Which you also knew,” he reminded her, pointedly. “Later, he told me the church approached him, made it sound very casual. I should have spoken to you then. He asked me not to. He convinced me that it didn’t change anything whether you knew or not, and knowing would only make you suspicious.”
“And that didn’t make you suspicious?”
“There was other stuff, too. I’m not going to lay it on you. I was stupid about the whole thing. I’m sorry, Ana. I truly felt the icon should go back to Greece.”
“What if I had decided to go with a private buyer?”
“Then that would have been that.”
“You wouldn’t have tried to talk me out of it?”
“Not if your mind was made up.”
“Bullshit.”
“What could I have done? I couldn’t make you choose against your will.”
You could have made me do anything you wanted, Ana thought bitterly, but again the anger was directed mostly at herself.
“How can I believe anything you’re telling me now?”
“That’s a fair question. I can’t answer it. You have every right to doubt me.”
So calm and reasonable, even in his guilt.
“Fuck you, Matthew.”
He had stood quite suddenly, as if she had thrown cold water in his lap. She struggled not to stand also, to keep her expression closed and ungiving. He could not stay, not now, yet she desperately did not want him to leave.
“Have you told the police all this?”
“They know the facts; the rest is hypothesis. I held back some of the history.”
“What history?”
He’d hesitated, clearly not wanting to tell this part. “The icon comes from my grandfather’s village. It turns out he and my godfather were involved in some scheme to trade it to the Germans, during the war.”
More secrets. There was no bottom to them, apparently. The grandfather clock’s metronomic click assaulted her thinking. Her great-great-uncle had built it; her grandfather had shipped it here with his other possessions fifty years before. Ana had loved the clock as a child, but at that moment she found herself wanting to toss it onto the street for the junk collectors.
“That would seem to be worth reporting,” she had said coolly.
“The details aren’t very clear.”
“You came here to tell me everything, remember?”
“This isn’t the sort of story you tell without knowing the truth behind it. It’s pretty damning stuff, and everyone involved has a different version.”
“How did my grandfather get the icon?”
“That I really don’t know. But I’m going to try to get some answers, for both of us.”
“How?”
Swaying where he stood, wanting to be gone, he had looked right at her for the first time.
“I’m going to see my godfather.”
“They’re going to let you leave the country while they’re still investigating?”
“I don’t plan on asking permission.”
“Matthew,” she began, rising to her feet, approaching him before she knew it. “You could get into serious trouble. It might look as though you’re running.” Was he? Were her instincts wrong? They had not been very dependable so far, but then why had he come at all?
“He’s more likely to speak to me than to anyone else.”
“He won’t tell you the truth.”
“He might. Or he might give something away.”
“Look, if you’re right, then he had his own man shot. He’s dangerous.”
“I don’t think he planned that.”
“Then he’s not in control of the situation,” she had insisted. Why was he not getting it? “Someone out there is willing to kill for this thing.”
He’d opened his mouth to speak, but there was no easy answer to that ugly fact, and the truth of it settled around them quietly.
“Fotis is family,” he finally mumbled. “Besides, I helped create this mess.”
“Which is a stupid reason to make it worse now. Don’t go.”
She had tried awhile longer to dissuade him, knowing it was useless. For all his seeming rationality, he was actually incredibly stubborn. He left without touching her-sure he had forfeited that right, no doubt. She had given him no encouragement, had maintained her toughness to the end, but she fixed his dark head of hair and slouched, retreating back in her mind. Then she wandered into the dining room and sank into her hard chair, hollowed out. It was more than likely that she had seen him for the last time.
That had been two days earlier, and Ana sat now in the same empty dining room, shadows banished by the strong light through the windows, the warm sun of spring. Matthew would be in Greece. She expected no word, only hoped that he was safe, that he was not playing at some game that would prove too much for him. She had tried to put the matter of the icon out of her mind. After all, she had gotten money, gotten the thing out of her life, which was most of what she wanted. The police would take it from here. It was the Greek church’s business to cry foul, not hers. She had fulfilled her side of the bargain. That oily Father Tomas had stood right there in the hall, watching his men carry the package out to the van. Let him explain what happened next, if they could find him.
And yet…Her intentions had been subverted; where was her anger? For that matter, where was her sense of responsibility? This had been no idle choice. The icon’s provenance was sketchy, as with much of the other work her grandfather acquired just after the war. Her father had seemed embarrassed by it, and her grandfather’s adoration had a covetous, unhealthy quality. Ana might never learn the details, but she had no doubt that the Greeks in that village of Matthew ’s ancestors had not parted with it willingly. It belonged back there. She didn’t subscribe to family guilt as a concept, to the responsibility for old wrongs being passed down the generations. Yet she had long suspected that shady transactions lay behind many of the old man’s acquisitions, and she had never raised the matter with him. Now she had the estate, and with it certain obligations. She didn’t intend to make a life’s work of seeking proper restitution for every painting on the walls around her, but the business of the icon had jumped to life on its own and could not now be ignored. There wasn’t a lot she could do, but there were a few troubling details to ponder. One particular matter had bothered her all along, and set her wondering-not for the first time-about connections between these new events and things that had happened in the past. Don’t start something you don’t intend to finish, her dad had always said. Was that an argument for pushing forward, or for stopping now?
Ana strode down the hall to the kitchen. The place to start was Wallace. He knew things he wasn’t sharing. She had always understood this about him, but had hoped her
