“Keep your hair on,” Hugo said. “I’m only saying she’s a little fragile right now.”
“You like this girl, don’t you?” Jack sounded annoyingly pleased with himself, as if he’d masterminded the whole thing. “You have my approval.”
“I didn’t ask for your approval.”
“You have it anyway.”
Hugo ignored that. “You should know, I told her about Autumn. Had to. She was distraught, Jack.”
“It’s all right. She needed to know.” Jack was quiet a moment. Then, “Son, try to get her to stay another day at least, please. There’s someone coming tomorrow I want her to meet.”
“Who?”
“That is for me to know and for Lucy to find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Lucy came outof the bathroom, Hugo had disappeared. “Hugo?”
“Come hither!” he called back from the end of a short hallway.
Confused but intrigued, she followed his voice. “Come hither? Who says, ‘Come hither’?” she replied.
“I do. Are you coming hither yet?”
She reached a half-open door to what should have been a bedroom, but when she pushed it open, she found herself in Hugo’s studio.
“Fine, I’m hith—Wow,” was about all she could say. Lucy stood in the doorway, staring before stepping carefully inside. It felt like that moment inThe Wizard of Ozwhen Dorothy went from black-and-white Kansas to Technicolor Oz. Every single wall was covered, floor to ceiling, with paintings. The drop cloths covering the floor were stained every color of the rainbow. The few tables in the room were piled high with paints, brushes, water jars, and magic potions, for all she could tell. One ancient metal bookcase held what looked like a hundred well-worn sketchbooks. Even those were covered in paint.
Lucy had to ask, “Do you just stand in the middle of the room and throw paint over things when you get bored?”
“Yes.” Hugo was kneeling on the floor by a stack of canvases.
“Is this all Clock Island stuff?”
“More or less. Besides what’s gone to charities, I’ve kept every sketch, every photo, every cover painting, every single bloody note that Jack ever gave me about the paintings.” He pulled a yellow Post-it off the back of one canvas and showed it to her.
Lucy took it and read it aloud. “Spooky Ooooooooh not spooky AHH!”it read. “That’s not helpful.”
“Tell me about it.”
She handed the note back to Hugo, though she sort of wanted to keep it as a souvenir.
“Everything’s here or in storage in Portland,” Hugo continued. “Let’s just say Jack’s publisher impressed upon me years ago the historical and literary importance of…allthis.” He waved his hand around.
“You just have them here all stacked against the wall? Not in plastic? Or locked vaults?”
“Only blankets,” he said, “and a very good dehumidifier.” Hugo tossed a few of the blankets off the painting stacks. “Oh, tea and biscuits over there. Help yourself.”
Lucy went to the one table that wasn’t covered in paint. “Biscuits? These look like cookies.”
“I’m going to teach you to speak proper English,” he said. “Cookies are biscuits. Biscuits are scones, but we eat them with clotted cream and jam, not gravy. Gravy is for meat, not biscuits.”
“That I can get behind.” Lucy picked up the mug. It was warm in her cold hands. She carried it around the room, feeling as if she were at the world’s smallest, strangest art gallery.
“I also have cheesecake, which in England we call…cheesecake.”
“You bake?”
