“I’m confused,” Dave said, turning onto a narrow road of broken tarmac. It ran straight as a ruler, with fields of cornstalks on either side. “These were real conversations or dreams?”
“I thought they were dreams,” Teresa replied, slumped in the passenger seat and fighting sleep. “But the calls are on my phone. Very short. I’m almost positive that I spoke to Audrey. James could have been in my head. At one point he became my parents.”
“For a hundred and seventy-five dollars I’ll tell you what that means.”
“Where is this place?”
“Should be coming right up.”
Sure enough, over the next rise a red barn appeared. Behind it an orchard marched into the distance. In front was a gravel lot so full of pickups and SUVs that they spilled onto the muddy grass. Families with children shuffled to and from the huge, beckoning barn. Dave had to park a hundred yards away, and the walk in the cold morning air revived Teresa. Pumpkins were spread in stacks near the open barn door, and a white cat danced across the top of them. Around the side were pens with sheep, goats and chickens. Teresa had never gone to places like this as a child, and would have said she had no interest. Yet she had a sudden yearning to be a girl here. To grab the scampering barn cat and rub her face in its thick fur, despite her allergies. To buy a paper bag of pellets and feed the pushy goats. For one fleeting moment she was able to imagine an entirely different childhood, a different life. She felt her eyes misting and drove her ragged fingernails into her palms. Pull yourself together.
Dave went into the barn, but Teresa continued down the muddy lane toward the orchard. Beyond the duck pond, beneath the first apple tree, was a picnic table, and sitting there was a lone and austere figure. Black cashmere sweater and rain coat. Iron gray hair and eyes. No hint of either warmth or hostility. Teresa sat down across from her.
“Hello, Ilsa.”
“Good morning.”
“Thank you for meeting. Is your sister here?”
“No. Mr. Webster is with you?”
“Yes. I imagine he’ll find us before long.”
“He is a persistent man. What did you need to ask me so urgently?”
Straight to business. So be it.
“Did Jenny call you yesterday?”
“Hmm.” Ilsa ran a hand over the rough plank of the table. “Jenny calls often.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. So you know that people have been hurt. Badly hurt, because of events you set in motion.”
“Me? No. Events have been in motion for years, with predictable consequences. My part has been small.”
“These are desperate, unstable men. To set them on each other just because you can—”
“I thought you brighter than this,” Ilsa said. “I am sorry to spoil your illusions, but your uncles are vile men and have always been so. They wish to ruin me. To take what is mine.”
“I would think there’s enough for everyone.”
“We have no idea what will be left when the accountants are done. Maybe nothing. But your grandfather was clear in his wishes.”
“I don’t believe he hated his own sons.”
“No,” Ilsa said, with a quick turn of the head that Teresa remembered. “He believed in responsibility for actions. He would have told you himself, had he lived.”
“Was it him who believed that, or you?”
“Is that what you think?” Ilsa nodded slowly. “Your grandfather was his own man. He made the rules, always.”
Dave sat down beside Teresa and placed a box with donuts and cups of hot cider on the table. Neither woman glanced at him.
“Even if you despise my uncles,” Teresa pressed, “why involve Pete? You could have dealt with Philip directly.”
“You think Peter is innocent? A thief, liar and extortionist?”
“All the more reason for you to steer clear of him.”
Ilsa placed her palms flat on the table, and Teresa wondered if their talk was over. Just that fast.
“You know about Philip,” Ilsa said. “Ja?”
“I know what you told my grandfather. I have no idea if it’s true.”
“Then ask Audrey,” the older woman sighed. “In any case, my obstacle in talking to Philip about the matter is that Alfred forbade it. It was his absolute rule that it not be discussed within the family. Under any circumstances.”
“But he’s dead,” Teresa said.
“Death does not remove my obligation. You may dismiss it, but throughout this difficult time I have tried to remain the custodian of your grandfather’s wishes.”
“More the letter than the spirit,” Dave said, through a mouth full of donut. “Jenny’s not family. That’s why you used her. Makes sense now. And if Phil or Fred killed Pete to shut him up, that was just bonus points.”
Ilsa looked at Dave as she might a goat that had bleated a credible counterfeit of speech. Teresa took a deep breath, thinking: now or never.
“Why did you ask Pete about stealing the painting?”
Ilsa took a tissue from her purse and blew her nose before speaking.
“I suspected that was your question. Are you prepared for the answer?”
I think I just got it, Teresa judged, her spirit sinking.
“As prepared as I’ll ever be.”
Ilsa swept the table again with her shaking hand, and Teresa realized it was a nervous gesture. That the older woman was as disturbed by this conversation as she was.
“I am not a religious person. Religious, spiritual, choose your own word. I have always been suspicious of those types. Your father was different. He was a true seeker. By which I mean he was certain that he did not know the answers, but was open to what answers might come. He believed in good and evil, devils, angels. I think he understood them metaphorically, the soul at war with itself. But I am not certain.”
“You talked about this stuff with him?” Teresa could not disguise her amazement.
“Later. At first I only overheard him with Alfred. They were both brought up to ignore servants. Especially women. I might have been offended, but I thought it a privilege to listen to them talk. Long and heated debates, Alfred on the side of the rational, your father the mystical. Alfred usually got the better of it. Yet I sensed that he wanted your father to win, ultimately. That he wanted to be convinced.”
“Convinced of what?”
“The influence of the supernatural. The reality of the invisible world.”
“So Grandpa didn’t believe in the painting’s power?”
Ilsa’s gaze became sharp and anxious.
“It was layers beneath layers with your grandfather. His business dealings, his entire life was such a maze of deceit that he himself was lost in it. He certainly wanted others to believe. To fear the portrait, and him by extension. Also to desire it. In private, he would laugh at them, and declare the whole thing nonsense.”
“But you didn’t buy that,” Teresa said.
“I asked him once,” Ilsa replied, her mouth twisted oddly. Smiling at a memory, yet pained by it at the same time. “If you worship this verdammte painting so much, why is it on the wall behind you.”
“He couldn’t look at something like that all the time.”
“Your father could.”
“So he had...what? A higher tolerance for the work’s influence? Higher than Grandpa, I mean?”
“Truthfully?” Ilsa eyed Dave with distrust. For a moment Teresa thought she would have to ask him to take a little walk, but the older woman overcame her hesitation. “I am not sure that comparison was ever tested.”
“Holy shit,” Dave whispered after a moment.
“Wait, what does that mean?”
“She means,” said Dave, his voice hushed with wonder, “that Alfred Arthur Morse never looked at the portrait. My God, you have got to be kidding.”
“No, that’s, that can’t...” Teresa felt stricken, and could discern a matching misery on Ilsa’s face. Why? It was shocking, certainly, but why this pain? She sat with it for half a minute and then she knew. “He brought that thing into the house. Into all our lives. His own son never recovered from what he saw. That historian died. And he never even looked at it?”
“I do not know for certain. We didn’t discuss it.”
“You do. You know, or you never would have said such a thing.”
“Perhaps now you understand your father’s mind a little better, ja?” Ilsa pushed on. Reaching a hand across the table, but stopping short of Teresa’s. “Why he might have found his own claim to the work superior to Alfred’s.”
“Did he know Grandpa never saw it?”
“If I am not sure, he could not have been. Yet he must have sensed the truth.”
“And he asked you to arrange its theft?”
“His interest was not like other men’s,” Ilsa insisted. “He did not want to sell it, or to inflate his stature. He did not care about ownership. As long as Alfred allowed him access, he was content. But Philip and the lawyers pushed Alfred to sell. Dorothy hated it and wanted it gone, and then she died so needlessly. Alfred felt terrible grief and guilt, and made up his mind to be rid of it. Ramón realized he would lose the work forever.”
“But what did he want from it?” Teresa demanded.
“That he could not have said himself, I think. Except. He believed there was a demon in his blood. I use his own words. The thing that gave him strength and clarity also gave him those terrible depressions. And the mania, which was worse. He was institutionalized as a teenager.”
“I didn’t know that,” Teresa said numbly. Bludgeoned by the knowledge.
“He saw in Goya a kindred spirit. Someone who had been through the fire, and found a way to defeat his demon. He thought that by looking closely enough, by meditating on the work, he might know the artist’s mind. He might find his own way out. For himself, for your mother. For you. It was not greed or possessiveness, Teresa. It was love.”
A green tractor rumbled by, towing a hay wagon full of squealing children. They made their slow way along the rutted lane, into the heart of the orchard. Teresa looked for the hidden lie, but could not discover it. She had always felt that her father loved her, however distantly. Love. How much harm had been perpetrated in its name? How much more was to come before they found the bottom of this?
“What then?” she asked, wiping the dampness from her face. “You asked Pete to steal it and he refused.”
“He refused to even answer. He pretended not to take me seriously. I put myself into his hands and achieved nothing. I told Ramón he must forget the whole matter.”
“How did he take that?” Dave asked.
“Not well. He didn’t argue, that was not his way.”
“But he didn’t give up the idea?”
“I believed that he had.”
“Do you think he stole the painting?” Teresa asked. “Tell me honestly, Ilsa.”
The woman bowed her head, and Teresa feared the worst. But a moment later Ilsa shook her gray crown vigorously.
“It was a long time before I could remember that day. I confess that in weaker moments I wondered. When I finally brought myself to ask him, Ramón swore he had not done it. He was offended. Offended and hurt. It was the last time we spoke.” Teresa thought the woman would weep then, but her eyes remained dry. The tears were all in her voice. “He did not care for me as I did for him, but I do not believe he would have hurt me like that.”
“Wait a minute,” said Dave eagerly, leaning forward. “You’re saying you do remember that day?”
“Much of it has come back. It took months, Mr. Webster. Years even. Much too late for the police, or your investigation.”
“And no memory of who hit you?”
“It was from behind, I never saw. Just the boy there on the carpet.”
“James,” Teresa breathed.
“Yes,” said Ilsa, her voice gone strange. She stared at a grassy patch near the table, but her mind was back in the study at Owl’s Point. “Rolled into a ball. So still. As if there was no life in him. Then for just a moment before the room went dark, he looked up at me. And he smiled. An awful smile.”
“What?” Teresa cried, standing and banging the table with her thigh. A cup of cider went over, and Dave stood also. “What the hell are you talking about? He was catatonic when they found him.”
“Yes,” Ilsa agreed. Her voice suddenly tired, as if the vision had emptied her. “It’s true, yet the picture is in my mind. So clear. Probably something my bruised brain invented.”
“Sit down,” Dave said urgently. Why urgent? Because he sensed that her outburst had broken the mood. They might lose Ilsa any moment, and there was more he wanted to know. She didn’t care. Not about Ilsa’s secrets or Dave’s needs or anything. It was all too much. The edges of her vision shimmered, and a sick feeling welled up in her. She sat.
“What else do you remember?” Dave asked.
“Bits and pieces,” Ilsa mumbled. “Nothing useful. I went to Teresa’s room to check on her. Ramón was worried. He was normally inattentive to children’s illnesses, but he was very worried that day. I heard James scream, I ran down the back stairs to the study.”
It started. A wash of bright light, and the world fractured. Don’t close your eyes, Teresa commanded herself. That only makes it worse. Yes, that’s my girl. See it. See.
“What’s wrong?” Dave’s hand grasped her upper arm. “Teresa?”
“She is having a seizure,” Ilsa answered calmly.
“You were in the room,” Teresa said between clenched teeth. Fighting to remain present.
“Yes,” Ilsa replied. “Your room.”
Not heading to her room, which Teresa had always believed, but actually in the room. She could see her there. Concerned gray eyes looking down, moments before James tore their world open. Teresa pulled breath downward from the base of her lungs, releasing it slowly. She stared at a single branch of the apple tree, willing it to stay solid.
“Where was Audrey?” she asked, her voice growing stronger.
“Sleeping by the window.”
“Did you see her there?”
“No. You did.”
“That’s right,” Teresa said. Herself again. The fractured world began to reassemble. Dave still held her arm, warm and close. Looking worried. Ilsa seemed shocked. She had not expected the young woman to shake off the fit. For the very good reason that Teresa had never done so before. “I saw her. No one else did. Dave, we have to go back. Now.”
“Like, right now?”
“Yes, we have to go back to the house. Please, get the car, and I’ll be right there.”
“Right. All right.” He looked at her with concern and suspicion both, but rose from the table and set off toward the barn. Ilsa had begun to rise.
“One more thing,” Teresa said. “What did you see that night? The night Grandpa died.”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw someone in the house.”
“No, that was only shadows.” Ilsa fell back onto the wooden bench and turned away. She looked as drained as Teresa felt. “I found him in that, that state. I was frightened.”
“A figure with something over its head. Ilsa, please.”
“It was nothing. Nothing but my fear. Fear does the most terrible things to us, my child. It is the cause of all of this unhappiness.”
I can’t argue with that, Teresa thought. My child. Something her father said. Fred had been correct about the source of Ilsa’s residual affection.
“You know,” the older woman continued. “Later I decided it wasn’t something covering its head. That it was hair. You see what I mean? Long thick hair to his shoulders.”
“Like my dad’s.”
“Yes,” Ilsa confirmed. With a smile so fragile that the faintest pressure would shatter it. “Like Ramón. But it was nothing, Teresa. There was no one there.”
“Okay.”
“Why did you ask me about it?”
“No reason. No reason at all.”