Look for the picture inside the picture. It’s not always easy to see, but it’s always there. And if you miss it, you can miss the world. I know that better than anyone, because when I looked at the picture of Carson Jones and my daughter—of Smiley and his Punkin—I thought I knew what I was looking for and missed the truth. Because I didn’t trust him? Yes, but that’s almost funny. The truth was, I wouldn’t have trusted any man who presumed to claim my darling, my favored one, my Ilse.
I found a picture of him alone before I found the one of them together, but I told myself I didn’t want the solo shot, that one wouldn’t do me any good, if I wanted to know his intentions toward my daughter I had to touch them as a couple with my magic hand.
I was already making assumptions, you see. Bad ones.
If I’d touched the first one, really searched the first one—Carson Jones dressed in his Twins shirt, Carson alone—things might have been different. I might have sensed his essential harmlessness. Almost certainly would have. But I ignored that one. And I never asked myself why, if he was a danger to her, I had then drawn her alone, looking out at all those floating tennis balls.
Because the little girl in the tennis dress was her, of course. Almost all the girls I drew and painted during my time on Duma Key were, even the ones that masqueraded as Reba, or Libbit, or—in one case—as Adriana.
There was only one female exception: the red-robe.
When I touched the photograph of Ilse and her boyfriend, I had sensed death—I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, but it was true. My missing hand sensed death, impending like rain in clouds.
I assumed Carson Jones meant my daughter harm, and that was why I wanted her to stay away from him. But he was never the problem. Perse wanted to make me stop—was, I think, desperate to make me stop once I found Libbit’s old drawings and pencils—but Carson Jones was never Perse’s weapon. Even poor Tom Riley was only a stopgap, a make-do.
The picture was there, but I made a wrong assumption, and missed the truth: the death I felt wasn’t coming from him. It was hanging over her.
And part of me must have known I missed it.
Why else had I drawn those damned tennis balls?