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I raised a curious eyebrow. “They were?”
He nodded. “My mother hated your grandmother, but she was always close to Carl. She had a lot of pain in her joints from painting. He prescribed her medications to help. She also suffered from migraines, from breathing in all the fumes, and that gave her trouble sleeping.” Luca moved to the next painting. “Art tells the truth, even when people lie,” he said to quote his mother.
The quote that brought us together.
“She was so talented. No one could capture emotion like your mom.”
We stared at the canvas splashed with a mixture of reds, yellows, blues, and greens. I could make out the shape of a face, but I couldn’t tell if they were male or female. Her style was a mixture of cubism and Art Deco, the two I also favored. Evangeline titled it The Truth About Liars. It was my favorite piece in her entire collection.
Luca pointed at a long bench next to an easel covered with a tarp. “I sat there when she painted it. She was so mad that day, even though she tried to hide it. I helped her choose the paint for her palate, and then she started flinging her brush at the canvas.”
“I’m sure there was more skill to it than throwing paint.”
He shook his head. “I’d never seen her like that. She was so angry with my father over something. They fought a lot in the last few years before her death. I thought she’d lost her mind when she started screaming, ‘I will always tell the truth even when you lie.’ I think she was talking to my dad.”
“Some of the best art comes from pain. That’s when the muse takes over.”
Moving toward the center of the room, I glanced up at the ceiling, taking in every detail. My heart thumped in my chest as I absorbed her sad story. The hidden meaning behind her work was heartbreaking.
“This is a masterpiece,” I whispered, still in disbelief at her skill. “You don’t see it, do you?”
Luca shook his head. “See what?”
“Your mom’s story.” My eyes filled with more tears. “When did your father adopt Bastian and Damian?”
“Six months before my mom died.”
“That makes sense,” I sighed. “When they came into your lives, things got messy.”
His head snapped in my direction. “What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t realize your mother was so religious.”
“She was Catholic but never went to church.”
“I studied Christian Lit because I wanted to get a better sense of artists like da Vinci and Michelangelo. Christian artists use numbers and symbols in their work that correspond to the Bible.”
He cupped my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length. “Stop rambling. What are you talking about?”
“I don’t have it all figured out.” I raised my hand in the air and pointed at the far right corner to the first pendentive. “You can see the start of her journey. Beneath the red and gold geometric shapes, I can make out an Art Deco woman hidden between the puzzle pieces.”
He tilted his head to the side. “How did you see that?”
Because it was how I taught myself to paint, to hide people and emotions with the swipe of my brush, so others could interpret my art however they liked. Concealing pieces of yourself in your work took a lot of skill.
“It’s easy to miss,” I assured him. “Your mom hid her story well. Do you see how she used lines and shapes to make it look like one unified piece?”
Luca nodded, and I motioned to the next set of images. “See the woman in a fancy dress holding a baby in her arms? She looks like the typical Art Deco woman. So does the man with a top hat beside her. She’s showing her transition from a girl to a woman, a wife, and a mother.”
I grabbed his hand, leading the way. “She’s older in the next image. And now, she’s kissing a baby boy with another one hugging her leg. She starts with who she was before she met your dad. The number one represents creation and the start of her art journey. The number three relates to the divine, like the Trinity. And then she had Marcello, the number four representing the totality of her creations.”
“Keep going,” he urged.
“Are you sure?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “You won’t like how it ends.”
“I’m sure.”
Staring up at the same family, only much older, two more boys stood at the man’s side. With her head down, the woman hugged her children. She turned away from Arlo and his adoptive sons. In the previous images, she was full of life, but now dark storm clouds separated them.
“Your mom wasn’t happy about adopting Bastian and Damian. Six is the sign of the Devil, a symbol of imperfection. They disrupted the unity in your family.”
