CHAPTER TWELVE

New York City

The unfulfilled promise of sex after Liam left made Tillie restless and prowly. The work she should have done earlier was lost to the strange fugue state, for lack of a better description. She didn't know what else to call the lost time. Her stomach twisted in worry.

The best use of her restlessness was painting. To keep herself centered, she started Spotify on the Bluetooth speakers she'd installed in the corners of the studio, then changed into painting clothes. As was her ritual, she rounded the studio, looking afresh at each of the paintings, standing in front of each at a distance to check its impact and balance while also reminding herself what she was doing.

The woman nursing a wolf cub was one of the best this round—dangerous and moody, with what one critic called her "exquisite elevated sensibility." The others, too, had a spirit to them—the owl-mermaid girl was lost at sea, navigating home by the light of the moon. One showed an old woman offering food to the fairies, and in the shadows was a girl who'd grown too large for the world of the fey, chained to a tree.

Not all were dark, though most of them had an edge, but even the dark subjects held a reverence for nurturing. It didn't take an expert to interpret her longing for her mother. The woman feeding the fairies had Arlette's face and body, a chubby woman walking toward a fantastical barn with magical goats trailing behind.

So far, so good. She needed four more. The series felt tapped out, as if she was ready to move into the next phase of work, but needed to finish this one first.

The table in the middle of the room was scattered with the cat drawings, and she leafed through them, suddenly intrigued by the possibilities. The wise, human eyes, the long whiskers. She often painted dogs and goats and little cats, but this one was very different. Curious, she picked up a thick stick of graphite and started to sketch—

Then she remembered the weird afternoon, the lost time. Sticking AirPods in her ears, she dialed Jon. He picked up immediately. "Hey!"

"Are you busy?"

"Recuperating after the big party last night, honey." He yawned. "No surfer boy?"

"I tried. Unfortunately, Jared was here when we arrived and spoiled the mood." Picking up a gessoed canvas, she placed it on a sturdy easel. She started drawing, tethering herself to her best friend. "How did you celebrate?"

"Drinks with Alexander, and then to Train. I missed you. I wish I could cure you of those damned migraines."

"That's nice of you." She picked up a burnt sienna oil stick and drew a broad curve, a back. Made a mark for an eye.

"Are you still going to your mom's place tomorrow?"

"Yes. The Realtor is meeting me."

"Sure you don't want to wait until I can go with? I've been a little worried about you. I mean, you don't know what happened to you when you were a child. Maybe you have trauma that's just now surfacing with your mom's death."

"Liam said the same thing, and while I appreciate your worry, I really do need to get the farm on the market. I can't stand to be there without her."

"I wish I loved my mother the way you love yours."

"I wish you'd had a mother who loved you the way mine loved me."

"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "Me, too. Anyway, let's talk about happier things. Guess who I saw last night?"

Tension seeped out of her body toward the floor as Jon launched into a gossip fest. It was exactly why she'd called him, his butterfly flittering through the world of humans. His art was solid and melancholy, but you'd never guess it from his chatter.

It served to keep her grounded as she worked. Sitting at the big table, she sketched the cat, then started painting, seeing a girl on his back, his ears tufted like a lynx.

Jon slowed down, and she heard him yawn. To keep him going a little longer, she said, "Tell me about the trip to Crete."

"I'm waffling." He'd broken up with his longtime partner almost the same week Tillie and Jared had split up. They joked it must have been a deep astrological shit show, but it really had been quite a bad month. They'd done a lot of whining over the past few months, Jon more than Tillie, since she'd initiated the break in her relationship, and Jon was the one devastated. "It just won't be the same without Reggie."

"It won't be," Tillie agreed, tilting her head to check the balance of values on the painting. "But it will be a celebration of your enormous career victory."

"Who wants to go on a vacation by themselves?" He sighed. "I'm not really all that comfortable on my own. You know, childhood judgment and all that shit."

"You've had too much therapy."

"Is that even possible?"

"Maybe not." She stepped back and brushed hair out of her eyes, feeling a streak of paint mark her jaw. "I think it would be good for you, but you're the one who has to live your life, so you do you."

"Thank you," he said with some irony. "Just think about going, okay?"

"I can tell you I will, but you know as well as I do that I can't take the time right now."

"I get it." He yawned massively. "I've gotta go, honey. I can tell you're painting and want company, but I'm falling asleep."

She half smiled. "It was nice when we shared a studio."

"See? People are good!"

"You're good."

"No, you're good. Good night."

She hung up. Music played from the speakers overhead and kept the worst of the silence from squashing her, but the room was open and echoey, and right at this moment, it made her feel small. She wished to be able to call her mother, who'd stayed up well past midnight, making soaps or reading her latest tome, and always welcomed a call from Tillie. It was easy to visualize her in the cottage, dressed in her favorite long-sleeve flannel pajamas, her feet bare, the long, wiry gray hair trailing down her back.

Longing burned. Tillie wanted desperately to be able to bend down and hug her. Arlette had been very plump during the past ten years, and her hugs were like sinking into a soft blanket. Standing in her studio, paintbrush aloft, Tillie fancied that she could smell her, that she was still with her. A ghost who would not abandon her.

After Arlette died, Tillie spent three days clearing out the farmhouse. She'd boxed up the kitchen and the living room, given away the aging furniture, the sparse artwork. Arlette had lived mainly in the greenhouse, amid the shelves and pots, the strings of peas growing to the ceiling in the winter, the tomatoes producing even in December. Tillie couldn't even enter it at the start of her clearing frenzy. She didn't know what to do with it, how to keep things going, or even if she should.

Arlette had died of a heart attack, which seemed sudden but turned out to be something she'd known about—she'd had one before, and was being treated, but she never told Tillie a thing. She'd dispensed with a great many of her things after that first one—as ever, putting her daughter first—and there had only been books and clothes to go through, a few papers, dishes and pans and aged furniture, most of which didn't even interest thrift shops.

Liam showed up at 7:00 a.m. with two paper cups of drinks: coffee for Tillie, tea for him, judging by the dangling paper tag. "Lots of cream, right? A little sugar."

"Yes." She was touched that he'd noticed. It was an aphrodisiac to be seen.

In the car on the way up, they listened to folk songs, singing along to Joan Baez and Eva Cassidy, the Lumineers, and Paula Davies, the lesser-known artist they'd realized they both liked. "She's married to my cousin," he said.

Tillie's mouth opened. "What? That's a weird coincidence."

He shrugged. "I'm sure we'd find other connections if we kept talking. The world is smaller and stranger than we know."

"True." Tillie passed a lumbering truck. "I thought your family was in New Zealand?"

"Yeah, first generation. My mum was from Devon."

"Is that north or south? My knowledge of England is pretty limited."

"West," he said. "Far west. Looking at your paintings, I'm surprised you haven't gone. The west is magical, full of legends and lore and fairies all about."

A yearning swept through her like a brisk wind. The forest from the painting wafted over her imagination, a forest filled with enchanted and dangerous creatures. "That sounds amazing."

"You should go."

It seemed suddenly odd that she hadn't, but she had no real reason other than always choosing somewhere else. "I've always traveled for the adventure, or really, Jon does. England seems ... less of a challenge."

"Yeah, no. Americans think they know it, but ... England is not America."

"What do you mean?"

He shook his head. Tillie was aware of the smell of him in the small space, that note of lime. "I dunno. It's just not the same country."

"Have you been back since your gap year?"

"Oh yeah." He sipped his tea. "We've done a few gigs in London. I haven't been back to Devon since I was a kid, but I'm going this time. I'm pretty solid with my mom's BFF. She lives in this big tumbledown house and has a bunch of kids. Her husband is a veterinarian, and they always have a handful of rescue animals. A blind goat, a hobbled dog, like that."

"That's kind of cool. Another old hippie?"

"Totally."

The day was bright and sunny, though winter hadn't entirely burned away. She loved the look of the March fields, empty with that glowing promise of spring. For all her worries about going back to the farm, she felt remarkably calm. Liam's presence was very peaceful. "Do you have more workshops or whatever before you leave here?"

"Two more."

"Would you be open to me coming to listen?"

"I don't know that you'd find it all that exciting."

"Meditation isn't meant to be exciting, though, is it?"

"No." He took her free right hand. "Truth?"

"Of course."

"Do you mind if I keep that part separate for now?"

A prickle of warning rolled like a burr down her spine. "Are you hiding something?"

"One thing," he said. "But I swear, it isn't bad. It's just that it might interfere. With—" He gestured between them. "Us. This. Whatever it is."

She narrowed her eyes. "Seriously? What does that mean?"

"Nothing bad," he repeated. "Promise." His thumb moved, sizzling over the long bone of her hand as if it conducted electricity. She felt it to her gut. It was enough to make her want to stop the car and make out on the side of the road. Just so she could touch him. So he could touch her.

She glanced at him, her skin rustling. "This," she repeated, "can't be anything, though, can it." It wasn't a question. "You live halfway around the world."

"I do," he agreed. "But this isn't my imagination, is it? There's something here."

She turned her eyes to the road, away from that burning blue, the earnestness. "It's not your imagination. But I still don't know how anything can emerge. Maybe we should just be here now." She grinned at him. "Isn't that what you guys all say?"

He chuckled. "Well, I don't know about all, but I might have said something similar once or twice."

The drive looped through a dark forest, to the cottage where she'd grown up. She parked and sat for a moment with her hands in her lap, looking at the porch, bare now but once populated with a wide swing and pots of plants. For a few beats, she saw the other porch, the one from the painting with the big leafed plant, the cat, the two figures in turquoise.

Shake it off. Literally, she shook her shoulders.

"You okay?" Liam asked.

She nodded. "Here we are." Her mother's vast herb garden was to the left, winter barren but tidy. At the edge of the fields was the greenhouse.

"I like it," Liam said.

As they climbed out of the car, the Realtor appeared on the porch, a slim woman with hair cut in a precise line at her shoulders. She wore muted red lipstick that made Tillie wish she liked makeup more. "Hello," she said, coming down the steps to greet them. "You must be Tillie. I'm Beatrice."

She didn't look like a Beatrice, Tillie thought, but the da Vinci painting of Beatrice d'Este suddenly showed itself to her. The Realtor could be her sister. She smiled. "Hi," Tillie said. "This is my friend Liam."

Liam gave her a polite nod, his attention on the farm itself. Beatrice stared at him for the barest second too long. He didn't shake her hand, just wandered toward the side lot, where hog fencing protected the garden from deer. Rabbits often managed to find a way in and have a feast, but Arlette never got mad, just reinforced the lower levels of fencing. "They have to eat, too," she said.

Tillie was fiercely glad that it was still so early in the spring that the garden was mostly fallow. She didn't have to see what Arlette had planted last year when she was still alive, for a harvest she'd never see. She spied a line of garlic shoots, and if she got close, she'd see the asparagus patch. Of course, the perennial flowers along the porch were popping tiny green heads through the earth, primroses and daffodils, which not even deer liked to eat. In a few weeks, they'd be dazzling.

One reason Tillie wanted to get it on the market.

"Shall we take a look?" Beatrice asked.

Tillie nodded. It still seemed impossible that her mom wouldn't be there. It was a relief to open the door to empty rooms, only a few boxes of paperwork remaining, which she'd drag home with her today. "It hasn't been professionally cleaned yet," Tillie commented. "But almost everything is out."

"Do you mind if I just do a walk-through?" Beatrice asked.

"Go right ahead."

Liam waited on the porch. "You can come in if you like," Tillie said.

He shook his head. "I'm just going to wander the gardens."

"Okay."

The house wasn't huge. The living room and kitchen split the main floor, and upstairs were three bedrooms of modest size. The floors were wide-plank pine, in need of a good cleaning and resealing, but solid. Tillie walked to the window over the sink and spied Liam squatting near the potato patch. He reached down to pluck what was likely an early violet, and the light caught his hair, shimmering.

Us. This. Whatever it is.

Beatrice's boots clopped solidly on the wooden stairs, and she made notes in the kitchen. "Obviously, the appliances need updating or maybe just removal. Let the buyers figure it out."

"Okay. That's easy."

"I had a walk around the land before you got here, and it's in remarkably good condition. Your mother must have had a lot of help."

"No. She did it all herself. She said it kept her young."

"Really? I'm impressed." She flicked through her notes. "Well, the house is not quite as appealing, but it has good bones. The barn is very well maintained, and there's plenty of land for a small farm. It's not always easy to find the right buyer for a place like this, but COVID brought a lot of young families out of the city. Some of them have stayed, building organic farms of all sorts. That's who I'm thinking will be the buyer here."

"Sounds great."

"All right, let me work on some numbers and a marketing strategy, and I'll get back to you in a day or two with a contract and a plan."

Tillie loved her efficiency and lack of small talk. "Excellent."

"Thank you so much, Tillie." She shook her hand again, a solid grip she trusted. "By the way, I am really an admirer of your work."

"Oh!" Tillie was caught off guard. "I'm surprised you know it, but thank you so much."

"You're too modest. It's not like a million kids go to Fox Crossing High School. You're pretty well known around here."

"I'm so surprised." She made a mental note to make something for her. Ink and wash, perhaps. Tillie saw her as ... a black swan? Maybe. "Thank you."

The remaining boxes had come from Arlette's closet. Tillie had peeked into them when she first brought them downstairs—the usual detritus of a life: photos and mementos, paper tickets from trips taken long ago, a set of keys on a ring with a scribbled address that meant nothing to her. Most of it would end up in the trash, but Tillie didn't want to toss everything out without giving it the respect of a glance.

She wondered now if she could condense most of it into one box. She took the lids off the two top boxes and gauged the weight. Easy. Gathering sheaves of ephemera from one box, she transferred it to the other. A photo fluttered away and landed on the floor.

Liam knocked. "All right to come in now?"

"Yes." She transferred another handful of bits, then swept the last few things from the bottom of the box. Yellowed newspaper was stuck to the bottom, folded so she couldn't read it, and she used a fingernail to free it.

It was the Los Angeles Times , dated March 12, 1989, with the headline "Firestorms Kill Four."

"The LA Times ," Tillie said. "That's odd. I didn't know she ever lived there."

Liam squatted easily beside her. "Maybe she didn't. Maybe it's just packing material or something."

She nodded, but put it in the box anyway. She opened the third box and found it only a quarter full. More detritus—an old map of what might be a park, a ticket for a ferry. Tillie looked at it more closely, seeking a destination. "Huh. LA to Catalina, June 8, 1989."

"Or maybe she did live there," he said reasonably.

Arlette had never spoken of her life before Tillie was born, not in any real way. Vague sketches, parents who died when she was young, making her own way in the hippie days, living on communes, trading her baking and cooking skills for a roof overhead. Of Tillie's father, she said only that many of them slept together at the farm where she lived—she didn't know which of the men were her dad, and it didn't matter. Arlette left when she was pregnant and went to the city to make money to raise her baby.

"When she said ‘the city,' I always thought she meant New York. Maybe it was LA," Tillie said, and a sense of lostness filled her chest cavity. The bits of paper, the ancient mementos, made Arlette's life seem somehow lonely. "I wish I knew more about her life."

His fingers were laced together, hanging between his knees as he balanced on his heels. A shaft of light made his eyes look translucent. He waited.

"That's it," she said. "I just wish I knew more."

"Was she very private?"

"She was. But also ..." Tillie frowned. "She had some ... mental issues. Nothing particularly that interfered with her life or raising me, but she was reclusive, for sure. I sometimes wonder if she was abused as a child or something like that."

His brows pulled down ever so slightly. "Could it have something to do with the illness? Or was it an injury? That you can't remember?"

"Maybe." She shook her head. "Anyway, that's all a question for another day." She slapped the cardboard lid down on the box, and it suddenly gave way, two corners splitting. "Whoa," she said, staggering to her feet. "That made it a little bit heavy."

"Do you want some help?" He mocked a muscleman pose and gave a grunt.

"Yes." She smiled. "Please."

As he lifted the box, he said, "You've dropped something there."

It was the photo that had fluttered out. Tillie swept it up, turning it over to see a little girl, maybe two or so, in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt, sitting beside a swimming pool in a child-size chair. T in Santa Monica, it said on the back.

Not a child she recognized. She tucked it back into the box.

He carried it to the car, and she opened the trunk, shoving aside a blanket and a pile of junk she'd been meaning to get rid of. His forearms corded with appealing muscle, so he must not spend all his time in meditation. "How'd you get these muscles, Superman?" she asked.

He dropped the box in the trunk. "Yoga, actually."

"Really." Eyeing his arms, she wondered if the rest of him was that solid. She hoped she'd have a chance to find out. "I still want to sketch you."

"Better hurry. I'm leaving Saturday."

It gave her a pang, which she shoved away. "Come on. I know a place in the village you will love."