Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
R ose woke up at five thirty the following morning to seven missed calls from Sean. She shot up and stared at the phone to read:
PLEASE CALL ME BACK ASAP. I don’t care what time.
Did he mean that? It was difficult to tell. But Rose’s phone was already against her ear, and she was listening to Sean’s brrring. She imagined it vibrating next to his pillow, wherever he slept.
Suddenly, she imagined herself in bed beside him, listening to the sound of his breath.
Stop. There’s so much else to think about.
It was chilly outside and black and sorrowful. It was hard to believe that she and the Salt Sisters had had a barbecue at the Grayson Estate just last night.
She needed to start calling it the Carlson Estate in her mind. She’d taken her maiden name back immediately after her divorce. It suited her—even if her family back in Mississippi didn’t. It certainly suited her far more than Grayson had. Rose Grayson now sounded so foreign to her, like a language she’d once been able to speak that had filtered out of her memory.
Sean answered the phone on the third ring. He didn’t sound groggy. “Rose,” he said without saying hello. “I can’t believe it. We found your sculpture.”
Rose’s heart slammed against her rib cage. Before she knew it, she was out of bed, her free hand in a fist. “You what? How? Where?”
Sean sputtered. “That’s the strangest part of all. We used artificial intelligence technology to scan through thousands upon thousands of art auctions and online art fairs. It flagged an upcoming auction in Manhattan. I checked the photograph. It’s yours. It has to be. But it’s credited to another artist. Here, I’ll send you a link.”
Rose’s blood boiled. She opened the link Sean sent to see a photograph of her gorgeous sculpture, the piece she’d spent so much of the year immersed in. On the auction website, it read:
You’re invited to the party of the year. August 30th, 2024. Twenty-five iconic pieces of art will be sold at auction. Tickets are five grand to enter.
Rose’s eyes widened with shock. “Five grand to enter?”
“It’s for the Manhattan elite,” Sean said.
“What do the Manhattan elite want with my sculpture?” she demanded. “I mean, don’t they already have enough art? Enough Manhattan-based artists? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Sean seemed stunned with silence.
Suddenly, all Rose wanted was to tell him to come over, hold her hand, and tell her what to do.
But she didn’t want a man to “save her.” Not anymore.
Rose pulled the phone away from her ear and clicked through the website a bit more. Who were these people? How had they gotten her sculpture?
That was when she spotted who was throwing the event in the first place.
“Sean,” she breathed into the phone. Tears filled her eyes. “Sean, I don’t know what to make of this.”
Sean sputtered. “What? What’s going on?”
“Sean, it’s the Waldens.”
Sean was silent for a moment. “Remind me who they are again?’
“Mr. and Mrs. Walden,” Rose said. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “They hired me to babysit their children thirty-one years ago. They’re throwing the party. They’re auctioning off my sculpture!”
Sean was speechless. Rose walked to the window and opened it wider to inhale salty sea air. The world was spinning too fast. She thought she might faint.
Why do the Waldens have my sculpture? Are they trying to punish me for something? Is Mrs. Walden finally going to get revenge for my departure?
Sean’s voice came through the phone. “When was the last time you saw them?”
Rose’s heart thudded. The memory dropped down from the sky. “It must have been 2001 or 2002,” she said. “I was in Manhattan with Oren.”
What Rose didn’t say was That was right after my final miscarriage. That was right after I fully gave up trying to get pregnant.
“But that was years ago,” Rose breathed.
Suddenly, an idea smacked Rose over the head. Oren is involved in this.
Oren is the one who took my sculpture.
She wasn’t sure why it was suddenly so startlingly clear.
But Oren was probably aware that she’d recently bought the Grayson Estate. He probably wanted to mess with her. He probably wanted to keep her from digging through his things.
It’s a warning, she thought.
“I can get a warrant immediately,” Sean said over the phone. “We can be in Manhattan by this afternoon.”
“No,” Rose said.
Sean took a breath. “What do you mean?”
“I want to do this differently.”
Sean sighed. She imagined he was thinking: She has no idea how police work operates. She’s in over her head. She’s arrogant.
But maybe because Sean was a kind and considerate man, he took a deep breath and asked, “What did you have in mind?”
Rose pinched her lips together. A plan formulated in her mind. Could she trust Sean with her idea? Then again, who else could she trust?
“I’ll tell you,” Rose said, “but you have to promise to keep an open mind.”
“I promise,” Sean said. “Whatever it is, I’ll help you. As long as it isn’t a crime.”
Rose set to work late in the morning on her strategy. At the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a bunch of jitters in her stomach, she dialed the phone number for Mrs. Walden’s philanthropic organization. Mrs. Walden began the organization in the late 2000s to donate funds to lower-class neighborhoods in greater New York City. Rose knew it was also a way for the Waldens to expense their cash. Nothing the wealthy did was ever selfless.
A secretary answered. “Thank you for calling The Walden Group. How can I help you?”
Rose put on her brightest and shiniest voice. “Hello! My name is Brenda Sparrow. I’m the portraitist hired to paint Mrs. Walden. Would you mind passing me through to her office phone? I recently purchased a new phone and unfortunately lost all of my contacts.”
“Mrs. Walden isn’t in today,” the receptionist said, “but I’d be happy to pass along her number.”
It was too easy.
Within a minute, Rose had Mrs. Walden’s personal cell phone number. She didn’t hesitate and called immediately. But Mrs. Walden wasn’t the sort of woman who answered calls from numbers she didn’t recognize. This left Rose with the terrifying decision of whether to leave a voicemail.
She decided to go for it. What else could she possibly lose?
“Mrs. Walden,” Rose said, her voice musical, “my name is Brenda Sparrow. I’m a professional painter of portraits of the Manhattan elite—those I feel make a true difference in our iconic city. A friend of yours recently mentioned you as a potential candidate for my project. The paintings will be featured in an exhibit at the MOMA later this year. Please call me back and let me know if you’d be interested in sitting for your portrait. We’d love to include you in the exhibition, but time is limited.”
Rose hung up and winced. She’d said “a friend of yours” without mentioning a name. It was fishy. It was risky. Why would Mrs. Walden trust a strange message like this?
But Mrs. Walden herself called before noon.
“Brenda Sparrow!” Mrs. Walden’s voice soared. “You’d like me to sit for a portrait for the MOMA? What a sensational idea.”
Rose’s heart thrashed. It was too easy to manipulate a rich person. You just had to tell them how important they were. Just as important as royalty.
Mrs. Walden didn’t even ask who’d recommended her.
After all these years, hearing Mrs. Walden’s voice sent a chill through Rose’s spine. It made her feel twenty-one again and fresh-faced from Mississippi, hopeful for a future she didn’t know how to build.
It didn’t surprise her that Mrs. Walden didn’t recognize her voice in return. Probably, Mrs. Walden hadn’t thought about her at all in years.
But why does she have my sculpture? Did Oren give it to her? Did Oren himself sneak into the house?
Questions spun in her mind.
Rose felt outside of her body as she secured a time to paint Mrs. Walden’s portrait for August 25th, just five days before the party where her sculpture was set to be auctioned off.
“I’m looking forward to meeting you,” Mrs. Walden sang over the phone. “I’ve always wanted to sit for my portrait. It’s finally time.”
Rose called Sean back and explained when she was needed in Manhattan. “But I told her we’d meet in my studio,” she said after a dramatic pause. “Which means I need to head to the city immediately and rent one!”
Sean laughed. “You’re a regular con artist. ”
“I grew up thinking these rich folks could walk all over me if they wanted to,” Rose said softly, tugging at her hair. “I’ll never be one of them. Not really. But I’m going to march in there and prove myself to them. I’m going to march out with my sculpture.”
“If only you could carry it,” Sean said with a soft laugh.
“It makes things difficult,” Rose agreed. “But we’ll manage it.”
“We will.”
The Salt Sisters were not pleased with Rose’s plan. They begged her to be careful; they begged her not to go.
Hilary called as they drove to the ferry and opened the conversation with, “Just send Sean! He’ll arrest them!”
“They’re too wealthy,” Rose explained. “They’ll slip through my fingers. An alias allows me to see them for who they really are without giving myself away. And I need to figure out what really happened with Natalie. If I get deep enough, maybe I can get someone to confess something. I don’t know.”
“Just be careful,” Hilary begged. “We want you back home as soon as possible.”
Rose and Sean drove to Manhattan, stopping frequently for cups of coffee or little snacks from the gas station. The air sizzled with their anxious energy. It was hard to believe Sean had agreed to come with Rose already—a full week before the event where her sculpture was set to be auctioned off. But Sean insisted it was all a part of the investigation. He’d even cleared it with his boss at the station.
Sean parked his car and hauled their suitcases upstairs to the hotel they’d rented for the week. It was just three blocks away from the studio Rose hoped would be hers for the portrait and just five blocks from where Mr. and Mrs. Walden would host their party the following Friday.
Rose and Sean had rented separate hotel rooms. The receptionist gave them a curious smile as though she wanted to ask them what their story was . Weren’t they a couple? But of course, that was just Rose projecting.
It was only three thirty. Rose had an appointment with the true owner of the art studio at five, which gave her and Sean a bit of time to relax in their separate rooms. Rose collapsed on the cloud-like bed and spread her arms and legs out as far as they could go. The air-conditioning was on high, and she felt chilly after sweating during the walk from the car. The August humidity was killer in the city. It was the reason so many people left during August. But she knew the Waldens were having this party at the end of August as a way to welcome so many people back for the beginning of autumn. School was set to begin. Real life plodded ahead.
The studio was exactly what Rose had envisioned for her “trap.” The ceilings were fifteen feet tall with windows that nearly stretched all the way from top to bottom, and there were easels and primed canvases everywhere. Paint was flung into all corners, and paintings she could pretend were hers hung at strange angles. She’d already primed a canvas for her portrait of Mrs. Walden. She set that up on an easel, then positioned her paints and brushes on the table beside it. She was so immersed in her vision that she almost forgot Sean was still with her.
When she turned back, she found him smiling softly and watching her.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” she said. “I got carried away.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Sean said. “I’ve just never seen you at work before.”
“By contrast, I always see you when you’re working,” she said.
It was the nature of their relationship, after all. She’d called. He’d come to help.
“I want to take tonight off,” Sean admitted, palming the back of his neck. “What do you think about that?”
Rose raised her chin. A flush ran through her. This is his way of asking me out.
She knew it in her bones. She knew it as clearly as she knew Oren had something to do with her stolen sculpture.
“I think I’d like that,” Rose said.
They went out to a French restaurant that evening and ordered escargot—which Sean had never enjoyed nor even thought to order. Rose showed him how to eat them properly; she refilled his glasses of wine; she laughed at his jokes and little stories. By the end of the evening, their hands were interlaced over the table, and they were gazing into one another’s eyes.
It was eleven thirty at night. They’d already been at the restaurant for four hours. Only one other couple remained, and they were looking at their phones, ignoring one another.
It was as though the magic of the restaurant was only for Rose and Sean.
“I wish I could take back what happened all those years ago,” Rose breathed. “I wish I would have gone out with you instead of him.”
Sean raised his shoulders as though to say it is what it is.
But Rose got out of her chair and pressed her lips against his. Her heart raced; her ears rang. His hand found the divot between her neck and her shoulder, and his thumb traced her collarbone. It surprised her. His touch was wonderfully tender.
When their kiss broke, their eyes were swollen and filled with tears.
It was clear to both of them that they wouldn’t need two hotel rooms. Not tonight. Not for the rest of the week.
Rose thought, I’ve never fallen in love as an adult before. Not really.
It’s better than I ever could have imagined.