“I will bring your friend back to you. If you are satisfied that it is indeed her, you will paint for me. If not, then we will part ways here and I will never trouble you again.”
Isabelle hated herself for what she was thinking.
You wouldn’t be doing this for yourself, she tried to tell herself. Not entirely. Sure, you’re selfish and you want her back, but it’s not like you’d be the only person to benefit. She thought of what Kathy had written about her in the journaclass="underline"
It’s not because she’s beautiful, which she is; it’s because she’s an angel, sent down from heaven to make us all a little more grateful about our time spent here on planet earth. We’re better people for having known her.
Kathy might as well have been talking about herself.
“These paintings,” Isabelle began.
“I will ask you to do only enough to restore me. Two—three at the most.”
“And your numena?”
“I will give them what they need from my own dreams.”
Could she do it? Isabelle asked herself. Could she bring two or three of her own numena across from the before and sacrifice them for Kathy’s sake?
She knew it would be wrong. She was wrong to even consider it. It put her on the same level as Rushkin. She knew that Kathy would be horrified at the price paid for her return.
“Well?” Rushkin asked.
“It wouldn’t even be necessary for you to make new paintings,” Rushkin said. “You must have one or two left over from before you entered this abstract expressionism period of yours.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “I couldn’t do that.”
It was hard enough that she had to sacrifice anyone for Kathy to be able to return, but not them. Not John and Paddyjack, the wild girl and the handful of others who had survived.
“But you will paint for me?”
41
“Isabelle,” he said softly. “What do you have to lose? If I fail to bring your friend back to your satisfaction, you owe me nothing. If I succeed—surely it would be worth any price?”
“I don’t know.”
God, she felt so confused.
If Rushkin wasn’t lying about being able to bring Kathy back, then perhaps he was also telling the truth when he said that the numena weren’t real. Isabelle couldn’t barter with true human lives—even for Kathy’s sake. But if the numena weren’t real. If they were only paintings. Dream-born figments without any true life of their own ...
But then she thought of something Sophie had told her back when they were sharing a studio in the early eighties. They’d gotten to talking about dreams, and Sophie, who had very vivid dreams, had insisted that you always had to maintain your principles, even when you were dreaming. What you did in a dream might not be real in terms of the waking world, she explained, but that didn’t change the fact that you had done it. That you were capable of doing it. If you killed someone in a dream, you were still guilty ofmurder, even if there was no corpse when you woke, even if no one had really died. Because you would still have made the choice where it counted: inside yourself.
So how would this be any different?
“I repeat,” Rushkin said. “What do you have to lose?”
My soul, Isabelle thought. And everything I’ve ever believed in. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me,” she said.
Rushkin shook his head. “But I do, Isabelle. I do. We have always had our differences, but I respect your beliefs. Just because I believe your feelings concerning the numena to be untrue doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the torment you are going through.”
His gaze met hers, guileless and clear. She could almost believe he honestly cared for her. Could almost feel herself falling under his sway again. Oh, Kathy, she thought. What am I supposed to do?
XI
There was no answer at the door to Isabelle’s studio.
“Jilly said she was running some errands this morning,” Alan said. “She mustn’t be back yet.”
As he turned away, Marisa stepped up to the door and tried the knob. The lock was engaged but the door hadn’t been completely shut and it swung open at her touch.
“Why don’t we wait for her inside?” she said.
“No,” Alan said. “We can’t just barge in ....”
But Marisa had already stepped inside. Alan and Rolanda exchanged uncomfortable looks, then reluctantly followed her inside. The studio was crammed with boxes and suitcases, but otherwise empty.
“Look at this,” Marisa said, standing by the windowseat.
She held up the painting of Paddyjack and Alan drew a sharp breath.
“That’s a character out of one of Kathy’s stories, isn’t it?” Rolanda said.
Alan nodded. He crossed the room and took the painting from Marisa. In the corner by Isabelle’s signature he found a date, 1974. So it was the original, not a copy.
“This shouldn’t exist,” he said.
Marisa gave him an odd look. “Why not?”
“It was destroyed in the fire—almost all of her early work was destroyed except for the one I’ve got, some juvenilia and the paintings in the Foundation’s waiting room.”
“That must have been so horrible for her,” Rolanda said.
“It devastated her,” Alan said, “though she tried not to show it.” He shook his head. “All that astonishing work ... gone, just like that.”
He pictured the one painting by Isabelle that he owned—a ten-by-sixteen oil pastel of a small angular, red-haired gamine that she’d called Annie Nin—and a thought came to him then. If Cosette really had been brought over through Isabelle’s painting The Wild Girl, then the subject of the painting he owned would be alive, too. Out there in the world somewhere. But the others, the others were all dead.
Destroyed in the fire.
“It must have killed her,” he said softly.
“Killed who?” Marisa asked.
But Rolanda was with him. “Isabelle,” she said. “The way she must have felt when the people who were born from her paintings all died in that fire.”
“No wonder the direction of her art changed so drastically,” Alan said. He stared down at the painting he held. “Except ... what if they weren’t destroyed?”
“You just said that the fire took almost everything she’d ever done up to that point in her career,”
Marisa said.
Alan nodded. “Including this painting. But it’s here, isn’t it?”
“Do you think she only pretended that they were destroyed in the fire?” Rolanda asked. “That she hid them so that she could keep them safe from harm?”
“I don’t know,” Alan replied.
But he remembered again how Isabelle had insisted on the condition that the originals of the art she did for Kathy’s book remained in her possession at all times.
“She’d be in a lot of trouble with her insurance company, if that’s true,” Marisa said.
Alan nodded absently. He placed the painting back down in the window seat, setting it on top of the brown wrapping paper that it had been lying upon before Marisa picked it up. He noticed the envelope as he was straightening up. Before he knew what he was doing, he had the envelope in his hand and was studying the handwriting.
“What’s that?” Marisa asked.
“A letter from Kathy. I recognize the handwriting.”
“Wait a sec,” Marisa said as he started to open it. “I know I walked us in here, but that’s because I didn’t think she’d mind us waiting in her studio, you being old friends and all. But we should definitely draw the line at reading her mail.”
Alan agreed with her. Normally he would never have considered prying the way he was about to.
But the need to know what Kathy had written overtook him, shadowing common courtesy. The compulsion had him going ahead and opening the envelope at the same time as he nodded in agreement to Marisa.