“Can’t wait to see it.” Reese touched her knee and smiled.
“You good?” she asked again, narrowing her eyes.
“Just fine,” he told her. “Just getting old.”
Oriana and Reese decided not to stay for the entire auction. On the way out, Reese stopped by the front desk to see about the delivery of her new paintings (she’d gotten four in total). She also received information about each painting, including who had painted it. The painting of the little girl on the mountain, in particular, activated her attention.
“Larry Calvin Johannes,” Oriana read the painter’s name aloud. “That’s a mouthful.”
Reese tilted his head thoughtfully. “Never heard of him.”
“I think this is one of the paintings they dragged out of a warehouse,” Oriana said. “There’s a possibility that he isn’t alive anymore.”
There was a photograph attached of the painting itself, which Reese looked over for a long time, his eyes glinting with meaning. “You have a wonderful sense for these things, Oriana,” he said. “I hope the painter’s still alive. I hope you can change his life.”
Oriana’s heart swelled with expectation. As soon as they left the event space, she called her assistant, Kendra. She told Kendra that a delivery was coming in tomorrow morning and that she needed Kendra to find someone. Kendra listened as Oriana passed over his name, then repeated it.
“Never heard of him,” Kendra said. “But I’ll start the hunt immediately and let you know when we find him. If we do.”
Oriana thanked Kendra, laced her arm through her husband’s, and walked with him through the indigo streets of an evening in Manhattan. “You said you were hungry,” she remembered, her smile too big to falter. “What do you crave?”
“You know I could always have a slice of pizza,” Reese said.
“You’re telling me that it’s our first night back in the city, and you want to have a slice of pizza?” she teased. “You’ll never overcome your college ways.”
Reese chuckled. “Okay, okay. We can go to a fancy restaurant. But I need some pizza, either there or on the way back. I think the grease and cheese will do me good.”
Oriana agreed to a fancy Italian restaurant not far from Little Italy, where a server with a thick Italian accent brought them a pizza with a two-foot diameter, a pile of pasta with bolognese, and a bottle of red wine.
As Oriana reached for her fork and knife to tackle the pizza, her phone buzzed. She’d forgotten to put it on silent. “It’s Kendra,” she said, wincing at Reese. She’d promised herself to be fully present for their date night.
Reese had already dug into his pizza. His lips were shining with oil. “Go ahead,” Reese said. “You won’t annoy me.”
Oriana answered it. “Hey!”
“I already found him,” Kendra announced proudly.
“You’re kidding! And in record time, too.” Oriana smiled at Reese, who mouthed, “Already? Give her a raise!”
“Larry Calvin Johannes lives in the Rockies. Specifically in a place called Nederland, Colorado,” Kendra said. “He’s eighty years old. That’s all I could glean from the internet. I would guess that he doesn’t have much of an online presence.”
“I don’t want to be online when I’m eighty,” Oriana declared. “I hardly want to be online now.”
Kendra laughed appreciatively. “It sounds like you’re about to change his life.”
“Can you give him a call and see what his availability is?” Oriana asked. “I’d love to go out to Colorado and see what else he has on hand. Perhaps there’s a treasure trove of paintings just like this one. Maybe we can launch his career before the end of the year.”
Kendra said she’d get on it right away and hung up to leave Oriana and Reese to speculate excitedly about this mysterious Larry Calvin Johannes. They googled “Nederland” and looked at photographs of a landscape so entirely different from their Martha’s Vineyard home. There were mountains and caverns and echoing valleys and tall pines. There were wooden cabins and bears and crazy winters that kept everyone trapped inside.
“I can’t imagine living alone in the middle of all that,” Reese said wistfully, flipping through the photographs.
Oriana felt a rush of sorrow, thinking about how her husband would soon be back in the chaos of his own business, and she’d be off in Colorado alone, chasing another painting lead.
It was because of this that she couldn’t help but ask him, “Do you want to come with me?”
Reese gazed at her, surprise echoing off his face.
“I know it might be hard to manage, given all the work you have to do,” Oriana said, sliding her fingers through his on the tabletop. “But I’ve missed you, Reese. I can’t explain it. I sound like a middle school girl, asking for more time with my boyfriend.”
