Kate was silent, thinking of the poem:contraries in love.
“She wouldn’t have given Sam up,” she said after a moment.
“No. Never. She would have fought him for Sam—we both would have.”
Kate turned the ring to see the other markings. The hearts were Beth’s, Jed had said. Under each were three dots.
“Ellipses? To be continued?” she asked.
“No. Those are drops of blood.”
Kate’s pulse quickened. She pictured the scrawled hearts on the back of the canvas and on the last page of Vasari’sThe Lives of the Artists, the book at Mathilda’s house.
“Blood hearts,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, sounding surprised. “That’s what she called them.”
“Did you ever seeMoonlight? The painting?”
“She told me about it. How it was stolen during that time, when they tied you up and your mother died.”
“You never saw the back of it, the unpainted side? What was drawn there?”
“No,” he said. “She never even showed me the canvas. Why are you asking about the back?”
“No reason,” Kate said, still staring at the hearts on the ring. “I was just wondering.” Then, “Where did she keep her ring?”
Jed reached into his pocket, pulled it out, placed it on the table.
It was beautiful, smaller than Jed’s. Beth had worn it. Kate picked it up. She closed her eyes and felt her sister’s passion. She turned it over and over in her hand, but Jed reached over and took it from her before she could slip it onto her own finger.
45
The first Saturday after school started, Kate went to the hardware store and bought an eco-friendly gel that wouldn’t leech into the sea. She filled a bag with safety goggles and gloves. She and Sam met Lulu, Scotty, and Isabel at Little Beach, and they scrubbed the boulders, removing the graffitied paint from the granite and quartz. After a while, Lulu, Scotty, and Kate left Sam and Isabel to finish the job and sat on a beach blanket to supervise. Julie walked the tide line, looking for sea glass.
September skies were bluer than August, the sea cleaner, less churned up by boat traffic. A good breeze blew the tops off low waves, sent beach grass skittering and tracing circles on the hard sand. Kate had always loved this time of year, when vacations were over and she and her friends had the beach to themselves. Even over here, this hidden, private place felt more isolated. People weren’t likely to come through the path.
Kate walked down to the water’s edge, picked up a piece of tide-scoured driftwood. Bleached silver by salt and sun, bark scraped off, it was a foot long, the thin, sharp tip of a broken branch. When she returned to the blanket, Scotty was on the phone with Nick, and Lulu was lying on her back, face to the sun.
Waiting for Scotty to finish her call, Kate looked at her right index finger. For nearly a year after that day in Mathilda’s library, when they were teenagers, there had been a fine scar on the pad, from where she had pricked it, coaxed blood to bubble out. The mark had long since disappeared. When Scotty hung up, she shaded her eyes to look at Kate. So did Lulu.
After smoothing a patch of sand beside the beach blanket, Kate used the branch to write the lettersK,B,L,S. She encircled them with a heart.
“Do you remember?” she asked.
“Blood sisters,” Lulu said. “We wrote in the book.”
“A long time ago,” Scotty said.
“Time wasn’t supposed to matter,” Kate said.
“And it didn’t,” Lulu said, holding out her hand, grabbing Kate’s. “Not to me.”
“Feeling sentimental?” Scotty asked.
“More like confused,” Kate said.
“About what?” Lulu asked.
