“Imagine if I’d really moved.”
“No thanks. But listen to this.” Jilly boosted herself up onto the counter that held the studio’s sink and a hot plate and sat there with her legs dangling. “John Sweetgrass stopped by to see you at my place this morning.”
“John,” Isabelle repeated.
A deep stillness seemed to settle inside her. She put a hand on the counter to steady herself. Only moments ago she’d been yearning to reclaim the past, but now that it was here, looking for her, she wasn’t so certain what to do about it. After all these years, what could she possibly say to him?
“Except,” Jilly said, “he told me he wasn’t John. He was quite rude, really. The only similarity between this guy and the John I knew is that they look exactly the same.” She went on to relate the morning’s encounter, finishing with, “I mean, isn’t it weird? I know we were never the best of friends—I don’t think anybody really knew John well except for you.”
And did I even know him at all? Isabelle wondered.
“But still,” Jilly said. “It’s not as if I hadn’t just seen him a few days ago and he was perfectly normal—well, perfectly John, anyway: friendly enough, but a little distant. This guy had such a mean look in his eyes. Does John have a twin brother? More to the point, does he have an evil twin brother?”
Isabelle shook her head. “I’ve no idea. He never really talked much about his family, or his past. I know he had an aunt living here in the city and that’s about it.”
“It’s funny how you can know someone for years, but not really know them at all, isn’t it? There’s people I’ve hung around with for years whose last names I still don’t know.”
“Considering how many people you do know, I’m surprised you can remember anybody’s name.”
Jilly smiled. “Yes, well, I’m not exactly renowned for my very excellent memory. I never forget something I’ve seen, but anything that requires words, which includes names, forget it. My memory becomes very selective then, tossing up information only as it feels like it, instead of as I need it.”
“I think it’s called getting old.”
“This is true, more’s the pity.”
Isabelle was trying to match July’s lightness of mood, but it was a losing struggle for her. She couldn’t help but remember what Rushkin had told her, how the numena could be either monsters or angels, and sometimes it was difficult to tell which was which. Except Rushkin had always had his own agenda when it came to parceling out what he wanted her to know, hadn’t he? But what if her turning away from John was what had changed him? What if it wasn’t so much that numena were either monsters or angels, but that they became what we expected them to be? That they could be transformed, monster into angel, angel into monster, by our expectations. If there was only one John—and really, how could there be another, identical version of him walking around?—then she couldn’t even protect herself from him because his painting had already been destroyed, burnt in the fire along with most of the rest of her work.
At that thought her gaze went to the window seat, where she’d been sitting when Jilly had arrived earlier. Except she’d always believed that Paddyjack had burned in the fire as well, hadn’t she?
Jilly’s gaze followed Isabelle’s to the small painting. “Oh wow,” she said, hopping down from the counter. “I haven’t seen this in years.” She picked it up to admire it, then turned to look at Isabelle. “But wasn’t it one of the ones that was destroyed in the fire?”
“That’s what I thought.”
Jilly looked confused. “But then ...”
“What’s it doing here? I don’t know. I was picking up some things that had been left for me by an old friend and that was part of the package. I never thought I’d see it again, yet here it is, as though it was never hanging in the farmhouse when the place burned down. I mean, obviously it wasn’t, though I can remember it hanging beside the fridge in the kitchen—right up until the night of the fire. What I don’t remember is taking it down or giving it away or it even having been stolen. But here it is all the same.”
“So who’s had it for all these years?”
Isabelle shrugged. ‘just this guy who works at the bus terminal.”
For some reason Isabelle felt uncomfortable in sharing the communications from Kathy that had recently found their way into her hands. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jilly to keep a confidence, but that their arrival was still too fresh, their message too private for her to share. She wanted to deal with them on her own first. Letter and painting and the mysterious book that was still wrapped in brown paper on the window seat.
“Just this guy,” Jilly repeated.
Isabelle nodded.
“This is so mysterious. So how did you meet him?”
“It’s kind of a long, weird story ....”
Jilly sensed her discomfort. “Which you’re not ready to share quite yet.”
“I just don’t know where to start. I ...”
“You don’t have to explain,” filly said as Isabelle’s voice trailed off. “Nosy, I might be, but I’m patient, too. Just promise you’ll tell me all about it when you’re ready to talk about it.”
“That I can promise.”
Jilly admired the painting for another couple of moments before laying it back down on the window seat.
“But I do have to know something,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Did you borrow some paint and brushes before you left this morning?” Isabelle waved a hand at her unpacked boxes. “The one thing I don’t need is more art supplies.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Why? Have you lost something?”
“The only thing I care about is my favorite brush, but there’s also a couple of tubes of paint gone missing. A piece of hardboard, some turpentine. I can’t figure it out at all.”
Isabelle thought of her surviving numena. It would be so like Cosette to have “borrowed” the art supplies that Jilly was missing.
“That kind of thing happens to me all the time back on the island,” she said. “I think I must have brought one or two of the local Good Neighbors along with me.”
Jilly gave her an interested look. “Really? You’ve seen faeries on the island?”
July, Isabelle realized, was probably the only person she knew who would take something like that at face value. And it wasn’t really a lie—many of her numena were very much like the little mischievous sprites and hobgoblins that inhabited folk and fairy tales.
“I don’t see them,” she explained, “but things are often rearranged or borrowed for extended periods of time. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Well, they’re welcome to share,” Jilly said. “I just wish they hadn’t taken that brush.”
“Why don’t you leave out a note, asking for it back?”
Jilly gave her a quick smile. “Maybe I will. But that doesn’t help me at the moment. It’s back to the art shop for me. Will you be coming by this afternoon?”
Isabelle nodded. “I shouldn’t be here too much longer. Rubens isn’t giving you any trouble, is he?”
“Rubens,” Jilly announced, “is an absolute angel, just like he always is.”
Isabelle waited until Jilly had left before returning to the windowseat. When she was sitting down again, she picked up the other parcel, the one that felt like a book, but first she looked out the window, not at the view of the river, but down below at the street, searching for a dark-haired man in white shirt and jeans. But if John Sweetgrass was skulking about Joli Coeur, trying to catch a glimpse of her the way she was of him, he was being surreptitious about it.
After a while she sighed and began to open the parcel. The book inside had no title, or byline. But three-quarters of the pages were filled with a familiar handwritten script that she immediately recognized as Kathy’s, and although the entries were undated, it was obviously a journal.