Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The following afternoon at Larry Calvin Johannes’s place, Oriana listened quietly in the corner as Isabella interviewed him for the upcoming article in Artist on the Move, which planned to feature “Oriana’s next greatest find.
” Reese was still at the hotel, doing a little work and, she suspected, still resting.
She shoved fear about it out of her mind and told herself to be present, to listen.
Was there something amiss about this Larry guy, or did people in Nederland—much like people in Martha's Vineyard—like to gossip about things they didn’t know anything about?
To begin, Isabella asked Larry a series of questions that buttered him up.
She asked him about his artistic process and his inspiration.
She asked him how he felt about being “discovered” at the age of eighty.
He grinned sheepishly, and the photographer took a picture.
It all felt extraordinary. It all felt like it was falling into place.
“Tell me, Larry,” Isabella continued, her grin sterling. “It’s lonely up here in the mountains alone. Was that your plan? Or did you ever share this space with anyone?”
A flicker of sorrow came over Larry’s face. “I was married once,” he said. “When you’re as old as I am, you’ve had hundreds of experiences. Some of them don’t even feel like they belong to your life.”
Isabella leaned forward and put her chin on her fist. “What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Larry took a staggered breath. “It was so long ago, Isabella. Honestly, the man who married that woman was a very different person. I imagine that wherever she is, she doesn’t think of me at all.”
She definitely doesn’t think about him if she’s dead, Oriana thought darkly, then cursed herself for it.
It wasn’t likely that this soft-spoken, artistic man had killed a woman.
Then again, softer-looking men around the world had done much worse.
It was irresponsible to judge someone based solely on looks.
When the interview was finished, Oriana oversaw the packing of Larry’s paintings and explained that they would be shipped to a Manhattan warehouse. “From there, I can work on broadening your reach and vamping up your brand.” She narrowed her eyes, wondering if she was making a mistake.
Larry beamed with happiness and shook her hand. “This is the happiest time of my life,” he said. “You know, I’ve worked tirelessly for decades. I never thought anyone would want to see my paintings again. I thought my life wouldn’t matter.”
Oriana was caught off guard. “I thought my life wouldn’t matter” was such an honest and strange thing to say that it nearly broke her heart.
It was true that this was everyone’s fear, wasn’t it?
That their lives were small, that they hadn’t impacted anyone during their time on earth.
As she drove back to the hotel to find Reese, she counted back the years of her own life and wondered if they’d mattered at all.
She considered her daughter, her son, and her sister.
She thought of her “new” half-siblings, Roland and Grant, and how wonderful it was that they’d come together as one big, happy family.
“It had meaning,” she told herself as she parked at the hotel.
It all continues to have meaning. For me, anyway. For those I love.
But Larry didn’t have anyone else around, she remembered. She ached with a sense of loneliness for him, for his years alone and apart.
When she returned to the hotel room, she was thrilled to find that Reese was up and smiling. “How did it go?” he asked, kissing her. “Did you arrest Larry for murder?”
Oriana laughed and drew her arms around her husband. “Turns out he’s probably just a kind, lonely artist.” She told him about the interview and how he’d answered everything “perfectly.”
“What does Isabella think?” Reese asked.
“She wants to do a little more digging,” Oriana answered. “But she’s curious like that. She can’t hold herself back from cracking something wide open, even if that something turns out to be hollow.”
Two days later, Reese and Oriana flew back to Boston, grabbed their car from overnight parking, and headed back to Martha's Vineyard. The leaves on the East Coast were even brighter and more autumnal than they’d been a few days earlier, but it was warm, lower sixties, so they cracked the windows and breathed in the oceanic air.
“I could never live in the mountains long-term,” Oriana said.
“It’s pretty, though,” Reese declared. “Spooky and mystical, but pretty.”
Oriana laughed and laced her fingers through his. “Thanks for going out there with me.”
“Thanks for letting me tag along with you,” Reese said. “Sorry I’ve been so tired. Maybe I need to try out a few new vitamins. Perhaps I need to look into afternoon espresso. If it’s good enough for the Italians, it has to be good enough for me.”
Oriana listed out a few potential vitamins they could pick up from the pharmacy on their way home. Reese wrote them down in his phone, nodding, his brow furrowed. Oriana guessed that this spell of fatigue would be such a distant memory that they wouldn’t remember it.
When they returned home, they showered and watched television for a little while before heading to bed.
Tomorrow would be busy. Reese had a number of meetings, Oriana had calls with the Manhattan warehouse and potential buyers of Larry’s paintings, and afterward, they were invited to the Jessabelle House on Nantucket Island, where Roland’s daughter, Samantha, lived with her husband.
Located on the bluffs of Siasconset, the house was extraordinary.
Samantha had taken to having Coleman family parties not only on the traditional June Solstice but also “whenever she felt like it.” Oriana hadn’t seen her extended Coleman family in a while. It was time.
The following afternoon on the boat from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket, Reese and Oriana finished up their last emails, closed their laptops, and prepared their hearts for their big, boisterous family.
Their daughter, Alexa, and their grandson, Benny, were at the railing, watching the island grow closer and closer.
Benny turned around frequently to call out, “Grandpa! Look! It’s the island!
” Reese finally got up and walked slowly toward their grandson, wincing when Reese picked him up.
The toddler had gotten heavier recently, Oriana knew.
But it surprised her that Reese struggled with his weight.
Reese had always been strong, built up from years of working out at the gym.
When they reached the Jessabelle House, Oriana’s sister, Meghan, scrambled down the veranda steps to hug them first. It was clear she’d already had a margarita, because she was smiling in that joyous and tipsy way she so often did at family parties.
“I want to know everything about your new discovery!” she cried, leading Oriana back up to the veranda, their arms laden with bottles of wine and snacks Oriana had brought for the party.
Samantha, Hilary, and Hilary’s daughter Aria were standing in a circle on the veranda, sipping wine. They hugged Oriana in greeting and begged for details about the “mysterious painter.”
“I was reading about him this morning,” Aria said conspiratorially. “It’s strange that he’s been up in the mountains by himself all this time. I mean, it’s captivating!”
“Right? He must have gone years without saying a word to anyone but the mailman and the odd cashier,” Samantha said.
Samantha’s husband, Derek, came out to take Oriana’s groceries and bottle of wine. A moment later, Sam’s daughter Darcy appeared with a glass of wine for Oriana and for herself. She announced that she recently stopped breastfeeding, and she was so grateful to have her body back to herself.
“But it’s bittersweet,” she admitted, taking a sip of wine.
“They were special, special hours.” She went on to say that, of course, she was considering having more children, that she knew there would be future breastfeeding sessions, and future beautiful times.
“But it’ll never be the same. Not exactly. Never again.”
Oriana remembered her countless hours breastfeeding her babies, how she’d refused to take too much time off from work and had spent many of those hours on the phone with clients, buyers, and artists.
All the while, exhaustion had made her head foggy, and her body had felt stretched thin and meant for something else.
Mothers were superheroes, she knew. But they didn’t always feel like superheroes.
Sometimes they felt dried up and at the end of their ropes.
It was often hard to get women to admit that.
Reese disappeared into the house to chat with some of the men of the family about whatever it was they liked to talk about: sports, maybe, or work, or travel.
Oriana watched him go, her heart aching at how slowly he walked.
She’d watched him take four vitamins just that morning.
Maybe they’d kick in by the end of the week.
At that moment, Oriana’s phone buzzed with a call from Isabella, the journalist. She excused herself to the end of the veranda to take it. “Hey!” she said. “Thanks again for the article. It did everything it needed to do!”
“I take it you have interested buyers?” Isabella asked.
“I have so many missed calls and emails to respond to. I might go crazy in the next few days,” Oriana said with a smile.
But she knew it was rare for Isabella to call her out of the blue just to talk about how successful something had been. Isabella cut to the chase shortly after that.
“Don’t you get the sense he’s not telling us everything?” Isabella asked, speaking of Larry, about his wife.
“Maybe he really doesn’t remember,” Oriana suggested. She’d bought what he’d said about feeling like he’d lived so many different lives, that he couldn’t always find himself in all of his memories.
“But what about all the gossip in Nederland?” Isabella asked. “I can’t get it out of my head. People think he murdered her. I mean, murder is a big leap, don’t you think?”
“I think they’re bored up there and don’t have anything else to talk about,” Oriana offered, although she wasn’t sure if she believed that either.
Isabella sighed. “I have stacks and stacks of work to get to, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get Larry Calvin Johannes out of my head. Not quickly, anyway. Do you mind if I keep digging into him?”
Oriana felt a wave of nausea. “I don’t mind, of course.”
“I know that bad press around him might affect your career,” Isabella said quickly.
Oriana imagined the headlines. She imagined buyers calling her, demanding to know why she’d sold them paintings from such a sinister criminal. But what if Larry really had done something to his wife, and she chose to ignore it?
“It’ll take me a little while to go through everything,” Isabella went on, pushing it. “I probably won’t uncover anything for a month or more. If there’s anything to uncover.”
“Right. That big ‘if,’” Oriana said, squinting so that she could just barely make out an enormous bird, landing on the watery horizon.
“I’m visiting family on the East Coast around Thanksgiving,” Isabella said.
“What if I bring you whatever I find then? You can assess it and tell me what you think. Maybe it’ll be nothing.
Perhaps it’ll be something so crazy that it’ll actually help you sell his paintings.
You know how fame can be. It can come from a good place, but it can also come from a bad place. ”
Oriana laughed nervously. She had no idea what was on the horizon. “You’re always looking out for me.”
“We’re friends,” Isabella reminded her. And it was true that they’d worked together for the better part of twenty years at this point.
Sometimes it boggled Oriana’s mind to think that she was toward the end of her career.
She’d worked tirelessly for so long. She wasn’t sure what it would mean to quit.
After Oriana got off the phone, she returned to her circle of female family members and got a refill of wine.
Conversation swirled, taking them from one topic to another in a sort of beautiful dance.
Samantha announced that dinner would be readysoon, then they would have a video chat with Rachelle in Rome at six o’clock and a bonfire on the beach when night fell.
It would be a gorgeous night. They would be able to see every sensational star.
But a little before dinner was served, there was a cry of alarm from inside the house.
“Oriana!” Roland called from the kitchen. “Come quickly!”
Oriana felt all the blood rush from her head. Panicked, tipsy, and lost, she shot into the house and down the stairs to find the men of the family crowded around Reese. He was on the floor, slumped over, his hands on either side of his face. It looked as though he’d fallen.
“Call the ambulance!” Oriana cried because she couldn’t take it anymore. Reese shouldn’t be this tired. He shouldn’t be this thin. He shouldn’t be falling like this.
Oriana sat down beside her beloved, took his hand, and tried to find his eyes. But he was too exhausted to look up at her. He was too lost to mutter anything but, “I’m sorry. I thought I could do it. I’m sorry.” Oriana didn’t know what he meant, but she guessed he didn’t either.