months before the loan reset.
Elliot’s wake-up call came blaring through the baby monitor at five forty-five. Sophie lay in bed waiting for Brian to make the first move, but he stayed asleep, or pretended to, snoring lightly.
***
The object carts were no longer in the hallway when Sophie visited Brian this time. Instead, half of them had been crowded into Brian’s office, where Sophie had to scoot sideways, holding her messenger bag high, to get to the chair beside his desk. “Sorry,” Brian said, moving a pile of reference books to the floor so she could sit down. “I’ve left the art handlers a million voice mails about this, but apparently nobody’s home.”
Sophie looked at the mess surrounding her and wondered what kind of help she was expecting to find here. She felt her resolve slipping, but tightened her grip. The conversation she was here to have—about the bills, the mortgage, the shell game—this was what married people did. They shared their troubles, confessed their mistakes, accepted help when it was offered. This was normal. Nothing to be afraid of. And she knew exactly how Brian would respond—with restraint. He wouldn’t yell, he wouldn’t blame. He’d just sigh and press his lips together, repressing his “I told you so.” And in a way, this is what she was dreading most: his tranquillity, his bottomless well of tenderness. He would try to make her feel better, telling her it was an honest mistake, promising they’d work it out together. He was always nicest to her when she deserved it the least.
Gathering her courage, Sophie turned to face him squarely. But Brian was uncharacteristically animated, swiveling in his chair and drumming his fingers in a way that looked almost gleeful. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I think I just figured out there’s a piece of Saint-Porchaire on the loose.”
“A piece of what?”
“French ceramics from the fifteen hundreds. Really ornate.” He played his chair arms like bongos. “There’s probably only about eighty of them in the world, a few of them in museums. We don’t have any. Yet.”
“Is there one coming up at auction?”
Brian gave her a faint one-sided smile that, for him, represented unbridled joy. “I think it might still be in private hands.” He launched into the story: how he’d dug up the records of an 1893 estate sale in France, which showed the purchase of a small collection of Saint-Porchaire by the Philadelphia shipping magnate Paul Wilder. How he’d traced three of the pieces—a cup, saltcellar, and candlestick—to Wilder’s son, who had eventually bequeathed them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. How he’d figured out that there had been two candlesticks in the original sale—not one, as everyone had always assumed.
“So one of them broke when Wilder shipped them home,” Sophie said, knowing that if this were true, Brian would be acting a good deal less jolly.
“That’s the thing. He didn’t ship it. I found the insurance records.” Brian drummed his armrests a little faster. “I figured maybe he kept it in his Paris apartment, so I wrote to his granddaughter, Eleanor. She lived there for years and eventually sold the place, along with all the art he’d been hoarding there.” He snatched a piece of stationery from a pile on his desk and held it up. “I just heard back from her.”
“And?”
“She says the candlestick wasn’t in the apartment.”
“So…it broke before she was born.”
“Maybe. But it’s the way she wrote it.” He scanned the letter. “‘The candlestick was never displayed in the apartment, and the family is not aware of its whereabouts.’ That’s basically all she says about it. It’s not the world’s friendliest letter.”
“But she’s acknowledging that there was one.”
“Right? That’s how it sounds to me. It also sounds kind of like, ‘Mind your own business.’”
“Which you have no intention of doing.”
Brian gave a happy little shrug.
Elliot’s wake-up call came blaring through the baby monitor at five forty-five. Sophie lay in bed waiting for Brian to make the first move, but he stayed asleep, or pretended to, snoring lightly.
***
The object carts were no longer in the hallway when Sophie visited Brian this time. Instead, half of them had been crowded into Brian’s office, where Sophie had to scoot sideways, holding her messenger bag high, to get to the chair beside his desk. “Sorry,” Brian said, moving a pile of reference books to the floor so she could sit down. “I’ve left the art handlers a million voice mails about this, but apparently nobody’s home.”
Sophie looked at the mess surrounding her and wondered what kind of help she was expecting to find here. She felt her resolve slipping, but tightened her grip. The conversation she was here to have—about the bills, the mortgage, the shell game—this was what married people did. They shared their troubles, confessed their mistakes, accepted help when it was offered. This was normal. Nothing to be afraid of. And she knew exactly how Brian would respond—with restraint. He wouldn’t yell, he wouldn’t blame. He’d just sigh and press his lips together, repressing his “I told you so.” And in a way, this is what she was dreading most: his tranquillity, his bottomless well of tenderness. He would try to make her feel better, telling her it was an honest mistake, promising they’d work it out together. He was always nicest to her when she deserved it the least.
Gathering her courage, Sophie turned to face him squarely. But Brian was uncharacteristically animated, swiveling in his chair and drumming his fingers in a way that looked almost gleeful. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I think I just figured out there’s a piece of Saint-Porchaire on the loose.”
“A piece of what?”
“French ceramics from the fifteen hundreds. Really ornate.” He played his chair arms like bongos. “There’s probably only about eighty of them in the world, a few of them in museums. We don’t have any. Yet.”
“Is there one coming up at auction?”
Brian gave her a faint one-sided smile that, for him, represented unbridled joy. “I think it might still be in private hands.” He launched into the story: how he’d dug up the records of an 1893 estate sale in France, which showed the purchase of a small collection of Saint-Porchaire by the Philadelphia shipping magnate Paul Wilder. How he’d traced three of the pieces—a cup, saltcellar, and candlestick—to Wilder’s son, who had eventually bequeathed them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. How he’d figured out that there had been two candlesticks in the original sale—not one, as everyone had always assumed.
“So one of them broke when Wilder shipped them home,” Sophie said, knowing that if this were true, Brian would be acting a good deal less jolly.
“That’s the thing. He didn’t ship it. I found the insurance records.” Brian drummed his armrests a little faster. “I figured maybe he kept it in his Paris apartment, so I wrote to his granddaughter, Eleanor. She lived there for years and eventually sold the place, along with all the art he’d been hoarding there.” He snatched a piece of stationery from a pile on his desk and held it up. “I just heard back from her.”
“And?”
“She says the candlestick wasn’t in the apartment.”
“So…it broke before she was born.”
“Maybe. But it’s the way she wrote it.” He scanned the letter. “‘The candlestick was never displayed in the apartment, and the family is not aware of its whereabouts.’ That’s basically all she says about it. It’s not the world’s friendliest letter.”
“But she’s acknowledging that there was one.”
“Right? That’s how it sounds to me. It also sounds kind of like, ‘Mind your own business.’”
“Which you have no intention of doing.”
Brian gave a happy little shrug.
Similar Books
