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None of which explains what kind of work the Panzavecchias were doing in their lab. Or if it has anything to do with smallpox. Or why Grace is talking about French spies. Or why she’s here.
Who even knows she’s here, besides Jane? Doctor Philip Okada? He was in the attics yesterday wearing medical gloves, then sneaking around in the middle of the night, saying inscrutable things about a journey and carrying a gun. And a diaper bag. Jane realizes suddenly that the white bag with orange ducks Philip was carrying last night must have been a diaper bag.
Phoebe Okada? Patrick? Mr. Vanders? Jane saw him carrying another small child—little Christopher Panzavecchia?—across the Venetian courtyard only yesterday. What about Ivy, who was with Jane then and didn’t give any explanation for the little kid when Jane asked? Ivy was in the attic with Philip too.
What on earth is going on in this house?
“Grace,” Jane says. “Are you okay?”
The question seems to trigger the girl’s fury. She sits her rump down again, wraps her arms around her legs, and starts crying, but it’s angry crying; it’s her temper she’s trying to contain by holding her own body tight. “I don’t even know who you are!” she yells.
“Is someone here hurting you?” says Jane. “Patrick? Or—” She can’t get her mouth to say “Ivy.” “Phoebe Okada? Are your parents in the house too?”
“I bet you’d like to know! I bet you’d like to ask me a whole lot of questions! I’m not telling you anything!”
“Grace!” says Jane. “I only want to know that you’re okay!”
“Stop calling me that! My name is Dorothy!” She rockets to her feet suddenly.
“Where are you going?”
“I bet you’d like to know!” she yells again, then takes off running, around the terrace, along the wall of the west wing and away from Jane. She disappears around the corner of the house.
Jane is standing there, staring numbly after the girl, when the scrape of an opening door spins her around. It’s the door Jane came through herself, the one in the fish tank. Patrick emerges, looks to right and left, sees Jane. His face registers nothing. Patrick seems to have a gift for projecting innocent, blue-eyed vacuity. At any rate, his is more convincing than Ivy’s.
“Hello,” he calls, walking toward Jane. He’s swinging a heavy flashlight in one hand, powered off at the moment. “Getting some air?”
“Yes,” Jane says shortly. “Clearing my thoughts before I do some work.”
“Ivy tells me you make umbrellas,” Patrick says, clapping his bright, blank eyes on Jane’s face. “Seen anything interesting out here?” he adds, just as if he couldn’t care less, and the hair rises on the nape of Jane’s neck. She thinks, for some reason, of the leer of that eel in the fish tank.
“Not a thing,” says Jane. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
“Lost something,” he says, indicating his flashlight, as if having lost something is a justification for carrying a flashlight in broad daylight. “Thought I might find it here.”
“What is it?”
“It’s hard to describe.”
Does it have crooked blond hair, Jane wants to ask, a tear-stained face, and a mistrust of all people? “How enigmatic,” she says.
A sudden, staticky noise makes her jump. “Patrick?” says a metallic version of Mrs. Vanders’s voice. “Come in, Patrick?”
Patrick pulls a walkie-talkie from his back pocket. Tucking his flashlight under one arm, he presses a button on the walkie-talkie. “Go ahead.”
“Dorothy’s come home,” says Mrs. Vanders’s voice.
Patrick grins brightly. “There’s no place like home,” he says, then pockets the walkie-talkie, gives Jane a nod, and moves on, taking the same route Grace Panzavecchia took, along the wall and around the western corner of the house.
“Aunt Magnolia,” Jane says to the air. “What the actual hell is going on here?”
The air does not respond.
* * *
Jane winds her way back through the pool room, the bowling alley, the stuffy green parlor. Her goal is the second-story east wing, where she last saw Mrs. Vanders headed—something about a Vermeer—and where she intends to confront Mrs. Vanders about how she knew Aunt Magnolia, about who Dorothy is, about everything strange going on in this house. But when Jane steps into the Venetian courtyard, Mrs. Vanders is right there, standing beside the fountain, her back to Jane. She’s muttering into a walkie-talkie.
“Who’s Dorothy?” Jane asks without preamble.
“Oh, hello, Jane,” Mrs. Vanders says, lowering the walkie-talkie and turning around smoothly. “Dorothy’s my great-niece, visiting from out west. Why? Have you met her?”
“I was with Patrick when you called him on the walkie-talkie and said ‘Dorothy’s come home.’”
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders. “She knows she’s not supposed to wander around without telling us where she’s going, but she does it anyway. I worry, especially since there’s a pool in the house. Patrick is fond of her. He was worried too.”
“What did you mean by ‘Dorothy’s come home’? Where’s home?”
“Wherever I happen to be when she finds me,” says Mrs. Vanders crisply. “I’m her family. Family is home.”
“Speaking of family,” Jane says, “Mr. Vanders just told me you knew my aunt Magnolia.”
Mrs. Vanders grunts, her eyes sweeping the balconies of the courtyard.
“How could that be?” says Jane. “I don’t remember Aunt Magnolia ever saying anything about knowing anyone here, besides Kiran.”
Mrs. Vanders grunts again, then says nothing, just studies Jane. An odd silence stretches between them. Jane tries again.
“She made me promise once that if I was ever invited to Tu Reviens,” she says, “I’d come. Was that so I would meet you?”
“Do you like to travel?” says Mrs. Vanders.
“Yes, I guess,” says Jane. “I haven’t really traveled much, so I don’t really know. Why? Did you travel with her or something?”
“We have one of her travel pictures,” Mrs. Vanders says. “A yellow fish peeking out of the mouth of a big gray fish. Your aunt had a talent for . . . uncovering hidden truths.”
“Oh,” Jane says, amazed, then flushing with pride that Aunt Magnolia’s photo should end up on the walls of a fancy house like this. “So, is that how you knew her? Were you in touch about the photo?”
“Do you like Ivy?” responds Mrs. Vanders, peering at Jane.
“Sure,” says Jane in confusion. “Why?”
“I may ask for your help at the party,” she says. “If I do so, I’ll convey the message through Ivy. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She turns and walks away.
“I don’t work for you, you know,” Jane snaps at the empty air.
It’s one thing for Mrs. Vanders to lie and evade on the subject of Grace Panzavecchia, who’s obviously mixed up in something bad. But why would she need to be cryptic about Aunt Magnolia?
Unsettled, Jane stares into the cheerfully splashing fountain. Somewhere behind her, she hears the approaching voices of Lucy St. George and Colin Mack, and finds herself moving away from them, up the stairs. She needs to think. “I’ll be a bit longer,” she texts Kiran as she climbs.
Jasper is waiting outside her door. Inside, smoothing her ruffled, red-orange shirt, Jane sits on one of the armchairs before the cold fire. Jasper burrows under the bed and begins snoring, a soft, low, soothing rumble.
For some reason, Jane can’t stop picturing the last thing she ever saw Aunt Magnolia wear, the day she left on that final, fateful Antarctic trip. A simple, deep purple dress, flowy, with long sleeves and pockets. Her clunky, sturdy black boots and her long, iridescent purple coat with the silver-gold lining. She’d looked like some sort of fashion warrior set to take on the Antarctic night.
Jane has only ju
st begun the gold-and-brown self-defense umbrella, with its sharp ribs and powerful springs. But what she’s imagining now is an iridescent purple umbrella, with a contrasting interior of silver and gold.
Could Jane make an umbrella like that, without it hurting too much?
