I’m staring at two Monets, a Renoir, a Picasso that isn’t supposed to exist any longer. There’s a Klimt that positively radiates its own light, a Cézanne tablescape of plump peaches that makes my mouth water.
I think it’s been almost two days since Caroline left me here. I remember what Matthew told me about how his father let him languish down here without food and water until he began licking the stone floor for any kind of liquid and then reached the point where dehydration knocked him out.
I’m nearly there.
When I regained consciousness after being attacked outside my apartment, I was in the back seat of a car, my hands tied behind my back, my ankles bound. I couldn’t see who was driving and there was a gag over my mouth. I tried to keep my faculties about me, but then I passed out again and didn’t wake up until I was being dragged through wet grass, my backside bumping over sharp rocks. I looked up into the moonlight and saw her face once more.
Caroline.
Everything went dark again.
When I woke up, I was in here, being held captive by the Swansons.
Now the door is finally opening. It sounds like an ancient drawbridge being lifted. The stone is as thick as a Cadillac is wide; that’s how Matthew described it. Even a tank couldn’t get through. It was, in fact, designed so that a tank couldn’t get through during the Second World War. I can’t lift my head to see who is approaching, but her heels click-clack like the keys of a typewriter on the cold stone floor. As soon as I see them Irecognize them. I’ve worn them, held them in my hands as I sobbed. I can see my face in the shiny black reflection.
She kneels and offers me a small plastic cup of water. I take it and gulp thirstily. Then comes a square of chocolate, dark, speckled in some kind of sharp salt.
Caroline kneels next to me now.
“You must know these shoes,” she finally says. “I thought you would appreciate me wearing them. Sometimes I wish he weren’t so unoriginal, but Pascal is a man who likes what he likes. He wants what he wants until he’s finished with it.”
Her words have no meaning to me. My throat is sandpaper. I need more water. She pulls a glass bottle out of her bag and refills my tiny cup. I try to sit, but the blood won’t return to my brain.
“Give yourself a moment. It’s terrible here, isn’t it? A dungeon. My brother may have told you about the time Father locked him down here. He was lucky. It only happened to him once. Every time I disobeyed I was dragged here or somewhere else like it, left for days to learn my lesson for some minor transgression or stray word. It’s how Father planned to make me strong. In some ways it worked. It wouldn’t have worked on Matthew; that kind of treatment would have broken him, but it did wonders on me. Look what my father created.”
I can finally look up at her, now sitting cross-legged on the floor yet still towering over me. The chocolate she gave me is dark and bitter, but it’s the sweetest thing that’s ever passed my lips. Next Caroline produces a warm buttered roll that I devour like a starved dog as I stare at my reflection in her shoes.
“My father succeeded in making me over in his image,” she continues. “He beat and starved any kind of emotion out of me. Feelings, he told me, were useless in business. Feelings were what made his own father leave his mother for Stella. My grandmother killed herself eventually. After she knew she’d defeated Stella, after she’d convinced Maxwell to get a vasectomy so Stella couldnever have her own children. It was the cruelest thing she could think to do to another woman, deprive her of being a mother. That cruel streak in my father came from her and from his grandfather. It skipped over Maxwell Senior. He was a good man, too good. But Stella chose Matthew over me when I was a teenager. She abandoned me when I needed her most. My father told me it was because I disgusted her with all my emotions. Can you imagine saying that about a thirteen-year-old girl?”
This is the opposite of what Stella’s told me about her relationship with Caroline, about how she’d been desperate to stay close to her. The stories don’t add up at all. But I don’t particularly care about their family feud at the moment. I want out of this dungeon.
“I always wondered what I would have been like if I’d gotten the same love from her that Matthew had. Maybe I could have been soft too and float through life creating video games and rubbing elbows with the Spice Girls.”
I accept another glass of water, drink it slowly to make sure it stays down. If I lie here, weak and unresponsive, she may keep going. Everyone wants a captive audience. That’s what Pascal once told me about exhibiting art. You paint the walls white, make the room sparse. You deprive the viewer, the potential collector and buyer, of all their other senses. You hold them captive. I need time for her to make a mistake.
“Pascal,” I whisper. The shoes.
“He was the first person who made me feel anything besides pain in a very long time,” Caroline says at the sound of his name. “He was my teacher too. Years ago. He flayed open my soul and lit it on fire. He made me appreciate art in a way that I’d never been allowed before. My father didn’t want me to go to that school. I already had a business degree but a proper art historian in the family can be useful, especially one with a master’s from the École des Beaux-Arts. Pascal groomed me from the start even though I was older than his other conquests. He wanted mypower and connections. I loved these shoes when he gave them to me. Did you love them?”
I manage a nod.
“Did you love him?”
“Very much,” I’m able to whisper.
“So did I. He didn’t discard me the way he did so many others, the way I assume he did you. He knew he couldn’t because of who I am, but I also couldn’t be with him, not in real life. My father would never allow it. When I knew Pascal had moved on to the next girl, it was me who ended things, but we’ve stayed in touch all these years. Neither of us has been able to quit the other. We keep finding a way back.”
All of this may have pained me if I weren’t so weak.
“You probably want to know why you’re here. There is no reason to keep it from you now. It’s because of Pascal. He led me to you. You’re aware he’s an expert in Van Gogh and Renoir authentication. But you likely don’t know that he also hates my father with a burning passion. Stella contacted him before she passed. She was looking for someone to help her prove that some of the paintings in the Musée d’Orsay were frauds and that our family could have donated fakes. He humored her but thought it was all the ramblings of a crazy old woman. And then she died.”
“But how did you connect her to me?”
“She mentioned you to Pascal during their meeting, told him she was working with one of his most promising students to try to reveal the fraud. He came to me with the story and I asked him your name. So when my brother brought you to the party, I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. That’s when I realized that Stella was plotting something from beyond the grave.”
It can’t be possible. Stella couldn’t have kept this particular detail from me. She knew my own history with Pascal beyond being his student. I can still see her face when I poured out everything about us, how she’d nodded at all the right moments, asked the perfect questions. None of this is a coincidence. Myfury burns like acid through my veins, but the scream building inside me emerges as nothing more than another broken moan.
“I think you would be foolish to continue to protect her now,” Caroline continues, unmoved.
