Chapter 25
There were often late-afternoon thunderstorms at summer’s end, but today’s weather looked clear and fine for the flight to Cleveland.
Kate stood on the tarmac, greeting David Stewart, a regular client, who had a board meeting.
An elderly man with sharp blue eyes and a full head of white hair, he and his wife summered on Fishers Island.
“Hello, David,” she said, and they shook hands.
“Kate, I haven’t had a chance before now to tell you we’re so sorry about your sister. Lainie and I are heartbroken.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“She was an extraordinary woman.”
“You knew Beth?” Kate asked, surprised.
“Yes, she and Lainie both volunteered on Thursdays at the New London soup kitchen.”
“Beth loved doing that.”
“She cared about the people so much. Lainie always said so. It didn’t matter who they were, where they came from. Drug addict or the artist down on his luck—she treated them the same way.”
“Well, she was known for helping artists,” Kate said.
“Yes, a true philanthropist. We really appreciated her recommending one fellow to teach art to our grandkids.”
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“Very talented young man. Beth introduced him to Lainie, knowing that we love art and that we’d enjoy helping him out—but it turns out, he’s done so much more for us than we have for him. As a matter of fact, he’s heading out to the island again today. Third time now. The kids love Jed.”
“Jed?” Kate asked. “I don’t think I know him.”
“Oh, I thought you might. Beth told Lainie she was considering a show for him at the gallery. He was at the soup kitchen too.”
“A volunteer?”
“No, a client. He takes his meals there. Lainie says he’s a brilliant artist, graduated from the Black Hall Art Academy, but is rather down on his luck. Literally a starving artist. She says he’s a master at line drawings. She’s already bought two of his drawings, to help him out.”
Drawings. Kate’s heart skittered. She pictured the nude, the signature, first initial J.
“David, do you know Jed’s last name?” Kate asked.
“Hilliard, I believe. Yes, that’s it. Jed Hilliard.”
Kate was rocked by a full-body tremor. JH.
David took his seat, and Kate entered the cockpit. She heard Jenny offer him coffee. She and Charlie ran through the rest of their preflight checks. Kate had to pull herself together. Had the mystery of the drawing been solved?
Her hands were shaking. She knew she shouldn’t fly.
“Charlie, you want to take the controls today?”
“Sure,” he said, sounding happy. She rarely gave him the chance.
He called the tower, and they were cleared for takeoff.
Charlie began to taxi to the runway. He released the brake, but Kate barely noticed.
Her thoughts raced: Beth at the soup kitchen, JH drawing her nude.
The plane accelerated at roughly the same rate as her heart, gaining speed along five thousand feet of asphalt into liftoff.
Charlie banked left over Fishers Island Sound, giving David a good look at the island, then turned west.
The Citation X was a fast jet, powered by large Rolls-Royce engines, flying a mile in six seconds.
They landed in Cleveland less than two hours after takeoff.
The crew had four free hours before David would be ready to fly home.
Sometimes they hung out together, but Kate left them in the airport; all she could think about was Jed Hilliard.
She texted Lulu:
I figured out who JH is. CALL ME.
Then Scotty:
Did you know Beth had a friend named Jed?
Kate pulled the envelope from her shoulder bag and looked at the drawing again.
It was undeniably a fine piece of work, but she didn’t care about that.
Now that she knew the name of the artist, she looked for signs of what Beth had been feeling.
Had it been a romantic relationship? She stared at Beth’s pregnant belly—could everyone be wrong about Pete being the baby’s father?
No, it wasn’t possible. Her sister would never have cheated.
She would have talked to Kate if she even had feelings for someone else.
She needed to feel close to Beth, so she took a cab to the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Imposing and graceful, presiding over the Wade Oval, the neoclassical white marble building soothed her upon sight.
She had been here before, on past trips with David, and although she usually liked to visit the current exhibitions, today she went straight to an old favorite in the permanent collection.
A painting from Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series occupied an entire wall of the East Wing’s Impressionism gallery.
She took a seat on the wide bench and stared at it.
It had been painted at Giverny, during the last years of Monet’s life, when he’d stayed home creating massive paintings, triptychs of his beloved lily pond.
Viewing this panel brought back the trip to France.
It brought back Beth. Her breathing slowed as she stared at the painting.
The October before the gallery incident, their parents had taken the girls to New York.
They stayed at the Stanhope Hotel, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum and Central Park.
While their parents met with a collector on Park Avenue, Kate and Beth went to the park.
Kate skateboarded from the Obelisk down to Conservatory Water and around Bethesda Fountain while Beth ran along with her.
“Let’s go to the Met,” Beth said after an hour. “I’m cold.”
Kate was wearing a red wool hat and a navy-blue down jacket. Beth wore a camel-hair coat, but even so, Kate took off her jacket to put around her sister’s shoulders.
“Now you’ll be cold,” Beth said.
“Let’s head down to Poet’s Walk. You love the statues.”
“No, the museum,” Beth said.
“Aren’t you tired of art?” Kate said. “We have that at home. We’re in New York—do you really want to look at more paintings?”
Beth smiled.
Orange and yellow leaves carpeted the ground. The graceful statue Angel of the Waters rose from a pedestal in the circular pool, above the park benches and lake. Kate wanted to stay outside, watch people, and get a hot pretzel, but she couldn’t say no to her little sister.
Half an hour later, they were standing in front of a Renoir, a mother with two daughters in blue dresses. Kate had had to check her skateboard at the front door.
Kate shook her head, staring at the Renoir. “Impressionism is too pretty. It’s too easy. Let’s go look at Kandinsky.”
Beth had given her a look as if she had felt sorry for her. “Haven’t you ever listened to Mathilda? The Impressionists changed everything. The way they created light out of paint. One brushstroke, and it’s a red hat. Just like yours.”
“Yeah, well,” Kate had said.
Now, looking at the large canvas of Monet’s Water Lilies, Kate thought of how much Beth had loved this series—and Kate had to admit she did too.
Their feelings about art had changed after their mother’s death.
Kate had almost instantly needed the comfort and familiarity, warmth and light of Impressionism—not French but American, the work her family had collected.
Beth, in contrast, had decided that art had caused their mother’s death, and she never wanted to think about it again.
That hadn’t lasted long. Soon after their mother’s death, the two sisters had switched paths. Beth had become devoted to the idea of working at the gallery. She had lost herself in scholarship and paintings. To Kate, art was a pleasure to be abandoned, like everything else.
Had Beth met Jed Hilliard at the Academy or in New London?
His talent was unmistakable. Kate ached, wondering why Beth had never said a word about him, at least to her.
Had she talked about him to Lulu? Was that why Lulu had acted so strange when Kate had shown her the drawing?
She checked her phone—neither Lulu nor Scotty had texted back.
Kate stared at Water Lilies, getting lost in the wash of subtle color and shadows, passing the time until David’s meeting was finished, till they could fly home to Connecticut, until she could learn more about what Jed Hilliard had meant to her sister.