Chapter 37
It’s three a.m. and I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes my dead mother is there.
Standing beside Dr. Rice, head tilted hard to the right as she watches me.
This leads me to the horrible memory of finding her at the bottom of our staircase, in that skirt I had never seen before.
The subsequent cresting grief and panic inside me won’t relent, and I try to visualize a breath ball.
It’s useless. I can’t lie in bed a moment longer.
Wyatt sleeps soundly as I creep out of our bedroom.
First, I go to the kitchen for a glass of water, adding one of my electrolyte packets.
I stir the mixture with my finger and head back up the stairs, tiptoeing past my bedroom and Clementine’s.
The moon is nearly full, and it glows through the window adjacent to my studio’s door, illuminating a rectangular patch of light on the landing.
Typing in my code to unlock the door, I cringe as the alarm pad beeps loudly three times, granting me entry.
Slipping inside, I turn on the lights and then squint with the sudden brightness. My watch buzzes. Switch to red-light filter for optimal circadian rhythm management? I touch the ignore button, the bright lights remaining as they are. I won’t be going back to sleep tonight.
Blinking to help my eyes adjust, I look at the painting, which remains covered on my workbench. A chill moves through me, goose bumps rising across my arms. There’s a cardigan hanging on the back of the door, and I slide it on before sitting down at my desk.
I sip my electrolyte water as my personal tablet comes to life, and then take a notebook and pen from inside the desk’s drawer.
Normally I’d use my GIA-issued tablet, but I don’t want a digital trail for this search.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for, or what I’ll find, but I have the sense I’ll want to keep it to myself.
Welcome back, Tilly! A search bar appears below the greeting message, and a virtual keyboard lights up under the tablet. Setting my hands on the lit-up keys on my desk’s top, I start typing. “Margot Milton, Painting Conservator, Toronto, Canada.”
A list of hits runs along the side of the screen, with another search box popping up in the center to help narrow the findings.
For a moment my fingers pause on the keys, my chest tight.
Then I type, “The Child + Charlotte Leclerc.” Six references are highlighted along the side, and I touch the first one.
It’s an announcement of The Child’s procurement, which I’ve seen before.
The details are limited, and the collector is mentioned as “an anonymous admirer of Leclerc’s art.
” I close it, then scan the next few references.
A website link for the Art Gallery of Ontario.
A HoloLex—the modern version of Wikipedia—page on Charlotte Leclerc, with optional hologram features if you have the technology at home (we don’t).
That article by the journalist from a few years back, with the teaser headline…
A Terrible Fate Was Coming My Way. The fifth reference is blocked, a red-bordered box popping up when I click it, asking for an Advanced EduNet passcode.
This article is behind a security wall, meaning it can’t be viewed by the general public.
The screen is fuzzed out for privacy, so I can’t even read the synopsis.
I hesitate, as entering my GIA code will automatically flag a connection to Charlotte Leclerc. I was given strict instructions to keep the nature of this conservation private, the signed NDA top of mind.
I decide it’s worth the risk. After all, who’s going to go looking through my search history? Raoul knows what I’m working on, and I can’t imagine anyone else bothering to check. I enter my password, and the screen comes into focus.
Charlotte Leclerc: Tragic Character or Avant-Garde Artist? The Child, a Conservation. By Margot Milton, Principal Conservator—Paintings, Art Gallery of Ontario
It’s my mother’s presentation. The one she was working on the day she died and never had the chance to deliver in person.
I can’t believe this is the first time I’m seeing it.
Then I check the upload date—only a month ago, for a CAC conference session about some of the museum’s most enigmatic artists and projects.
That explains why it wasn’t in the package I received from Cecil when I started my conservation.
I race through the presentation, which is verbatim and many pages long. I’m breathless by the time I reach the end. Then I reread her closing paragraph, and a shiver moves through me.
I’ve learned three things.
One, The Child was as disturbing and curious a piece of art as the one currently in my studio.
Two, my mother was deeply affected by this particular conservation, noting how Charlotte Leclerc “wormed into my subconsciousness, whether or not I was actively working on the piece, and at times made me question where her brush ended and mine began.”
Three, while it was her self-professed “project of dreams,” my mother posed a final question in her presentation, and reading it now makes my blood run cold.
“When we restore art—breathing new life into the brushstrokes, colors, shapes, and textures—a conservator must ask: have we also brought the artist herself back from the dead?”