“Something.”
“You stay tryna be in my business.”
I am. I’m not ashamed of that, though if she really wanted me to stay out, I’d respect her wishes.
“You’ll have to get some shots here. Tanya lives in the very bones of this building,” I say.
“How so?”
“Tanya was a not-so-silent investor.”
Surprise etches its way onto her features, not at the fact that Tanya invested in me, but that she didn’t know about it.
“Yeah. My art was doing really well for itself and the Baltimore Collective was already established, so I was ready for this step, but Tanya didn’t want me to front all the capital myself.”
That earns a wider smile from her. “And what were her not-so-silent conditions?”
I chuckle, thinking of the many contributions she made over the years that I pretended were too grandiose but always appreciated. “You know Tanya. She always had something to say. Some grand idea.”
“And they were grand,” she adds.
“Very. We hosted aBridgertonball here one year. That was all her doing.”
“Aww, I loveBridgerton. I wish—” She cuts herself off before she can say she wishes she had been there. Because she could’ve been.
I never would’ve stopped her, but once again I’ve inadvertently stepped on one of the bombs of our past.
“I know she came in fullBridgertongarb,” she redirects the conversation, and once again I let her.
Thankfully, after the awkward moment at Spring House, we were able to bounce back and enjoy each other’s company on the way to BMA, even if it wasn’t a long ride.
When we get there, Tanya’s assistant wastes no time escorting us to her office. Her space is as vibrant as she was, teal and gold prominent throughout all the tiny details, incense in eccentric-looking diffusers, and her desk clear of anything except a statue of two linked hands.
Her back wall is covered with photos. In all the time I knew Tanya, she was never without someone under her wing. She loved to pretend she was this mysterious widow, but everyone knew her heart was ten times the size of her body, and her photo wall of every kid she mentored only proves that point. She took care of so many of us; most of us have her to thank for our success. Staring down the rows of people who went on to become famous in their fields, I’m reminded of her impact.
Dani sighs beside me. “I keep wondering when I’m gonna walk into a space that was hers and not lose my breath.”
“If grief was easy to measure, people wouldn’t be nearly as afraid of it.”
Sometimes, there’s no rhyme or reason to the things that trigger us. I think Tanya’s loss has the power to change the trajectory of our course entirely.
Dani takes a deep breath before trailing her fingers along Tanya’s desk and walking to the other side of it.
“What do you think she wanted us to find here?” she asks, eyes roaming.
“The note said we’ll find her life where we find her art. Maybe she just wants us to go through her stuff. See if we learn any secrets about her.”
We have no idea where this scavenger hunt will take us, only that the possibilities are endless, which in Tanya-speak means we could end up anywhere in the world for all we know. Our first clue was the note Victor gave us from Tanya about art imitating life.
She snorts. “Even on her deathbed, she was the most dramatic woman I know.”
“My junior year of college, I applied for this fellowship in New York and I didn’t get it, which was fine, except I lost out to a guy in my class that I hated. When I bitched to Tanya about it, she sent a string quartet to my place to play sad ‘get over it’ music. Drama wasn’t on her, it was in her.”
Dani stares at me with wide eyes before doubling over with laughter. “I’m sorry, but that’s funny as fuck. Did you let them play the whole song?”
“I mean.” I pause. “Yeah, they were really good. But still—”
Her sharp laughter stops me short and it just keeps going.
