Chapter 26
“Are you sure?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
I’m on a call with Dr. Ruth-Anne Torrance, GIA’s conservation scientist. Most people don’t understand how much science is involved in art conservation.
How many compounds need to be analyzed from original artworks.
Along with the expected art history or fine arts expertise, this work necessitates knowledge of chemistry, plus a desire to solve complex puzzles.
“I’m sure,” Ruth-Anne says.
“So, it’s cerebrospinal fluid. But…how?” How can this painting, burned beyond recognition, not to mention decades old, be leaking a liquid? Let alone human cerebrospinal fluid? It makes no logical sense.
“I don’t have a reasonable scientific explanation for you, Tilly,” Ruth-Anne replies. “But science doesn’t always have an answer.”
“That’s true,” I murmur, thinking about Cecil and what his take might be.
“But here’s the other nutty thing,” Ruth-Anne continues. “The tissue sample you sent in?”
“Yeah?” I snap out of my reverie, now thinking about that slice of tendril. As is standard, the sample was permanently cast in a polyester resin, which was then ground and polished for analysis.
“It’s connective tissue, from a human nerve bundle. A piece of the palmar branch of the median nerve, according to my analysis.”
“The median nerve?”
“It’s one of the main nerves in your arm,” Ruth-Anne says. “Runs from the forearm to the hand and provides sensation to the palm and up the thumb.”
Bile rises; a memory of the dismembered hand from my nightmare, painting with blood, loads into my mind. The tendril-like strands that hung limply from the wrist…I swallow hard, forcing the image to retreat.
Former Leclerc paintings have revealed fingernails, eyelashes, blood, skin cells…
but a human nerve branch? Where did she get it?
And equally puzzling…why did she use it in this painting?
Incorporating an element like this would be especially challenging—paint can be finicky, and materials don’t always play well together.
“The artist was an adult, right?” Ruth-Anne asks.
“Yes,” I reply, my voice unsteady. “Probably around forty.”
“Then this nerve isn’t hers,” she says. “Too many neurons. Probably a child, under twelve according to KIRBI.”
KIRBI stands for Knowledge Integration and Retrieval for Biological Inference, a specialized AI tool for analyzing and inferring biological data. It’s used frequently in medical and scientific settings, though rarely in our industry. Unless you’re restoring a Leclerc, that is.
“A child?” My voice cracks, my mind spinning.
“Yup,” Ruth-Anne says. “I don’t need to tell you this, but obviously this wasn’t an accidental inclusion. You don’t just wake up one morning and say, ‘I know what this painting needs—a human nerve bundle!’ It’s pretty morbid, truly.”
The dead speak through their paintings, Mathilde. The back of my neck prickles, goose bumps rising on my arms. My watch buzzes a notification, and the creepy-crawly feeling escalates.
“I’d better let you go, but thanks for rushing this,” I say.
“Happy to help,” Ruth-Anne says. “I’ve filed the samples here, unless you want them returned?”
“That’s fine. Thanks again. I appreciate both your speed and discretion.”
My fingers tremble as we hang up. I shake them out, trying to prepare for my next meeting, which is in ten minutes. I’m not looking forward to this one.
—
The MotherWise tattoo technician uses an alcohol swab to clean the inside of my forearm, resting on the kitchen table between us.
There’s a rush of coolness, which increases when he fans the area with his gloved hand.
I look away, toward the glassed-in vertical garden on the other side of the kitchen.
There are newly blooming squash blossoms, a pretty bright yellow color.
Earlier, Shelby mentioned wanting to batter and fry them up for dinner—I’ll trim them after this is over.
I’m not distracting myself with thoughts of deep-fried squash blossoms because needles bother me.
They don’t. But I remain prickly about the soon-to-be tattooed tracker, and my turned-away glance is one of annoyed acceptance.
However, the technician—young, long hair gathered in a bun at the nape of his neck, a name tag that reads Alex R.
—clearly interprets it as squeamishness.
“How are you with needles, Mrs. Crewson?” He’s getting the tracker tattoo ready, opening packages and laying things out on a sterilized pad.
“Fine,” I reply. “No problem at all. I’ve had many.”
I turn back to watch the procedure, proving I am, in fact, fine with needles.
“Okay, great! You’ll only feel a minor prick, then a touch of warmth, then all done.
It’s highly tolerable.” Alex sure is enthusiastic, or enthusiastically following a training manual he’s memorized.
I wonder how he knows that it’s “highly tolerable” and how he can declare that with such confidence.
I’m confident Alex here has never had a MotherWise tracker tattooed under his skin.
“Good to know.” I glance at my disinfected forearm; the spotlight from Alex’s headband light shines a pale blue circle the size of a quarter onto my skin. This marks the spot for the tattoo, he tells me.
Alex puts on his glasses, tapping the right arm. A green light illuminates near where he’s tapped. “If you could relax your hand, Mrs. Crewson, that would be fantastic.”
It’s not intentional, but my hand has clenched into a tight fist. I release it slowly, watching the tendons and ligaments move under my skin.
I know that with the glasses on, Alex can see right through my skin to the structures underneath.
I consider asking to try them on, the glasses, so I can see what he’s seeing.
I think back to my conversation with Ruth-Anne.
To the piece of a child’s nerve bundle I sampled from the painting.
Asking myself, again, Where did Charlotte Leclerc get a palmar median nerve bundle?
A crazy—truly, insane—answer comes instantly to mind: She harvested it from her own daughter, after she died.
I nearly laugh at how absurd and impossible that would be.
But then…Charlotte Leclerc was a renowned surgeon at the time her daughter died.
She had privileges at the hospital, and maybe, somehow, obtained access to her daughter’s body.
I let the story take shape. Perhaps it was a professional kindness extended her way, granting her privacy to sit with her child alone in the morgue, post autopsy.
All she would have had to do was ask the right person.
Dr. Leclerc also had the skill to remove a nerve branch from a corpse, her scalpel working with quiet efficiency, the body bloodless by then.
Half-mad with grief, maybe Charlotte Leclerc did something no one else could understand.
Is it possible? I wonder. I want to call Ruth-Anne back, to find out if she can narrow the age window of the nerve. Could it be from a, say, five-year-old?
I’m distracted from my thoughts by Alex, who is re-swabbing my arm with another alcohol pad. It’s unnecessary, which tells me he’s nervous, despite his steady hands and all-seeing med-tech glasses. “So, how many weeks along are you, Mrs. Crewson?”
Small talk. I’m unsure if he’s trying to distract me or himself. “Almost fourteen.”
“You must be excited. Your husband too,” he says.
I nod. “We are.”
He picks up the tattooing device. It looks like a steel ballpoint pen with two flat ends. He clicks something on the bottom of the device and a trio of quarter-inch needles pops up.
“See?” Alex says, showing me the needles. “Super tiny, right?”
If you connect the dots these needles will make on my skin, you’ll get a triangular shape.
“As promised,” I reply.
Alex smiles, and with another click on the device the needles retreat.
“All set?” he asks, looking up at me. The headband’s light hits my eyes, and I squint against the glare.
“Ready whenever you are.” I watch the blue circle reappear on my forearm, about two inches from my wrist crease. He sets the needle end of the device onto my skin, double-checks the parameters to ensure the circle lines up, then says, “Take a deep breath, Mrs. Crewson. One, two…three!”
On three he clicks the end and there’s pressure and a mild stab into my skin, like I’ve brushed against the stinging barbs of a plant. Then a brief flush of warmth to the area before he removes the device.
“That’s it?” It was fast, like Kat said it would be. Like Alex himself promised.
“That’s it!” He smiles and nods before setting a white bandage over the area.
After giving me instructions to remove the bandage the next morning, and to call if there are any issues, like ongoing pain or redness, Alex packs up and heads off to his next appointment.
As soon as he leaves, I remove the bandage, holding my arm up to the light and moving it back and forth to see how noticeable the tattoo is.
It’s the same color as my skin, the three triangulated dots only visible because of a sheer, glossy finish and the lingering redness.
They look like dots of the white glue we used in elementary school, which dried clear.
There’s an uncomfortable ache in my forearm that reminds me of when I’ve gripped a paintbrush or solvent swab too long.
But after I clench and unclench my fist a few times, the ache dissipates.
“Highly tolerable,” I murmur, gently pressing my fingertip into each of the glossy dots.
Under my finger on the last dot I feel something: a barely there pulsing; it’s quick, like a fetus’s heartbeat.
Then a voice fills the empty room—childlike, seemingly coming from upstairs.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Mathilde. ”
I hold still, barely breathing. When I raise my eyes from the tattoo to the staircase, I tense but there’s nothing there. The faint pulsing under my finger continues as I watch the stairs, eyes watering the longer I refuse to blink.
It’s a reaction to the procedure, I tell myself, finally removing my finger from the still-faintly-pulsing dot. Your inner voice, acknowledging your apprehensions about getting the tattoo.
“I did what I had to do,” I say, out loud to my empty kitchen.
There’s no response, and the quiet stretches on.