“Are you certain?”
Her offer makes me prideful and happy. We have written something together that feels truly worthwhile and for the first time I feel like an equal.
“Absolutely certain.”
We do a final polishing of the piece, sitting knee to knee in joyful silence, celebrating our work by treating ourselves to the shrimp and cherries a boarder left us when he departed. Vincent comes running in and leaps onto Jo’s lap, smothering her face with kisses. The boy adores his mother. But more than that, even at his young age, I believe that he respects her. He sees how hard she works to support him and all of us and he is never bratty or greedy like other children. He never asks for more than he is given. He is truly a delight in both of our lives. When I see him in Jo’s lap like this, I long for my own daughter. I have written to Madam asking for more information about the family she is with, and I have received no response. Writing our essay about motherhood only stoked my longing. Jo folds up the final draft of our essay and stuffs it into an envelope. “Claire, can you get this into the post and then we can take Vincent to feed the geese?”
No matter how terrible the weather, Jo has been spending as much time as possible outdoors with Vincent after reading that a sluggish mother raises sluggish children. Though we both know there is no end to criticism of how mothers care for their children, despite what we have just written against these kinds of dictums, she still internalizes all of it.
I happen upon the letter carrier a few streets over from the boardinghouse. He hands me a bundle of correspondence with a smile.
“Will we ever see the sun again, Miss Donadieu?” He chuckles.
“I think not, sadly.” I sort through the envelopes as we stand there chattering idly about the weather.
I offer a polite goodbye when I see Isaac’s bold scrawl on a small brown envelope.
Ire swells in my chest, along with fear. The wrong words fromhim will send her to her bed again for a week. She’ll lose all her interest, her energy, and her resilience. And more than that, Isaac is a distraction. An affair is a stain on Jo’s reputation. I’m overtaken with the compulsion to do something bold and wrong. I turn the envelope over. Its seal is loose enough that I can slip my littlest finger beneath it and open it without a tear. This is an invasion of Jo’s privacy, but she will read it to me eventually; she often does. I tell myself I only want to prepare what to say to her in advance. My heart thrums against my ribs as I pull out the piece of paper, almost as if it were my own letter from a lover. I scan the page quickly. “I’m adrift at sea buffeted by several hurricanes,” he writes. “As I’ve told you many times before I cannot even think about something more permanent, not in the way that you mean it. But I’ll never meet another person like you…Can’t we exist together in the in-between space? Come to me, darling. I cannot eat, sleep, or create until your warm gaze is upon my pillows.”
This is the last thing she needs. Our house is falling apart because she is falling apart. I crumple the paper in my hands until it is a tiny ball and chase after the postman to ask him for a favor.
I have made a decision that will change absolutely everything for both ofus.
19
Emma
No funeral isheld for Stella Claire Swanson. Her death is never mentioned in any of the papers in Paris that make it to the island by boat. I think back to our drug-fueled night with Sébastien and his boyfriend, how they had no idea she was dead. The Swansons haven’t told anyone about her demise.
I wonder if the lack of attention bothers her. All she’s said is, “That’s what you get for being an excellent shadow for so many years. To be fair, I’ve outlived anyone who would possibly care to celebrate me. The only ones left are the ones who despise me.”
We’re walking and talking now, going over the plans Stella hastily outlined yesterday, but still need way more clarification.
“I just don’t think we can possibly steal two paintings from the Orsay!” Colette declares, her voice pitched somewhere between panic and fascination.
“I have no doubt you can do it,” Stella replies with the casualconfidence of someone suggesting we try a new restaurant, not commit grand larceny. It’s exactly what she said yesterday when she laid out this portion of her plan, the part where we mastermind an intricate heist. “I have no doubt that any highly skilled woman could do it. Did you know that the majority of art heists in history have been done by men? And they nearly always make a grave mistake, yet many of them still often don’t get caught. You won’t make any mistakes.”
“There’s a reason women don’t steal art. Women have always had more to lose,” I say, mentally tallying the potential downsides—prison, poverty, banishment from the country I’ve come to love. Who will pay for my mother’s care if I get locked away? But then again, if I don’t agree to Stella’s terms, how will I pay for my mother’s care moving forward even if I’m free?
Yes, Stella wants us to steal two paintings from the Musée d’Orsay, two paintings she claims are fakes, she just has to prove it. And if she can prove it, that’s how she’ll take down the Swanson empire and destroy her stepson.
It’s also how she will reveal the biggest fraud the art world has ever known.
It’s confusing. So damn confusing. We’ve had her repeat it many times for us and she does it again on today’s walk.
What Louis Swanson has allegedly done, according to Stella, is fairly brilliant and massively illegal, not to mention morally bankrupt. His scheme exploits the fact that fine art from the “great” artists has become a commodity for both the ultra-wealthy and the world’s most cunning criminals. I hadn’t known the extent of it until Stella laid it all out for us. There is art that’s sold through auction houses in public-facing events, often used for rich people to compete with one another and burnish their image when they donate their $50 million purchase to a museum. And then there’s the shadow playground, where the ultra-wealthy buy and sell art through trusts and shell companies. The buyers and sellers have enormous flexibility in determining thevalue, making it perfect for money laundering, tax evasion, and using art as collateral in the trade of illegal goods.
“Say you want to buy fifty million dollars of automatic weapons for your unsanctioned militia,” Colette tries to explain. “You can do it with a single Monet and cash never has to change hands; there is no bank record or paper trail. The art-crime business is estimated to be worth around six billion dollars. Most things that are bought and sold in it are small enough to fit in a carry-on suitcase because they’re tough for customs agents to spot, and they can easily be converted into cash.” The black market for art is one of Colette’s personal fascinations.
According to Stella, this shadow art market is mostly controlled by the Swansons. It is an open secret, and they aren’t by any means the only ones operating in it. That part of it is not fraud per se. It’s underhanded capitalism for sure, but still within a legal gray area.
“But my stepson got too greedy, if you can imagine that,” Stella explains. “For the past five years he has been double-dipping. And I believe it has made him more than a billion dollars.”
“What do you mean by double-dipping?” Colette asks, though she has a better handle on it than Lucie and I do.
“Nearly every museum in the world has something donated by the Swanson family. Those donations are an incredible tax write-off for the family. Done well, they allow the company to avoid paying taxes altogether. Everything becomes profit for them. But Louis realized that the museums rarely check the authenticity of the paintings. Why would they? The Swanson family authenticates nearly everything. So he’s hired a small gang of incredible replicators to re-create the paintings he donates to the museum.”
“But what happens with the real paintings?” I ask.
