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As they waited for the client, Oriana glanced at Brea, then furrowed her brow. “Brea, are you all right?”
Brea stuttered. “Yes? Why?”
Oriana leafed through her purse to find a small package of Kleenex. “Your makeup ran a little under your eyes.”
Brea took a tissue and attempted to mop herself up, feeling shaken.
“Were you crying?” Oriana asked, her business voice melting away to show the true friendship and love beneath.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that,” Brea lied.
She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to tell Oriana about Kenny’s illness. She supposed she didn’t want Oriana to send her home, thus pushing back her career even longer. She and Kenny needed the money above nearly everything else. Plus, she didn’t want to verbalize her fears, which meant they were real and couldn’t be ignored.
Right now, Brea could continue pretending that everything was mostly normal and that Kenny had a stomach bug.
“Is everything all right at home?” Oriana pushed it.
“Everything is great,” Brea assured her. “Kenny’s so happy that I have this promotion. And he’s going to look for a better job— one he doesn’t hate so much.”
Oriana smiled. “That’s wonderful news, Brea.”
The doorbell rang, and Oriana righted her face and walked purposefully toward the door. “You ready?”
“Of course,” Brea lied, matching her smile to Oriana’s. “Let’s do it.”
But all the while, as Brea stood off to the side and Oriana performed her song and dance number, illustrating how much this painting was desired and truly worth, Brea felt her insides melting.How could anything this ugly be worth four million dollars? How could Kenny be this sick?
Nothing was making any sense.
But when Oriana turned to her and asked, “What was it the woman who viewed the painting yesterday afternoon said?”
“She said it was an incendiary force,” Brea said. “When she looked at it, her soul burst like fireworks.”
The client nodded, his eyes shimmering with want. Brea wondered what it was like to want something so meaningless. Then again, she supposed a talent amongst humans was their ability to find meaning in almost anything— even modern art.
ChapterSeven
Present Day
Oriana had never contacted a private investigator before. It felt strange to Google “private investigators around Martha’s Vineyard” and far stranger to read that there were so many. Apparently, people were a lot nosier than she thought.
To her tremendous surprise, Reese walked up behind her and saw her Google search.
“Private detectives? Why are you googling that?” Reese laughed and kissed her gently on the back of the neck.
Oriana closed her computer swiftly and laughed, the sound jangling in her ears. “I was, um. Thinking about writing a book.”
Reese leaned against the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. His hair was mussed from sleep, and his glasses were slightly crooked. Oriana thought this was how she loved him most: groggy, slightly messy, just opening himself up to the day.
“A book, huh? A crime thriller?”
“Yeah. Something like that,” Oriana said. “All I’ve done the past twenty-six years is talk about other people’s art. And because I can barely hold a pencil to a piece of paper, I thought I might try out the written art instead.”
Reese’s eyes sparkled with electricity. “That’s incredible, honey. So, you want to interview a private detective and ask about their careers? What they’ve seen?”
“What their process is, I guess,” Oriana lied. “I know they can’t tell me about the unique details of each case, but I’d like to know how their instincts around certain facts work.”
“Fascinating,” Reese said. “Phew, you’ve never made app development look so boring.”
