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I wish you well, Frank. I really do. I hope you find peace in your heart one day.
God bless,
Margaret
I knew already my mother wasn’t leaving me behind as I’d originally thought. Bronwyn, of all people, had told me this outside our house.They were taking you with them, but not me. But I didn’t know I was the reason we were leaving. And I sure didn’t know my father knew, all these years, because he never said a word.
“Was Mom planning to take a trip?”
“Your mother? Going on a trip? Where the hell would she go?”
I’ll never know if my mother gave this letter to my father before she died, or if he found it later, or even why he kept it all these years. But the most shocking revelation, the one that is making my hand shake so much I can barely put the letter back in its envelope, is how devastatingly wrong Bronwyn had been about everything.
A friend has helped me find a house for Laura and me.
My mother wasn’t running off with Bronwyn’s father. He owned a real estate agency. He was helping her find a home for us, and he was doing it in secret so my father wouldn’t find out. He was being a friend. But Bronwyn misunderstood those late-night calls and she killed my mother and, years later, her own father, too.
If Bronwyn had lived freely, would she have kept going? Knocking off every person who didn’t worship her as she thought she deserved, until there was no one left but her and her stupid mirror? You bet she would.
I went to see Gavin once before we left for Carmel. I told him I had something for him, and I brought the paper bag with me. I think he thought I’d brought pastries or something. He smiled, then stared inside the bag for a long time. When he looked up again, he looked surprised. A little too much, even. Like he was putting it on.
“It’s broken! What happened? Where did you find it?” he asked.
“I know it was you, Gavin. I saw the footage from the robbery. I saw the watch you wear on your right wrist.”
He argued, but not very convincingly. In the end, he broke down.
“Okay, fine! I came back to the gallery, just as I said I would, and I saw you left the door unlocked.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “And?”
“And…” He clicked his tongue, then told me petulantly, as if it was my fault, that he’d wanted to be the curator of Bruno’s gallery, and that as his nephew, he thought he should have been. He told me that he took the job as my assistant, but he hated it. He hated the fact that his uncle treated him the way he did.
“When I saw the door was unlocked, I wanted to tell Bruno, you know? Show him that you weren’t perfect, that you made mistakes too. That he should have given me the curator’s job. I thought, heck, what if somebody came and took something!” He slapped his thighs. “So I did it. I went home, I got changed, came back in the middle of the night and I took one work, put it in the trunk of my car, and the next day you’d find it missing and you’d have to admit you’d left the door open. But then the gallery looked like it was broken into and I got really confused, and… well, you know, it just all snowballed. I had that thing in the trunk of my car and I didn’t want it. You heard what the insurance guy said. I had to get rid of it. So when I brought the trestle tables to your house for your stepdaughter’s party, I hid it in your garage. I didn’t know what else to do. Are you going to tell Bruno?”
“No,” I said. “You are.”
* * *
Bruno didn’t report him to the police in the end. He dropped the insurance claim and told the police the matter had been resolved. Then he told Claire Carter the work had been returned by an anonymous person.
It says everything about her talent that she fixed it up in no time and made it as enchanting and exquisite as the original. I went to her studio to pick it up, so I could deliver it to the couple who’d purchased it in the first place. I told her it was me who’d broken it. I didn’t steal it, I said, but I broke it.
She shrugged, tapped my shoulder. “You were trapped with the devil,” she said. As if that explained everything.And I thought, there you go. They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist. Maybe the devil’s greatest trick was to paint himself as dark and horned and grotesque, when in fact the devil is a beautiful woman with long raven hair and a face like a Renaissance painting. Or maybe he’s a regular guy who works in a bar and has blue eyes and makes you laugh. The devil comes in many disguises, but one thing is for sure, when the devil comes knocking, you won’t even look twice.
But Bronwyn did prove one thing about evil people. They die and take their evil deeds with them. Evil doesn’t get passed on through generations. To think that someone as evil as Bronwyn could produce something as perfect and joyful and inspiring as Charlie proves that beyond a shadow of doubt.
Inside the package is a small, exquisite artwork from Claire, with a card,For Charlie,congratulations.The work is titledThe Magical Garden,and it’s exactly what it is. A colorful imaginary garden with shrubs and trees and fountains and hills, and a tiny figure of Charlie patting a dog, and when you look closely, you can see bees flying around Charlie’s head.
She would have seen it on the news. We used to be on the news all the time after what happened. Not so much now, thank God, but then Charlie won the Young Scientist Research Award, the youngest recipient ever, for her work on monitoring beehives. She has a theory that when someone approaches a beehive, bees know whether that person is angry or sad, whether their intentions are good or not, and they’ll adapt their buzzing accordingly.
If only that were true of people, I thought.
Everybody wanted to write about her when she won. It was a happy ending to a tragic story. They called her a genius, which is true, but she’s also funny, and loving, and smart, and she has crinkly hair and a grin that makes you laugh. She’s perfect. And incredibly, miraculously, in spite of everything, she’s happy. She loves her new school, she loves her new friends, sheadoresher dog, Molly, a three-legged scraggly old thing we adopted from the pet rescue shelter. Since the moment Molly came home with us she has never left Charlie’s side.
I’m admiring the gift when the door opens, and I look up to see Summer, her arms wide open in greeting, a big smile on her face and right behind her, Katie, who immediately squeals, “Oh my God! I love this space!”
I jump up to greet them. “You’re here!” And for the next five minutes we embrace, we laugh, how was the flight? I ask. It was easy, Summer says, flapping a hand in front of her face. Katie tells me I have white paint in my hair.
“Where’s Dexter?” I ask.
“Parking the rental car and buying cakes for dessert,” Katie says.
We have become so close over the past two years. There’s been so many tears, so many conversations, so much forgiveness, so much atonement. They have come to visit for Thanksgiving weekend and while they’re here, they’ll help me finish painting the gallery walls. My first show will be an exhibition of Summer’s photographs. Not the black and white ones, she doesn’t do those anymore. She’s found her style. She does street photography now, focusing on small details like a crack in the sidewalk, the edge of a broken umbrella, an insect on a leaf, and her images are always surprising and always beautiful.
And now Dexter is here too and it’s noisy again. Everyone admires the gift for Charlie and now it’s time to leave, lock up and go to the house where we’ll make dinner all of us together and sit at the big kitchen table and talk and laugh all night.
I don’t think about Bronwyn often. I have my own little circle of love now, and it’s bursting with joy and hope and it takes up all the space in my life. And one day, I just know, I won’t think of Bronwyn at all.
* * *
