“What about your job? Uh, you’re a pilot.”
“I know. Maybe I can do both.”
Lulu gave her a skeptical look. “They’re both kind of full time, aren’t they?”
“I’m not ready to think about this,” Kate said.
“You can hire someone to run the gallery. As long as you don’t sell it. You have to keep it in the family. I still think of it as Mathilda’s.”
It touched Kate how loyal Lulu was to Mathilda. Mathilda had influenced both of them to become pilots. Lulu had gone up with Kate and Mathilda many times. But Lulu was right: the gallery had always been and would always be Mathilda’s. It bore the stamp of her style and personality, a home for the art of the Black Hall Colony.
“Beth was planning an exhibit around Hassam’s World War I flag paintings. It would have been an homage to Mathilda. She really loved that series.”
“Well, she was a veteran, a patriot.”
“She always told us that Hassam had wanted to volunteer to go to Europe and record the war. I think she wished a Black Hall artist had done that for her war.”
Her war.World War II, when she’d learned to fly. As Kate and Lulu headed across the lawn to meet the locksmith, Kate thought of the Harkness-Woodward women, how they had been shaped by their grandmother’s bravery. She’d withstood bullets and bombs and being demeaned by men in power. There must have been times when she had been so afraid, but she’d never talked about it to Kate. Maybe she had to Ruth. Kate thought about how even the strongest women could feel fear. The idea of Beth’s last hour filled her mind.
“She must have been terrified,” Kate said.
“Mathilda?”
Kate shook her head. “Beth. At the end, when he was strangling her, knowing that she was going to die. That she’d lose the baby. And whatever led up to that moment when ...” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “Do you think about it?”
“Of course,” Lulu said, staring into space. “All the time.” Her mouth and jaw were tense, set, as if holding back words.
“What is it?” Kate asked.
“Look, there’s the locksmith,” Lulu said.
Their feet crunched over white gravel and crushed clamshells as they approached the maroon van. It was painted with a gold lock and key. The locksmith was young and lanky, with a long dark ponytail covered by a red bandana. Kate showed him the doors with locks she wanted changed. Seven altogether, all around the first floor of the big house. When he was done, he wanted payment in cash. Kate had gone to the ATM and was prepared.
She and Lulu went into the kitchen and grabbed big black plastic garbage bags. Going through the bedrooms, they filled them with Pete’s and Nicola’s things. Kate stared at Tyler’s toys and clothes and couldn’t bring herself to touch them.
They piled the trash bags next to the driveway. Kate made Earl Grey tea, and out of a sense of reclaiming Mathilda’s house, served it in Limoges cups she had loved as a child—the translucent white porcelain delicately painted with butterflies, tiny roses, forget-me-nots, and ladybugs. She tucked the large manila envelope under her arm and carried the tray out the side door.
They sat on the side porch, the ceiling painted the palest shade of sky blue. The Compass Rose had had many tea parties in this exact spot. Mathilda had taught them to brew loose Darjeeling the way she had learned in England, when she had been stationed north of London during the war. Once the leaves had steeped enough, Kate poured the tea, and Lulu added extra sugar to hers.
“I want to show you something,” Kate said after they’d finished the first cup.
Lulu watched her reach into the envelope and pause. Kate felt torn—Lulu was her best friend and had loved Beth as much as anyone. But revealing her sister’s secret felt like a betrayal.
“What is it?” Lulu asked.
“I found these hidden in Beth’s desk,” Kate said. “She obviously didn’t intend for anyone to see them. I wouldn’t show them to anyone, even you, but I need help, to figure out what they mean.”
She handed Lulu the key, laid the drawing on the white wicker table. Kate stared at the signature, JH. The nude figure study was beautiful, showed Beth’s soft curves, her wavy hair falling loosely over her shoulders, the gentle heaviness of her breasts and slightly rounded belly.
“She’s pregnant here,” Lulu said, leaning closer. “But not very far along.”
“I thought that too,” Kate said, noticing that Lulu didn’t express surprise. It wasn’t the fact Beth had posed without clothes—when they were young, living in an art town, they’d all picked up a hundred dollars per session as models for the Black Hall Art Academy’s figure-drawing classes. It had been no big deal—a prestigious college, their family’s art lineage, their grandmother’s blessing. But Beth’s pregnancy meant she had posed for this within the last year, and that’s what Kate found surprising.
“It’s formal but also romantic,” Lulu said. “It doesn’t feel impersonal.”
“Who is JH?” Kate asked. “I can’t think of anyone with those initials.”
Lulu didn’t reply. She lowered her gaze from the drawing to the squat, almost square key. She lifted it up, bounced it in her hand as if judging its weight.
