ISABELLA
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was a mile and a half from the house, and yet, despite having driven past it thousands of times, Stephanie had never been. From the outside it didn’t look like a museum at all; if not for the discreet painted wood sign she would have simply assumed it was a private house. Inside she passed through a narrow, dimly lit walkway of arched brick. On her left, infrequent small windows revealed nothing of the house’s dark interior, but to her right the hallway suddenly opened onto a spectacular courtyard whose roof of leaded Victorian glass filled the space with a palpable winter light. She heard mizzling water and a Gregorian murmur of voices in the air. The walls rose four stories with balconies all around overlooking the garden and its massive tiled floor. All around the central mosaic were little walkways and statues, a mix of Asian and classical. At one end a pair of stone staircases rose to meet at a second-floor balcony thrusting into the courtyard like a pulpit. Gothic moldings in marble and stone adorned every available surface.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as she gazed up at nasturtium vines cascading down the side wall.
Alex was waiting. He said something to the girl in the green blazer manning the admissions desk and she hastily unhooked the rope and motioned Stephanie through.
She started to rummage through her purse to pay.
“I’m a member,” he said, taking her arm. “You’re my guest.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“You’ve never been? How is that possible?”
Stephanie shook her head as she continued to take in the garden. Stone benches habited by engrossed couples, solitary readers and breathless tourists ringed the courtyard.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I just never did.” Looking up, she could see people passing through hallways and pausing on balconies on the upper floors. She thought of the Escher print that had hung in the kitchen of her parents’ house. Faceless men purposefully navigating stairways that defied gravity and Euclid.
They crossed the hall into what a small placard indicated was the Gothic Room. “Isabella.” Alex pointed to a life-size portrait of a woman in the corner of the room. She wore a simple black velvet dress and her hair was pulled back in a bun. No jewelry except a plain pearl choker with a ruby at the throat and a silver chain belt around her waist. Her skin was like marble, pale and luminescent. Her eyes looked straight ahead.
“Sargent—she was a fan.”
“Beautiful. She looks so...sure.”
“Apparently she had a motto, as I guess one did back then.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “‘Win as though you were used to it and lose as if you enjoy it.’” He smiled. “Pretty good, huh?”
Stephanie turned to look at him. “Someone’s got a little crush, I think.”
“Oh, absolutely.” He held Stephanie’s eyes until she looked away.
“And how exactly did you two meet?”
“Well, there was this girl, also named Isabella as it happened, and apparently all Isabellas get in for free, part of the bequest.”
Stephanie raised an eyebrow. “Really,” he insisted.
They did a circuit of the Gothic Room. Stephanie paused to admire a Giotto painting and a wood carving of the Trinity but she was struck most by the room itself. The pale light was warmed by the stained glass of the rose window and scattered by dark tile and burnished hardwood so it glowed muted and reverent.
He followed her eyes. “Dutch light,” he said.
“Mmm.” She nodded.
“She had several Rembrandts but they were stolen. You must have heard of it. It was quite a thing at the time. Early ’90s, I think.”
Stephanie cocked her head. “That does sound familiar... Cops, maybe?”
“Sort of. They posed as cops and fooled the security guards. Took a bunch of Rembrandt and Degas paintings. Never caught, never recovered.”
“That’s crazy,” Stephanie said quietly. They stood in silence.
Alex tipped his head to the portrait of Isabella. “You remind me of her, you know.” He was standing close. “She was incredibly alive, so much energy.”
“Ha. That’s me, all right,” Stephanie said with a bitter smile.
He took her arm. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
He led her back down to the ground floor and halfway around the courtyard to a room called the Spanish Cloister. One wall was dominated by a Sargent painting called El Jaleo. In it a flamenco dancer, right hand gathering her voluminous skirts, left delicately extended, dances across the room as a dour group of black-jacketed musicians play against the back wall. She’s in profile, fairly crackling with vitality and sensuality. Alex swept his hand over the scene. “What do you see?” he said.
“I see her. I see Isabella, her spirit.”
“She bought this painting just after losing her son. He was two.”
“Jesus,” Stephanie said. Her belly clenched.
“Her only child,” Alex went on. “She never had another.”
Stephanie studied the painting, all somber blacks and whites save a stroke each of red and orange, scarves on two seated women at the far right, almost off the canvas. Like the first tulips of spring.
Neither spoke and Stephanie was uncomfortably aware of his hand still resting lightly on her arm.
She stepped away and turned to face him with a mock pout. “You never answered my quite sincere Christmas invitation.”
Alex laughed. “Appalling manners. I’m sure there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
* * *
The lights came on suddenly. Too early, too bright. Jordan struggled to clear his head. He’d been dreaming. The door was open and a man was coming toward him. Not Dennis. Jordan sat up, pulling the thin blanket up to his chin protectively. He blinked to focus as his eyes adjusted. The man was slighter, older. He had gray hair, glasses with dark frames and JC Penney clothes—khaki slacks, some kind of wrinkle-resistant synthetic, light blue button-down tucked in, brown belt and a cream windbreaker. And his shoes, not quite sneakers, sensible, functional; they made only the slightest dull sound of compression as he crossed the room. Everything about him was ordinary, neither so very much any one thing or another. He was almost invisible, the kind of person your eye would track past on a city street without retaining any impression. He was carrying a folding metal chair. He opened it at the foot of Jordan’s bed and sat down.
“Hello, Dr. Parrish,” the man said. His voice, too, was neutral, steady. It conveyed benevolence without judgment like an old family doctor or a very expensive lawyer. “Call me Sam.”