“You can fall apart with me,” Isabella told her, getting up to make more tea.
Eventually, Oriana ran out of tears and patience for the version of her life she kept replaying. That chapter felt finished. She exhaled, steadier now, and tilted her head. “Enough about me,” she said. “Tell me what’s happening with our guy. Larry Calvin Johannes.”
“The biggest new artist in town,” Isabella said in a singsong. She pulled out a stack of manila folders, from which she removed piles and piles of unorganized notes.
“You’ve been busy,” Oriana said, impressed.
“You know how I get when I’m obsessed,” Isabella said. “But there was something so creepy about that town in Colorado, wasn’t there? And when people started mentioning Larry’s wife to me, I had to dig deeper. I had to know what happened to her.”
Oriana grimaced. “Did he murder her?”
“Honestly? I still don’t know!” Isabella shook her head and pulled out numerous photographs taken more than fifty years ago. Most of them featured a younger, incredibly handsome version of Larry with a handlebar mustache and seventies-style clothing: bell-bottoms, turtlenecks, and sweaters. Often, he was situated alongside a beautiful young woman with brunette hair and long, slender legs. She wore sixties dresses, and then she wore seventies dresses, and she smiled nervously, in a way that suggested she wasn’t comfortable in front of the camera. That, or she wasn’t comfortable in the life she was living.
“Is that her?” Oriana asked.
“Introducing Henrietta Johannes,” Isabella said. “According to records, she and Larry were married in 1970 at the Boulder, Colorado, courthouse. They lived for a couple of years in Boulder before moving up to Nederland.”
Oriana picked up the photograph. “Where did you find these?”
Isabella blushed. “I wanted to go through Larry’s private collection, but he wouldn’t let me. Eventually, I tracked down an old friend of theirs who still lives in Boulder. His name is Ronald. He met Larry during a construction job at the university in Boulder. His first wife was friends with Henrietta, and they dined together often before Larry and Henrietta moved up to Nederland.”
“They took these photographs?” Oriana asked.
“He still had everything,” Isabella explained. “Apparently, his first wife died in the late seventies, and he wanted to keep a record of their life together. He hadn’t heard that Henrietta wentmissing, probably because he was so consumed with his own grief. When I asked him if it was possible for someone like Larry to murder his wife, he said no immediately. But then he stopped talking for a little while, like he was thinking about something. Eventually, he told me a story about how Henrietta had gotten a puppy while they were living in Boulder. Apparently, she hadn’t asked Larry if they could have a dog, and Larry was really angry about it. He would always show up at the construction site to complain about Henrietta and this dog. He really wanted a kid, I guess, and Henrietta hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. It put a big strain on their marriage. But he decided she was too obsessed with that dog, and one day he packed it up and took it away to a farm in Wyoming. Henrietta was devastated.”
Oriana leaned back in her chair, overwhelmed by the simple yet telling story. “That’s awful.”
“I know!” Isabella shook her head. “It sounds like she was lonely and frightened that she couldn’t have children.”
“Do you think he took her to Nederland to get her away from their friends?” Oriana asked.
“I had considered that,” Isabella said. “It’s the kind of thing that these guys do, right? If they’re abusive, they don’t want their wives to have anyone to confide in.”
“They want to make you rely on them completely,” Oriana agreed. She felt cold and clammy and strange. Outside, Martha’s Vineyard winds howled against the windows.
“Did he mention anything about Larry being an artist?” Oriana asked.
Isabella said he didn’t know anything about that. “He’d read about Larry’s paintings in the paper recently. He said he was surprised that Larry was still alive and up in Nederland.”
Isabella went on to explain that she’d returned to Nederland to interview people in the town about Larry and Henrietta. “I wanted anything they remembered,” she said. “I told them thatnothing was off-limits. I got a number of boring stories out of that.” Isabella chuckled. “But it sounds like our Larry wasn’t always kind to Henrietta. He would always sit in the truck and wait for her to get the groceries rather than come in and help her carry them. He would speak publicly about her inability to get pregnant as though it were all her fault. There are rumors that he tried to seduce many other women in town, if only to get them pregnant and have an heir. But he never managed to do it. Nobody would have him! And everyone felt awful for Henrietta.”
Oriana’s heart felt bruised. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Listen, these rumors are old,” Isabella hurried to add. “It’s possible that only half of everything I was told is true. Maybe even less.”
Oriana rubbed her chest. “I hate that I discovered this guy. I hate that I hauled him out of the past and made him famous.”
Isabella grimaced. “You didn’t know!”
Oriana showed Isabella what she’d sold just that morning: three iconic Larry Calvin Johannes paintings, each for between five and twenty-seven million dollars. “We’re raking it in,” she said sadly. “Meanwhile, he might have murdered his wife and gotten away with it.”
Isabella nodded. “People in Nederland really do believe he killed her. Apparently, something happened right after she went missing. Larry was found in the center of town, raving like a crazy person, calling her name. He couldn’t stop crying. Oh! Another thing.” Isabella leaned over the table. “Apparently, this was around the time of his first art show.”
Oriana’s head rang with surprise. “He had an art show?”
“Yes. He showed his paintings in Boulder during the summer of 1975,” she explained. “But he was so shocked by his wife’s so-called disappearance that he never graced the exhibition with his presence and didn’t sell a single painting. He packed everythingup in that dark room in his cabin and gave up on the world after that. Maybe it was out of guilt for what he’d done. Who’s to say?”
That night, Oriana sat with Reese in the upstairs bed and watchedLa Dolce Vita, an Italian film from 1960 that drew her into the world of grand movie stars, ancient monuments, divine foods, and long nights of dancing. Reese held her hand and fell asleep halfway through. As she watched him sleep, listening to the sweeping strings of the soundtrack and the wild and volatile Italian language, her thoughts returned to Henrietta and the dog she’d loved and the life she’d tried to live before she suddenly disappeared. Where had she gone? Was she still alive? Would anyone ever know the truth?
