The knife plunged deep. “You always say you draw what you see, you draw what’s underneath. Is this what you see? This is ugly!”
“I—I’m sorry.”
“You’re so cruel.” Fern sobbed, dropped the trousers, and ran from the room.
“Never mind her.” Charlie patted Ivy’s shoulder and returned to the piano. “She’s been nothing but cross lately.”
Ivy couldn’t stop staring at her drawing. Was that truly what she’d seen inside her sister? Yes, Fern had been cross and bitter of late, but this...
As Charlie’s wistful tune arose, Ivy ripped out her drawing, crumpled it, and stuffed it behind the grate into the fire. It curled and blackened and fed the flames.
What had Ivy done?
Even when cross, Fern cared. She worked hard, all for the family. She’d sacrificed her own house for the family. Even Ivy’s restrictive schedule had been created for the benefit of the practice, of the family.
And Ivy had hurt her with the jagged lines of a mindless drawing.
Her chest ached, and she reached for the sketch pad cover to close it.
The next page—a drawing of Gerrit van der Zee.
Last Sunday, he’d sat two rows ahead of her, where Ivy couldn’t help but see him. Her pencil had defied her and traced his likeness.
If she truly saw what lay underneath, why hadn’t she drawn the sickly evil of a collaborating heart? Instead, the image showed a gaze intent on the rector, an innate goodness about the mouth, and lines strong but gentle.
Not a face for the cinema screen, but for the drawing room.
Ivy tore it from the sketch pad. She wouldn’t burn it as she had the sketch of Fern—she’d hurt her sister by it. This sketch of the Dutch traitor would join the one she’d drawn the day she met him, hidden in the back of her desk drawer.
She should burn it. Burn both of them.
Why couldn’t she?
chapter
9
St. Helier
Sunday, November 1, 1942
Gerrit matched Bernardus’s brisk pace along the Esplanade through St. Helier. Zeal for the Lord had once propelled Gerrit to church, as it now propelled Bernardus. Gerrit’s zeal had cooled, but he kept attending church and doing the right things, as if to show the Lord that he wasn’t the one who had slacked.
Still, church wasn’t without its appeal. Last week, Bernardus had chosen the pew behind the Picot family so he could chat with Charlie, leaving Gerrit behind Dr. Ivy Picot with her shiny black hair curling beneath the rim of her dark green hat.
Ivy had been deep in conversation with Mrs. Galais—who had been shockingly friendly with Gerrit and Bernardus since Charlie had introduced them as his friends.
On Sunday, Ivy had handed the older woman a pencil drawing of a house.
Not as Gerrit would have drawn it. Not unless that house truly had walls bowed out like cheeks or a roof tilted like a hat worn at a saucy angle or an open door like a smiling mouth or light in the windows like sparkling eyes.
“How precious.” Mrs. Galais had held the drawing over the pew. “Look, Gerrit. Ivy drew my house.”
“It’s very nice. I like it.” The whimsy of it did appeal to him. “I would have drawn simply what I saw.”
“I did draw what I saw.” Ivy didn’t face him, and her tone chilled.
“Then you see far more than I do.”
