But when she comes back on deck an hour later, wrapped in a blanket against the cooling night air, and settles into the chair next to mine to watch the stars appear one by one over the water, I realize that surviving and living are not the same thing.
And Sera Mancini is making me want to live in ways I thought I'd forgotten.
4
SERA
Day five on the water, and I'm losing the battle against myself.
Ford stands at the helm, guiding us through a narrow channel between two marsh islands I couldn't tell apart if my life depended on it. The morning sun catches the silver in his hair, the strong line of his jaw beneath that beard, the capable hands that move over the boat's controls with the same easy confidence he brings to everything else.
I've been watching those hands for five days now. Watching them tie knots, clean fish, adjust rigging. Watching them wrap around a coffee mug at dawn while the rest of the world still sleeps. Watching them move with precision and care, never wasted motion, never uncertain.
I'm thinking about what those hands would feel like on my skin.
This is a problem.
"You're quiet this morning." Ford's voice cuts through my spiral. He doesn't look away from the channel, but I know he'saware of me. He's always aware of me. Part of the job, I remind myself. Keeping track of the asset.
"Thinking."
"About?"
"Work." The lie comes easily. "I have a piece waiting for me in Boston. Sixteenth century, Venetian school. The varnish has oxidized so badly you can barely see the original pigments underneath."
"What will you do with it?"
"Clean it. Carefully. Millimeter by millimeter, removing centuries of grime and bad restoration attempts until the real painting emerges." I pull my knees up on the bench seat, wrapping my arms around them. "Most people don't realize that what they're looking at in museums has been touched by dozens of hands over the years. Restored, repainted, varnished over. My job is to figure out what's original and what's been added. What belongs and what needs to go."
Ford is quiet for a moment, navigating around a submerged log before responding. "Sounds like archaeology. Digging through layers to find the truth."
"Something like that."
"You miss it."
It's not a question, and the accuracy of it catches me off guard.
"Yes." I watch a great blue heron take flight from the shallows, its wings beating slow and powerful against the morning air. "I miss the work. The focus. The feeling of solving a puzzle that's been waiting four hundred years for someone to notice it."
"Tell me about the Venetian piece."
I glance at him, surprised by the genuine interest in his voice. "You want to hear about Renaissance restoration techniques?"
"I want to hear about something that matters to you." He finally looks at me, those gray eyes steady. "We've got another ten days of this. I'd rather spend them learning who you actually are than circling each other like strangers."
Something warm blooms in my chest. Inconvenient. Dangerous.
"It's an altarpiece," I say slowly. "Probably by a follower of Bellini, though the attribution is disputed. The museum acquired it in the 1920s from a private collection in Venice. The previous owner had it 'restored' in the nineteenth century, which means they painted over whatever they didn't like and added a thick layer of varnish to make it look new."
"And now you're removing the nineteenth century to find the sixteenth."
"Exactly." I'm warming to the subject despite myself. "The preliminary analysis shows there might be a completely different composition underneath the visible surface. Possibly an earlier version that the original artist painted over. If I'm right, the cleaned painting will be twice as valuable, historically speaking. A window into the artist's creative process."
Ford guides the boat into a wider stretch of water, then cuts the engine. We drift in the sudden quiet, marsh grass waving gently on either side.
"You light up when you talk about it."
"What?"
