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All they could do now, they supposed, was eat the most sinfully delicious thing in all of Manhattan— Chinese food, or French food, or very expensive Mexican with plenty of melted cheese, and sleep in a hotel bed, dreaming of brighter tomorrows.
ChapterTwenty-Four
Just four days after Oriana returned to Martha’s Vineyard from New York City, Oriana received a phone call from Walter Billington’s wife, Priscilla. It was so out of the blue, yet also so in tune with everything else that had been happening, that Oriana was immediately fearful that Walter had learned about the painting’s forgery anyway and had decided to call to demand answers.
“Hi, Priscilla! How are you?” Oriana sat on the back porch of her home on a gorgeous early October day, watching as Brea and Benny played in the grass. Benny had really taken to her.
“Hello, Oriana. I’m so sorry to reach out like this. I wanted to let you know that Walter passed away in his sleep a few nights ago.”
Oriana’s heart dropped. “Oh no. Priscilla, I’m so sorry. Walter was a remarkable man.”
Priscilla sounded resigned, her voice heavy with the tragedy of it all. “He always spoke of you so highly. Your friendship meant a lot to him.”
Oriana pressed her hand on her forehead, unable to believe this. Walter had been a dashing man in his forties when she’d met him. How was it possible his life was already over?
“His friendship meant so much to me, too,” Oriana stuttered. “Our conversations were some of the most important I ever had. He taught me so much about the world. About art and music.”
“Yes. It’s impossible to understand the fallout of his death right now.” Priscilla sighed. “I never really understood that first painting you got him to buy. The one with the green and blue blotches?”
Oriana laughed gently. “I know the one.”
“But he just adored it,” Priscilla said. “He never let me move it anywhere else in the apartment. He said he saw something of himself in it. Something of a previous version, before time had its way with him. I suppose art does that to people. It creates a personal connection, even if others can’t understand it.”
Oriana blinked back tears, considering telling Priscilla the truth: that the painting had always been a forgery and that Walter had been wronged. That, worst of all, Oriana had known about it for twenty-three years.
But what good would that do? It would only irritate Priscilla. It would only make Walter out to be a fool.
And, beyond anything, hadn’t that painting done its job? It had spoken to Walter for all these years. It had been a comfort as he’d aged. It had filled him with longing and love.
That meant it wasn’t technically a forgery, not really. It was art in all the ways art was meant to be.
Oriana asked Priscilla to pass along details of the funeral. She wanted to come to pay her respects. After she got off the phone, she padded down the porch steps to find Brea and Benny on the grass, stretched out on the damp ground to stare at the cerulean blue. Oriana flounced down beside them and followed their gaze to watch a flock of birds in perfect V-formation headed south for the winter. It never ceased to amaze her.
“Walter Billington passed away,” Oriana breathed to Brea, not quite loud enough for Benny to hear, as he was on the other side of Brea.
Brea frowned. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“According to his wife, he loved that painting till the end.”
Brea brushed a tear from her cheek and then propped herself up on her elbow, her face pained and serious. “I reached out to Rita the other day.”
“What about?”
“I wanted to know what happened to the original painting,” Brea said. “The one I swapped out. Poor Rita, we’ve used her so often the past few weeks. But it sounds like she’s at a standstill on the situation in South America and was grateful to sink her teeth into something easier to track down.
“According to Rita, Neal sold the painting to a dealer in the Netherlands for five million dollars back in 1998. After that, it went off the grid for a while, then was sold in an auction for eight million in Tokyo in 2008.”
“Wow,” Oriana whispered, shaking her head.
“But in 2011, it was burnt to a crisp in a house fire,” Brea went on. “Nobody was hurt, and the damage to the rest of the house was negligible. But that painting was taken. There’s a rumor that the wife of the guy who purchased the painting had always hated it and set it on fire on purpose when she’d learned he was having an affair.”
Oriana’s lips formed an O. “What a story.”
“That painting had serious power,” Brea finished. “But now, that power is dead.”
“It lives on in the forgery,” Oriana said with a smile. “As long as Nick keeps the secret— and he will— the forgery will stake its claim as the world's only known painting of its kind.”
Brea dropped back on the ground, so her salt and pepper hair wove through the grass. On the other side of her, Benny had dropped into sleep, and his eyes twitched behind the glow of his eyelids. Oriana felt a wave of impossible love for him.
“I’m going to start looking for a house here,” Brea said. “I want to stay. If you think that’s a good idea.”
Oriana smiled and dropped her head on her best friend’s shoulder. Another V-flock of ducks flew past, wings swaying through the breeze.
“I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Oriana whispered.
They’d already lost so much time. But, for reasons that now seemed mystical and outside of reason, Oriana and Brea had found a way back to one another again. It was up to them to electrify the rest of their days together on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, even as the autumn sun died above them and cast them further toward the blissful and cozy months of frost.
