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A vigorous nod of the head.
Jane has an alarming thought. “Is someone in this house actually Zorsteddan?!”
Jasper shakes his head. This is a relief. She doesn’t like to imagine the people around her being so dramatically different from what they pretend.
Returning to her worktable, Jane slices fabric and sews gores together, breathing through the work of her hands. After a moment, she notices the carvings on the table: whales and sharks, peacefully swimming. Ivy made this table, then. She traces a shark baby with her finger, breathing. Then she gets back to work.
* * *
She’s just thinking it’s time to take a break when the shouting begins. It’s coming from some distant part of the house, far enough away that it takes a moment for her to be certain it’s a person noise rather than a house noise.
“What’s that about?” Jane asks Jasper as she examines her six-part canopy.
He looks back at her evenly. Jane susses that he knows but can’t tell her.
“Is it about us,” Jane asks, “or anything to do with Zorsted?”
He shakes his head.
“Okay,” Jane says. “Then I don’t really care. But how are you doing? Don’t dogs need to go outside now and then? Want to go stretch our legs?”
He jumps up and runs for the door.
As they walk down the corridor together, the volume of the yelling increases, sounding like it’s coming from the house’s center. It’s Ravi’s voice.
By the time Jane and Jasper reach the stairs, Ravi’s yelling has become sufficiently interesting that Jane can’t help her curiosity. She descends one level and walks onto the second-story bridge. Jasper follows.
In the receiving hall below, Ravi is having a temper tantrum while Mrs. Vanders tries to calm him down with words like proper authorities and in due time. Practically the entire household is standing in the room with them. The stairs and bridges are lined with gala staff. Lucy St. George hugs a small wooden pedestal with a mirrored top to her chest, looking ill. Jane gathers from the hullabaloo that the sculpture of a fish has been stolen. She remembers Ravi asking Octavian about it last night in the courtyard, some Brancusi sculpture that was missing.
Whatever. Jasper seems to be crossing the bridge to the west side of the house. “Jasper,” Jane whispers, skipping to catch up, “why aren’t we going downstairs? What do you do, pee off the balcony into the courtyard?”
The look Jasper shoots her could burn a hole into another dimension. When he leads her into the west wing, she’s puzzled enough that she steels herself, just in case he’s about to run at her again and topple her through some other piece of art into some other realm he hasn’t told her about. Instead, he continues down the hall. She follows until a photograph hanging about halfway down the corridor stuns her. She stops in her tracks.
It’s one of Aunt Magnolia’s most famous photographs, enlarged and framed. A tiny yellow fish, a goby, peeks out of the open mouth of a huge gray fish with a bulbous nose. Jane remembers when Aunt Magnolia came back from Japan with this photograph, and how amazed she’d been at her own serendipity. The little fish had darted into the mouth of the big fish, then out again, all in the space of a couple of seconds, yet somehow Aunt Magnolia had managed to immortalize it.
Jane can’t catch her breath. This is why Mrs. Vanders knew her aunt: Mrs. Vanders respects art. It makes her chest hurt that one of Aunt Magnolia’s photos should hang in a house containing Rembrandts and Vermeers. She moves closer to the photograph until her nose is almost touching it and she can see her reflection in the glass. Aunt Magnolia, Jane thinks. The things I could tell you about. Would you even believe it?
She’ll have to remember, next time she sees Mrs. Vanders, to tell her that the photograph needs to be reframed. Now that she’s looking super close, she can see a faint rectangular bulge behind the photo, as if it’s been badly matted. Aunt Magnolia’s work should not be carelessly framed.
Jasper is gazing up at Jane with a calm question in his face.
“Walk?” she says to him.
He continues along the corridor toward the door at the end. Jane follows.
* * *
He’s brought her to the freight elevator.
“Of course,” Jane says, pressing the call button. “Because steps are hard for a basset hound. I wonder why you turn into a basset, instead of a Lab or a husky or something.”
Jasper—unable to answer, of course—walks into the elevator, which has another set of doors at its back. When they reach the ground floor, both sets of doors open, one to a landing inside the house, the other to sunlight, shadow, and gusts of wind.
Jasper shoots out into the sun.
Jane holds a hand up against the brightness. The sound of the sea, crashing on rocks far below, startles her; she’d practically forgotten where this house is. She follows him around some scratchy, unkempt shrubberies, onto grassy ground.
Jasper seems shy about peeing. Every time she glances at him, he slams his leg down and runs off behind a shrubbery or hillock of grass to try again where she can’t see him. Finally, he sprints toward the northwest corner of the house, stops, glares at her, then disappears around the corner. Jane supposes she’d rather not do her business in his sight, either, given how the relationship has progressed. She stands in place, tactfully waiting, until he reappears, gives her another inexplicable look, then sets off again toward the yard in a high-stepping, carefree manner.
Mr. Vanders is on his knees in the gardens, applying a trowel to the dirt with graceful movements. The terrain nearest the house is riddled with holes so large, she’s surprised Jasper doesn’t disappear into one altogether. Jasper pushes toward a patch of scrub pines. She crosses the lawn with him.
Once in the trees, Jasper leads her down a steep incline. She follows, sliding on dirt and stones and dead leaves, swearing under her breath about the unfair advantages of four-legged creatures. When she finally lands on what appears to be solid ground, she finds he’s brought her to a tiny inlet, shaped like a crescent moon, with smooth, dark sand. A crooked wooden post juts out of the water. Jane wonders if small boats are sometimes moored here, like the one Ivy built with her brother.
The wind is strong, and chilly; Jane shivers. Seeing this, Jasper trots to an outcropping of stone and shrubbery that serves as a wind break. He drops down, whining for her to join him. Jane sits beside him.
Something about wind, water, sand, and Jasper’s kindness propels Jane to pull him closer so she can scritch his neck. His tongue hangs out in what seems like classic canine happiness. It’s very peculiar in someone she’s been having intelligent conversations with all day. It’s also extremely cute.
She speaks one more overwhelming question out loud.
“How do you know I’m from this world, Jasper? How do you know I’m not from yours?”
He tilts his head thoughtfully.
“You can’t say?” Jane says.
Jasper nods. Then he raises his quivering nose to the air and howls, quiet and melodious, at the sky.
They sit together, watching the water, for a long time.
* * *
Later, as they cross the lawn again to the house, Jane sees that Mrs. Vanders has joined her husband. She’s kneeling beside him, muttering grimly into his ear. He nods, frowning, then sneezes. The wind blows bits of her conversation across the grass to Jane. “Of all the days to [incomprehensible]” and “You know I can’t bring it to his attention now, with [incomprehensible]” and “I’d like to wring the neck of whoever dared [incomprehensible].”
Jane has no idea what this is about—the Brancusi sculpture? Philip and the gun? Grace Panzavecchia? But on the chance that she’s the one who dared, she approaches warily.
“You,” Mrs. Vanders says, breaking off her muttering and turning her eyes on Jane.
“Yes,” Jane says. “Hi there. How is
everything?”
“Ha,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Wonderful. Fabulous. Grand.”
“Okay,” Jane says doubtfully.
“My husband tells me you have a question for me,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“I do?” Jane says, confused. “Oh, right. Okay. That painting on the second-story landing, the tall one with an umbrella. Where did it come from?”
“Where did the umbrella painting come from?” says Mrs. Vanders, incredulous. “That’s your question? It was painted by a friend of the first Octavian Thrash, Horst Mallow, over a hundred years ago. An average talent and a very odd man. Octavian asked him for a painting of underwater creatures seeking solace in a forest of anemones, and instead, Mallow painted an umbrella in a room. Then Mallow disappeared. Vanished!” she says. “Vamoosed!”
“Eight letters,” Jane says wearily, “with a v.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Is that all you wanted to ask me?” says Mrs. Vanders. “I thought you were curious about your aunt!”
“Oh, right,” Jane says, remembering. “Of course. I am curious about my aunt. You knew her?”
Mrs. Vanders fixes Jane with those unreadable eyes. “Were you aware, before today, that I knew your aunt?”
“No, but I just saw her photo on your wall.”
“Were you aware,” says Mrs. Vanders, “that she came, on occasion, to the galas at this house?”
Jane blinks. “When did that happen? Who invited her? And why?”
“She would come to a gala,” Mrs. Vanders says, “then take off from here on one of her trips.”
“No,” Jane says. “That can’t be. She always told me her itineraries. She never said anything about island galas.”
