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“What are you talking about?”
“Come with me,” he says.
“Where?” Jane asks, thinking partly of Mrs. Vanders, but mostly of this strange little interplay she seems to have going with Kiran’s panoptically attracted brother.
“You do know what cosmology is, right?” Ravi says. “The study of the cosmos? You’re not confusing it with cosmetology? The application of makeup?”
“Condescending donkey,” says Jane, then adds, “No offense, Eeyore.”
Ravi chuckles as he steps away. “Your choice.”
Jane watches him move gracefully up the stairs. She’s completely forgotten to tell him that Mrs. Vanders is looking for him.
“Oh,” she says, meaning to call out to him. But in that moment, a kid darts into the receiving hall below her. This house is like Grand Central Station.
Jane has seen this girl before: She’s the one who was digging up the garden yesterday in the rain. Carrying something close to her chest, she goes to a side table, pushes some lilacs aside, and slides the thing onto the empty space. Jane can’t see it properly; there are too many lilac branches in the way.
It seems almost to Jane as if this little girl waited until the lilac ladies left, then snuck into the hall just when she wouldn’t be seen. The girl darts out again, taking the path under Jane that leads into the Venetian courtyard—spots Jane up on her perch, and freezes. She glares at Jane for a millisecond before continuing on, leaving Jane wondering if it’s utterly irrational to imagine that she looks like the news pictures of the oldest Panzavecchia child, Grace. The one who vanished from her school the same day her parents tried to rob a bank. The one with the mnemonic memory devices.
Ravi is long gone. Mrs. Vanders is long gone. Kiran is long gone and that child is just gone; only Jasper remains, still hopping and wiggling and occasionally whining on his landing. Piles of lilac branches litter the checkerboard floor below, like berries on ice cream.
The house is suddenly still, like it’s holding its breath.
Then the gunshots of Kiran’s boots touch Jane’s ears once more and Kiran stalks into the hall.
She walks to the pile of lilac branches on the floor. She picks one up, shakes the water out of it, then throws it back down again, seemingly just for the violence of it. Then she wraps her arms around her chest, hugging herself, pressing her chin to her collarbone. She doesn’t see Jane. Jane’s ability to see Kiran is an intrusion into Kiran’s personal pain; Jane knows this. Still, Jane reaches out, unable to stop herself. She wants to help.
“Kiran?”
Kiran’s mask slides into place. She raises her eyes to Jane. “Oh,” she says. “Hi, Janie.”
“Are you okay?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” she says. “Do I seem so not okay?”
“You seem sort of . . . missing.”
“Missing!” Kiran says. “That’s just lovely. Why did I even come here if people are going to accuse me of being missing?”
“Did Patrick confess to anything yet?”
Kiran’s face flickers with irritation. “I forgot I’d told you about that. No. He’s said nothing. You’re sweet to remember.”
“What do you think it’s about?”
“I don’t know,” Kiran says, “and I’m trying not to care.”
The lilac ladies come trooping back into the hall with more armfuls of empty vases. Kiran swings her back to them so they can’t see her expression.
“Do you ever feel,” she says to Jane, “like you’re trapped in the wrong version of your life?”
This extraordinary question fixes Jane in place. She’s felt exactly that way, ever since Aunt Magnolia died and the wrong version of Jane’s life wrapped its arms tight around her, dove into the water, dragged her to the bottom, and held her there while she drowned.
“Yes,” says Jane.
“People tell you that what happens to you is a direct result of the choices you make,” Kiran says, “but that’s not fair. Half the time, you don’t even realize that the choice you’re about to make is significant.”
“That’s true,” says Jane. “My parents died in a plane crash when I was one. Most everyone on the left side of the plane lived and most everyone on the right side died. My parents picked seats on the right, randomly, for no reason.”
Kiran nods. “Octavian went to an art auction in Vegas but his flight was delayed. He got in so late that he missed breakfast, so he caught a cab, and told the cabbie to find him a restaurant out in the desert, where he could drink a Bloody Mary and eat eggs while surrounded by flowering cactuses. The cabbie told him forget it and drove him to the Bellagio, where he got lost trying to find the restaurant and ran into a lady drawing sketches of the layout of the casino. He asked her if she was planning a heist. She told him her name was Charlotte, she was an interior designer, and she was redesigning the casino floor. Now she’s my stepmother. Could that be more random?”
“On the other hand,” Jane says, “they did decide to get married. Some things happen because we choose them.”
“Right,” says Kiran. “Go ahead, say it. I’ve chosen to be unemployed and useless.”
“Kiran,” Jane says, remembering Colin’s words to Octavian. “You’re not useless. You just haven’t found your path. I mean, welcome to my world. I don’t have a path either. I’m a way bigger moper than you are.”
“You’re not moping,” Kiran says. “You’re grieving.”
Kiran has a way of saying words that send a beam of light through the bullshit. I’m grieving. It’s like pushing my will through molasses.
“Come walk with me,” Kiran says, “and I’ll tell you the mystery of Charlotte.”
A heating pipe clangs somewhere and the air moves in the hall, whispering a word that she doesn’t quite catch. Charlotte.
Jane rubs her ears, trying to decide. She wants to know more about Charlotte, sure.
But she also needs to ask Mrs. Vanders about Aunt Magnolia—though it’s not as if finding out that her aunt was best buddies with Mrs. Vanders will bring Aunt Magnolia back. Jane suspects that beyond her urgency to know lies a crash into disappointment.
So maybe Jane should follow that Grace Panzavecchia look-alike who vanished into the depths of the house? What if that girl really is Grace Panzavecchia? And what if that’s the answer to the Okadas and Patrick, to the gun?
Of course there’s a part of Jane that wants to follow Ravi wherever he’s gone; really, wherever he goes. Ravi makes Jane feel like she’s been asleep and she might finally be able to wake up.
And what’s going on with the dog? The ridiculous dog, who’s whining on the second-story landing, watching Jane with the single most tragic expression ever seen on the face of a dog.
A bell rings somewhere in the depths of the house, almost too distant to hear, but sweet and clear, like a wind chime. “Choose, choose,” it seems to say.
Mrs. Vanders, the little girl, Kiran, Ravi, or Jasper?
The left side of the plane or the right.
Aunt Magnolia? Jane thinks. Where should I go?
The Missing Masterpiece
Jane decides.
“You know what, Kiran?” she says. “I need to talk to Mrs. Vanders first. I think she knew my aunt. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”
“Okay,” Kiran says, shrugging, disappointed. “Text me.”
“I will.”
Kiran wanders away.
When Jane reaches Jasper on his landing, he jumps up, circles around her, then runs at the back of her legs in his usual way. She scrambles past. “Geez, Jasper!” she says. “Come with me, you’re invited,” but when she turns back to check on him, he’s gone.
Jane finds Mrs. Vanders at the far end of the second-story east corridor, standing on one leg, studying a painting. The flat of Mrs. Vanders’s bare foot is balanced again
st her inner thigh and her hands are in a praying position. Jane assumes it’s some sort of yoga pose.
“Hello, Mrs. Vanders,” she says as she approaches.
“You,” says Mrs. Vanders, not looking at her, not moving. She’s got a walkie-talkie clipped to the back of her black yoga pants.
“Yes,” says Jane. “I heard that you knew my aunt.”
“You’re not Ravi,” she says.
“No,” says Jane. “Ravi went to visit someone. His mother, I think? Is she in the house somewhere?”
Mrs. Vanders’s response is a dismissive humph. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Ivy,” she says. “What have you two been discussing?”
Jane is fed up. “Did you not know my aunt, then?” she says, choosing sarcasm. “Am I wasting my time?”
“My question about Ivy is relevant to your question about your aunt.”
“How could that possibly be? Did they know each other?”
“Do you travel much?” counters Mrs. Vanders.
“No!” says Jane. “Why? Did you travel with her or something?”
“We have one of your aunt’s travel photographs,” Mrs. Vanders says. “A little yellow fish, peeking out of the mouth of a bigger fish. Your aunt had a way of . . . finding what was hidden.”
“Oh,” Jane says, astonished. One of her photographs, here? Jane begins to swell with pride. How appropriate that Aunt Magnolia’s work should make its way into the artistic jumble of this house. “So, is that how you knew her? Did you buy the print from her?”
Mrs. Vanders sighs shortly. “Yes. That’s it.”
“I see,” says Jane, feeling that this makes sense, except—except for the parts that don’t. “But what does that have to do with Ivy?”
