“Honestly, I’m just surprised you answered. It’s two o’clock on a Tuesday.”
“Yes, well some of us work.”
“But are you working rightnow?”
He sighed. She was infuriating, calling mid-afternoon on a Tuesday and assuming he might not be busy. Mostly because he knew she had already deduced that he wasn’t. “What do you need?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“At the moment I’m not working, no.”
“Good. Because I’m headed to our very favorite place in the world for a little peace and quiet and wanted to know if you cared to join me.”
A small smile returned to his lips. “I’ll meet you there.”
Knightley had always loved the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a New York institution. The towering columns and limestone facade alone felt like it physically anchored the center of the island. And inside it was a sanctuary: miles of art and sculpture and just… quiet.
It was incredible. Truly. But to Knightley, it was always simply a place to go. A safe space that for a long time vied only with the Woodhouses’ as a real home. A place to escape when his own became too much.
It was funny, his father spent millions trying to make their house feel like a museum, and Knightley still preferred the real thing.
“I haven’t been here in years,” he murmured as they made their way through the American Wing to European Paintings.
Though there was an order to how the galleries were laid out,it still felt like a labyrinth, and Knightley forced himself to stop keeping track of their location and just… wander. The way he used to.
Emma barely looked up from her pink Moleskin notebook as she made a note from a nearby plaque. Usually when they came here he could count on her to keep his random wandering on track. She never had an agenda or a schedule and would roll her eyes if he even tried to plan the trip. But today she seemed surprisingly focused, notebook in hand and a serious line to her brow. She was even wearing flats.
“Years? How is that even possible? You live half a block away,” she said.
He didn’t bother acknowledging the comment as he approached a Van Gogh and studied its thick brushstrokes.
They continued on to the next gallery. It was familiar, but it took Knightley a moment to remember why.
“Wasn’t one of your mom’s Pierre Bonnard paintings in this room for a while?” he asked.
Emma waved him off, focusing instead on the Manet in front of her.
Knightley didn’t mind the dismissal, he knew why. Cassandra, Emma’s mother, had collected Pierre Bonnard paintings; it was one of Knightley’s earliest memories of their house. The brightly colored canvases on almost every wall of the living room, the office, the hall.
They started to disappear when Cassandra died. Knightley had been nine. Over the next few years, Mr. Woodhouse had them removed one by one and gave them on loan to this museum. By the time Knightley was in high school they were completely gone, too painful a reminder of the woman who was lost so suddenly.
Knightley’s gaze slid across the light gray wall in front of him.“They had it hanging right here.Flowers on a Tableor something like that,” he said, almost to himself.
“Flowers on a Red Carpet,” Emma corrected him, her attention still on the Manet. “It was the one that used to be over the sofa in the living room.”
He paused, stunned for a moment. Emma had only been two when her mother had died, and she was barely out of grade school by the time her father had removed the last of the paintings.
“I didn’t know you remembered that,” Knightley said, turning to look at her.
Emma offered him a shrug. “Of course I remember it. I remember all of them. Mom picked them out so the paintings were like little pieces of herself through the house. They made it feel like it was still her home too, you know?”
He nodded. Sometimes he forgot that while he tried to piece through his memories of Mrs. Woodhouse, Emma barely had any at all.
He wanted to prod her further, but before he could continue, she closed her notebook and started forward again.
“Come on, Knightley. Keep up.”
“So what are we doing here?” he asked, following her into the next room.
