“Where did this come from?” he asked. He walked over to the photo of him holding William and picked it up. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“I printed some photos and framed them. There are a few more scattered around the house,” she said. “Feel free to rearrange them, of course.”
“Thank you. I should’ve…Where did you find them?”
“On your computer.” She waited for him to chide her for looking in files he had not told her to.
He didn’t. He set the photo back down and looked at the shelves again. “Is that The Flayed Man?” he asked.
She grinned. “It is. It’s a gift. Boss Appreciation Day.”
“Is that a real holiday?”
“I think I just made it up,” she said.
He almost smiled. “I love it.” He touched the blue glass bowl. “This was my grandmother’s,” he said. “Sometimes she’d let me eat ice cream from it. And where did you find this?” He indicated her painting.
“Oh. That’s the work of an up-and-coming artist from the Outer Cape.”
He glanced at her. “You?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“It’s extremely symmetrical. Don’t quit your day job.” He was smiling at her. She almost had to fact-check his face, but yes, that was a smile. “Thank you. It looks very…thoughtful.”
“You’re welcome.” He didn’t say anything else, and for a second, they just looked at each other, the faint roar of the waves the only sound.
Invite me to stay.
The thought came as a surprise. She could stay, of course—she had a room downstairs—but suddenly, she thought she should leave, although why, she wasn’t sure.
“Okay,” she said. “I think I’ll head back to Wellfleet and watch the storm from my place.”
“Drive safely.”
Drat. If he had said she shouldn’t drive in the rain, she would’ve caved. “I always do.”
He glanced at her, and his mouth moved a fraction at the corners. “Text me when you get there so I know you made it.”
Go figure.
He picked up the photo of him and William again and studied it, and Winnie could tell he was no longer thinking about her. It was oddly disappointing.
“Have a good night, Lorenzo.”
He was still looking at the photo when she left the house.
NINE
LORENZO
Lorenzo had asked Winnie to come to Boston.
It had been four days since he’d seen her last, since he’d seen the photos she had framed for him, the inexplicably perfect additions she made to his house. The curved little statue was a Tom Bennett sculpture; she’d bought it for $75 on the Cape, but it was worth closer to a thousand. A piece of driftwood, a martini glass filled with white stones, an embroidered red cushion against his white pillows. The woman who’d overseen the interior decorating of his home could’ve learned a thing or two from Winnie Smith. It wasn’t her taste per se…it was that he loved everything. That he would’ve chosen everything, if he’d had the time and inclination.
But it was the family photos that really got to him.
Every time he saw one, his hypothalamus passed his pituitary gland a little oxytocin into his bloodstream. In addition to the photo of him meeting William for the first time, there was one of him and Lucy, a picture of his parents on their wedding day (where she had found that, he had no idea). There a casual shot of him and Dante last year, one of the few times where they looked like brothers, not distant relatives, the both of them leaning on the deck railing here, their faces turned toward each other in conversation, neither particularly smiling, but both of them relaxed. There was a photo of him dancing with Noni at Sofia’s wedding…Noni had wobbled to her feet, and Lorenzo could still feel the pleasure of making his grandmother smile and laugh, hearing her Italian words telling him she was too old for this. Some part of him had known it would be the last time they’d have a chance for something fun. Sure enough, Noni had died a few weeks later.
