Echo had sensed his vulnerability—all artists had it. But she wasn't quite sure how to deal with his confession.
"You're a great painter."
Ransome shook his head, shying from the burden of her suggestion.
"If I ever believe that, then I will be finished." Echo got up, pinched some salt from a silver bowl, and spread it over the wine stain on the fine linen tablecloth. She looked hesitantly at him.
"How can I help?"
He was looking at the salted stain. "Does that work?"
"Usually, if you do it right away."
"If human stains were so easy to remove," he said with sudden vehemence.
"God's always listening," she said, then thought it was probably too glib, patronizing, and unsatisfactory.
She felt God, but she also felt there was little point in trying to explain Him to someone else.
After a silence the unexpected flood of his passion ebbed.
"I don't believe as easily as you, Mary Catherine," he said with a tired smile that became tense. "But if we do have your God watching us, then I think it likely that his revenge is to do nothing."
Ransome pushed his chair back and stood, looked at Echo, put out a hand and lifted her head slightly with thumb and forefinger on her chin. He said, studying her as if for the first time, "The light in your eyes is the light from your heart."
"That's sweet," Echo said demurely, knowing what was coming next. She'd been thinking about it, and how to handle it, for weeks.
He kissed her on the forehead, not the lips, as if bestowing a blessing. That was sweet too. But the erotic content, enough to cause her lips to part and put a charge in her heartbeat, took her by surprise.
"I have to leave the island for a few days," he said then.
Ransome's studio had replaced the closetlike space that once had held the Kincairn light and reflecting mirror. It sat upon the spindle of the lighthouse shaft like a flying saucer made mostly of glass that was thirty feet in diameter. There was an elevator inside, another addition, but Echo always used the circular stairs coming and going. Ciera was a very good cook and the daily climb helped Echo shed the pounds that had a tendency to creep aboard like hitchhikers on her hips.
She had decided, because the day was neither blustery enough to blow her off her Vespa nor bitterly cold, to pack up her paints and easel and go cross island for an exercise in plein air painting on the cove and dock.
Approaching Kincairn village, Echo saw John Ransome at the end of the town dock unmooring a cabin cruiser that had been tied up alongside Wilkins' Marine and the mail/ferry boat slip. She stopped her putter-ing scooter in front of the cottage where a lone priest, elderly and in virtual exile in this most humble of parishes, lived with an equally old housekeeper. Echo had no reason for automatically keeping her distance from Ransome until she also saw Taja at the helm of the cruiser, which wasn't much of a reason either. She hadn't seen the Woman in Black nor given her much thought since the night of the artist's show at Cy Mellichamp's. Ransome never mentioned her. Apparently she seldom visited the island.
Friend, business associate, confidante? Mistress, of course. But if she kept some distance between them now, perhaps that was in the past. Even if they were no longer lovers Echo assumed she might still be emotionally supportive, a rare welcome visitor to his isolate existence—his stiller doom, Echo thought with a certain poignancy, remembering a phrase of Charlotte Bronte's from Echo's favorite novel, Jane Eyre.
Watching Ransome jump into the bow of the cruiser, Echo felt frustrated for his sake. Obviously he was not going to be painting anytime soon. She also felt a dim sense of betrayal that made no sense to her. Yet it lingered like the spectral imprint of a kiss that had made her restless during a night of confused, otherworldly dreams; dreams of Ransome, dreams of being as naked in his studio as a snail on a thorn.
Echo watched Taja back the cruiser from the dock and turn it toward the mainland, pour on the power.
She decided to take a minute to go into the empty church. Was it time to ring the bell for a confession of her own? She couldn't make up her mind about that, and her heart was no help either.
Cy Mellichamp was using a phone at a gallery associate's desk in the second-floor office when Peter was brought in by a secretary. Mellichamp glanced at him with no hint of welcome. Two more associates, Mellichamp's morale-boosting term for salespeople, were working the phones and computers. In another large room behind the office paintings were being uncrated.
Mellichamp smiled grievously at something he was hearing and fidgeted until he had a chance to break in.
"Really, Allen, I think your affections are misplaced. There is neither accomplishment nor cachet in the accident of Roukema's success. And at six million—no, I don't want to have this conversation. No. The man should be doing frescoes in tombs. You wanted my opinion, which I freely give to you. Okay, please think it over and come to your senses."
Cy rang off and looked again at Peter, with the fixed smile of a man who wants you to understand he could be doing better things with his time.
"Why," he asked Peter, "do otherwise bright young people treat inherited fortunes the way rednecks treat junk cars?" He shrugged. "Mr. O'Neill! Delighted to see you again. How can I help you?"
"Have you heard anything from Mr. Ransome lately?"
"We had dinner two nights ago at the Four Seasons."
"Oh, he was in town?" Cy waited for a more sensible question. "His new paintings sell okay?"
"We did very, very well. And how is Echo?"
"I don't know. I'm not allowed to see her, I might be a distraction. I thought Ransome was supposed to be slaving away at his art up there in Maine."
Cy looked at his watch, looked at Peter again uncomprehendingly.
"I was hoping you could give me some information, Mr. Mellichamp."
"In regard to?"
"The other women Ransome has painted. I know where one of them lives. Anne Van Lier." The casual admission was calculated to provoke a reaction; Peter didn't miss the slight tightening of Cy Mellichamp's baby blue eyes. "Do you know how I can get in touch with the others?"
Cy said after a few moments, "Why should you want to?" with a muted suggestion in his gaze that Peter was up to no good.
"Do you know who and where those women are?"
An associate said to Cy, "Princess Steph on three."
Distracted, Cy looked over his shoulder. "Find out if she's on St. Barts. I'll get right back to her."
While Cy wasn't watching him Peter glanced at a computer on a nearby desk where nobody was working. But the person whose desk it was had carelessly left his user ID on the screen.
Cy looked around at Peter again. "I could not help you if I did know," he said curtly. "Their whereabouts are none of my business."
"Why is Ransome so secretive about those women?"
"That, of course, is John's prerogative. Now if you wouldn't mind—it has been one of those days—" He summoned a moment of the old charm. "I'm sorry."
"Thanks for taking the time to see me, Mr. Mellichamp."
"If there should be a next time, unless it happens to be official, you would do well to leave that gold shield in your pocket."
EIGHT
Peter got home from his watch at twenty past midnight. He fixed himself a sardine sandwich on sourdough with a smelly slice of gouda and some salsa dip he found in the fridge. He carried the sandwich and a bottle of Sam Adams up the creaky back stairs to the third floor he shared with his brother Casey. The rest of the house was quiet except for his father's distant whistling snore. But with no school for two days Case was still up with his iMac. Graphics were Casey's passion: his ambition was to design the cars of the future.