by Amy Maroney
Rose’s eyes lit up when she spied the toys. She toddled to the little bed and took the cart and horse in her hands. Turning back to Mira and Arnaud, she hugged the toys to her chest, a look of wonderment on her face.
The servant girl smiled. “She can play in the courtyard. And if she gets hungry, go to the kitchens as it pleases you. The cooks’ll give her biscuits and plums. Or porridge if you’d rather. A tub and bathwater are coming. You’ll hear a bell ring later when it’s time to eat.”
She curtsied and left the room.
Arnaud let out a low whistle. “What are the likes of us doing here?”
“I’ll remind you of my noble origins.” Mira tossed her head and scooped up the hem of her skirt, miming the walk of a fine lady.
“Ha!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Any woman who can hunt for her own supper, swim in a mountain stream, and wield a blade the way you do has no right to call herself a lady.”
“Any man who can read Latin, work figures like a Moorish scholar, and craft furniture much finer than anything in this place is nothing less than a gentleman.”
Arnaud offered her his arm.
“Shall we take a turn around our chambers, then?”
“Why yes, m’lord, I would be honored.”
Mira laid her fingertips delicately upon his dust-streaked sleeve. They sashayed here and there, Rose following behind dragging the cart and horse, until they both collapsed laughing on the chairs.
Rose regarded them in amazement for a moment. Then, waving the wooden horse in the air, she let out a scream of laughter herself.
“Mama!” she cried, her sparkling eyes fixed on Mira.
Mira swooped down and picked up the girl, swinging her around in a circle.
“She called me Mama!”
“I heard,” Arnaud said wryly.
Mira’s chest felt delightfully loose. The dread she carried in her abdomen like a clenched fist had vanished. In its place was something she had not felt for a long, long time. She scooped up Rose in one arm; with the other she reached out for Arnaud. The three of them stood swaying, breathing the lavender-scented air.
Rose repeated her new word in a soft, insistent voice. “Mama. Mama. Mama.”
Arnaud grinned. “You’re the favorite.”
Mira kissed Rose’s soft cheek. Her eyes stung with tears.
“Arnaud,” she whispered. “I almost forgot what joy feels like. I have not felt this way since...”
“...Since Deedit died?”
She nodded.
“Seize your joy,” he murmured into her hair. “Don’t let it go.”
Mira took his hand and pulled it to her heart.
9
March, 2016
Pau, France
Zari
Zari had finished a freelance job that evening, building a website for an organic cosmetics company based in San Francisco. Now she sat in the dark, clicking link after link on her laptop, combing through the archives of auction houses in search of unsigned Renaissance-era portraits painted in the Flemish style. It had become a habit. And it was needle-in-a-haystack ridiculousness, she knew. But she was fueled by a buzz of anticipation, a searing curiosity, and—most of all—desperation.
It could be worse, she told herself. I could be up all night watching cat videos.
The refrigerator hummed in the tiny kitchen. She got up and flicked on the kitchen light, rummaging in the cupboards for a teacup and a packet of crackers. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she stared at the photo taped to the refrigerator. It was a selfie she and Wil had taken in front of the cabin at Christmas. Their cheeks and noses were pink from cold. Her head was tucked under his chin, and they both looked radiantly happy.
If Zaragoza hadn’t ended so badly, she probably would have another adorable selfie to tape alongside this one. Instead, Zari could barely remember saying goodbye to Wil when she boarded her train back to San Sebastián. Both of them had been dazed, nauseous, sallow-faced wrecks at the time.
She poured boiling water over a chamomile tea bag, watching the steam rise from the cup. Now Wil was in Indonesia on a sourcing trip, searching for reclaimed teak wood to use in his furniture design business. Soon after returning from that trip, he would head to Croatia with Filip. The connection Zari had made between Filip and her brother’s disabled friend had blossomed quickly into a friendship. For the first time since his accident, Filip was preparing for an adventure again, and Wil would be at his side.
All of this travel meant that the conference in Bordeaux—two months away—was the next time she would see Wil. Zari traced a fingertip over their smiling faces in the photo. She felt completely at ease with him, absolutely herself. She had never longed for someone so hungrily before, which exhilarated her. But the aching loneliness she experienced when they were apart was terrifying. It made her feel trapped, locked into something she had no control over.
Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them angrily away. She had never been much of a crier. She became an expert at tamping down her emotions during the long years of fighting between her parents, and then even more so when her brother Gus struggled with addiction. Yet somehow since Mira and Wil came into her life, tears had become a regular—and irritating—occurrence.
She smiled, tossing her tea bag in the trash. How weird was that? Mira was as real to her as Wil. She had formed a deep attachment to someone who’d been dead for centuries.
Back in her seat, Zari could hear the sounds of her own eyelids lifting and lowering every time she blinked. The familiar shuffling steps of her nocturnal upstairs neighbor made muffled creaking noises overhead. She sighed, rubbed her eyes, and leaned back in her chair. Just a few more clicks, she promised herself.
Maybe ten more.
There was a tremendous crash from above, a heavy, ominous thud that sent the light fixture on the ceiling reverberating, and then—silence.
Zari sprang up. She walked swiftly to the front door, slipped out and climbed the stairs to the floor above. The crash had come from his apartment.
She stood at the door, hesitating, looking up and down the corridor. No one else had come out. She felt foolish for a moment. Then she knocked.
There was complete silence.
She knocked louder. Then called out, “Monsieur! Bonsoir!” She felt somewhat ridiculous saying ‘good evening’ at three in the morning, but nothing else came to mind. “Monsieur!” she called again.
A neighbor poked his head out his door, eyeing her in bleary annoyance. He was tall and pale and wore light-blue pajamas that looked like something Gregory Peck might have sported in a circa-1940 movie.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I heard a loud noise,” she said.
He did not look impressed.
“Very loud. From this apartment.”
The man frowned. He moved out from the doorway, adjusting his pajama top, and came to stand next to her.
“Monsieur Mendieta,” he called, rapping on the door with his knuckles.
There was no response.
Mendieta? He has my mother’s last name. Zari turned the thought over in her mind, staring dumbly at the door, willing it to open.
The man wheeled and headed to his own door again.
“Where are you going?” Zari asked, feeling abandoned.
“To call for help,” he replied over his shoulder.
“We’re getting help, Monsieur Mendieta,” she said through the door. “You’ll be fine. We’re getting help.”
When the paramedics left, after wrestling Monsieur Mendieta onto a stretcher and navigating him down the stairs, they thanked Zari for checking on him. He had collapsed due to dehydration, they said. He was not critically ill or badly hurt by his fall, but they would take him to the hospital anyway and keep him under observation for the nig
ht.
“Does he have any relatives?” she asked the neighbor who had first come to her aid. His partner, a sinewy man with russet-brown skin clad in a tank top and running shorts, had emerged from their apartment during the commotion and stood beside him, rubbing his eyes.
“I don’t know.” He turned to his partner. “Have you ever seen any?”
The man shrugged. “No one ever goes in there but him.”
Before they returned to their respective apartments, they introduced themselves and promised to check up on Monsieur Mendieta once he returned home.
The next day was Sunday. Zari slept until noon. When she awoke she set the kettle boiling, fixed a pot of Irish Breakfast, washed her face, and settled back in front of the computer, which still sat open on her desk. She hadn’t shut it down properly last night after Monsieur Mendieta’s crisis. Taking a sip of tea, she scrolled through her e-mails and saw one from an unfamiliar sender with the subject heading “ADL.”
The brief note, accompanied by several attachments, was from a man named Andreas Gutknecht who said he had been in the audience at John Drake’s presentation in Amsterdam last fall. When he saw a painting at auction in London that had the ‘ADL’ stamp on the back of the panel, his interest was piqued. He searched online using the hashtag ‘ADL’ and found Zari’s posts about Mira de Oto on various social media platforms. He concluded the note by wishing Zari luck with her research.
Zari sat up straighter in her chair. She leaned closer to the screen and clicked on the attachments. The first was a small image of a portrait listed in an auction catalog. The subject was a wealthy woman dressed in luminous blue, her hair concealed by a jewel-studded veil. Behind her was a window that was open to a courtyard dominated by a pink brick tower. Zari zoomed in on the accompanying text. The work was oil-on-panel, a circa-1500 portrait of a merchant’s wife. Artist unknown.
The last sentence made her catch her breath: “The reverse side of the panel bears the mark ‘ADL.’”
Zari slid to the very edge of her seat, zooming in on the image until it was a pixelated blur. She adjusted it again and again, trying to get a clear view of the details, of the woman’s eyes.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” she said firmly. “Verify first, celebrate later.”
She drank the entire pot of tea while writing to the auction house, explaining her interest and requesting access to high-quality digital images of the painting.
Then she began typing an e-mail to John Drake, hesitated, and hit ‘cancel.’ In just a few days she would see him in St. Jean de Luz. They would have ample time to discuss this new find—unless she had a major surfing wipeout and was sucked under the waves to a watery grave. It had been years since she’d climbed on a surfboard.
It’s like riding a bike, she told herself, attempting to dislodge the pit of worry in her stomach. Your body will remember what to do. Trust it.
10
March, 2016
St. Jean de Luz, France
Zari
Seams of white foam stretched to the glinting horizon. Zari stared at the swells, mesmerized by their rhythmic rise and fall, the salty sharp air filling her lungs. John strode toward the water, his surfboard tucked under one arm. She started after him. Sand squeaked under her neoprene booties.
She could get used to this.
Zari followed John into the water and lay flat on the surfboard, paddling with her arms and pushing the nose of her board low to dive under the surface of each oncoming wave. She paddled furiously to get out to deeper waters. Her shoulders and arms burned with the effort. She probably should have been doing more planks and push-ups in preparation for this little adventure.
Oh, well. She was in it now.
The first few waves she tried to catch rippled away from her and crashed on the shore, and her efforts to stand up on her board resulted in one wipeout after another.
For a while she sat on her surfboard, bobbing in the waves, watching John. Obviously at home in the water, he picked his waves wisely and rode them with sure-footed grace. He had a surfer’s body. His muscles were defined even under the wetsuit. After a while, she became uncomfortably aware that she was no longer admiring his technique, but ogling him.
Finally she found the proper balance on her board. Relaxing her knees, she rode a wave until it began to foam and weaken, then dropped off and paddled out to deeper waters again, a huge grin on her face.
Nearby, John whooped at her accomplishment, his voice echoing over the water.
“Not as rusty as you thought, eh?” he shouted.
She paddled closer. “It’s like riding a bicycle,” she said airily. “Your body never forgets.”
The next five waves she attempted eluded her, and when she caught up with John again, he gave her a pointed look.
“Bragging never gets me anywhere,” she admitted. “But defeat only makes me more determined. We might be out here all day.”
“Suits me,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the horizon. “Here comes a great set. Get ready, Zari!”
She paddled with all her might and caught another wave. Her confidence soaring, she followed that one with at least a dozen more. The energy sapped from her limbs little by little, but she ignored the voice in her head that told her to take a break.
A little while later she lost her balance and wiped out hard. Pushed underwater by a crumbling, messy wave, her lungs burning, she felt panic begin to overtake her. When she surfaced, disoriented, she waved at John.
“I’m going in!” she shouted over the roar of the surf.
Her legs were shaky as she made her way to the beach and sat down on a bleached log that lay near the water’s edge. Even though the air was cold and the water even colder, she was hot inside her thick wetsuit. She peeled off her booties and pulled back her hood.
Too exhausted to do anything but sit, she watched John catch wave after wave.
Then he wiped out and disappeared under the roiling waters. She stood, shading her eyes, and strode into the shallow waves that licked at the sand, her heart beginning to race. Where was he?
His board popped up, followed by his neoprene-encased head. He turned to look for her and waved, gave her the thumbs-up sign. Relieved, she turned and waded toward shore again.
A terrible stinging pain seized the sole of her right foot. She looked down in the water to see a streamlined dark shape darting away. She must have stepped on it, though why stepping on a fish would cause such intense pain was a mystery.
Zari limped back to John’s car and changed out of her wetsuit. The pain in her foot was worsening. There was a dark red spot on her sole where the skin had been broken. The surrounding flesh was beginning to swell. She rummaged in her handbag for ibuprofen tablets and retrieved her mobile from the car, then sat on the beach waiting for John to finish his set. Two plump seagulls settled nearby on a dark ribbon of sand littered with shells and pecked at a washed-up crab, occasionally pausing to give Zari accusing stares.
A white-plumed seabird with elegant black-tipped wings appeared over the waves, flying south. She took a few pictures of it cruising low over the whitecaps, then scrolled through the photo library on her mobile. There were images from Zaragoza (pre-food poisoning), Wil grinning at her in his blue down jacket with the River Ebro in the background. Dozens of shots from their snowy idyll at the mountain cabin. She idly swiped through the photo stream, glancing up now and then to watch John ride a wave.
When she got to the series she had taken at the Sacazar home in Nay, her heart began to thud a little faster. The shot of the orange cat stepping daintily across the stones on the courtyard floor gave her pause. There was something about the proud arch of its back, the curve of its tail, its command of a space that had just been swarming with energetic children.
But for the first time, it wasn’t the cat that caught her eye.
11
/> March, 2016
St. Jean de Luz, France
Zari
John jogged across the beach to Zari, looking as energetic as he had going into the water hours earlier.
“Ouch.” He put aside his surfboard, kneeled down, and took her foot in his hands. “You stepped on a vive.”
“A what?”
“In English it’s called a weever. A flat fish with a stinger. Hangs out in the shallows around here.”
“Stinger is the right word. I took some ibuprofen to ease the pain.”
“It also helps to immerse it in hot water.” He retrieved his surfboard from the sand. “Come on. I’ll take you back to your hotel. Run a hot bath and you’ll be right as rain in time for dinner tonight.”
Zari limped back to the car. Once in her seat, she eased her socks on. But when she tried to insert her right foot into her shoe, the pain made her gasp.
John flinched. “I feel responsible. I stepped on one of those things years ago. I should have warned you not to take off your booties.”
“It was just an accident, John. Life has thrown worse at me. It’ll make a good story one day.”
He smiled. “That’s one way to look at it.”
In the low-ceilinged restaurant that evening, a wash of pale light from a reproduction oil lamp illuminated their battered table. The server plonked down silverware and paper napkins, then promised to return with a carafe of white wine. Zari studied John across the table. He wore a brown wool sweater and dark jeans, and his hair was still wet from the shower. There was a faint red ring around his throat where the wetsuit neckline had rubbed against his skin.
A few tables down, two young boys sat with their parents, tucking into a spread of tiny whole fried fish and salad.
