“Everything in between is a journey,” her muse tells her. “A journey that can be documented and even held for a time, but never truly owned. Truth lies only in the vision that called up the creation and the memory of it that one takes away after it has been experienced, colored by each person’s individual life experience. No two people are the same, so no two people can remember it in the same way. Art is reborn each time a new individual experiences it.”
“Like life,” the artist says.
“Like life,” her muse agrees.
The story moved Alan every time he read it, for it seemed to echo in its few short pages all the contradictions that had made up Kathy’s life. Everyone had loved her, but no one had seen her in quite the same way. And no one had seen the dark currents that underlaid her life, no one had understood that her stories were as much a cry for help for herself as they were a source of hope for so many of her readers. He hadn’t fully understood those dark currents himself until he’d read the journal.
Over the past year, most of Alan’s ghosts had been laid to rest, but working on the book with Isabelle and Marisa as he had, Kathy had never been far from his thoughts. Tonight she was closer than ever.
She should have been here, he thought as he and Marisa took out a couple of boxes from the trunk of his car. She should have been here not only to celebrate the launch of this book and the culmination of her dream for an arts court for street kids, but because she had deserved better than what she’d gotten.
She’d deserved happiness. She’d deserved to live. If only one of her friends could have seen through the mask she presented to the world ...
That was what hurt the most, he’d realized. Unlike Isabelle, he’d accepted her death as a suicide from the start, but he’d never understood why she had killed herself until he’d read the journal. All she’d wanted was amnesia. All she’d wanted to do was to forget. He couldn’t imagine the life she’d lived, the dichotomy between who she seemed to be and the world inside her head, filled with the horrible memories she’d carried with her for all those years until she finally simply couldn’t bear to remember them anymore.
Marisa touched his arm. When he turned to look at her, he saw that she understood what was going through his head.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “But I can’t stop thinking about how unfair it is that she’s not here. I can’t stop missing her.”
“I never got the chance to meet her,” Marisa said, “but I find myself missing her, too. Especially tonight.”
She gave him a hug that Alan returned gratefully. Among all the things he’d learned and had to work through over this past year, discovering how much he loved her, and she him, was one of the few things he didn’t regret.
He closed the trunk of the car and hefted the box of books that they were going to sell at the opening. The box that Marisa was carrying held their give-aways: illustrated bookmarks and pins. They paused by the side of the car, looking up at the building that the advance money from the paperback sale of the omnibus had allowed Kathy’s estate to buy.
The arts court was an odd, square-shaped box of a building, situated just a few blocks over from the Newford Children’s Foundation. It had gone through many incarnations since it was first built in the thirties, housing any number of commercial ventures over the years, but this would be the first time the building harbored a nonprofit organization. Alan only hoped they’d have more luck than all those failing businesses had before them.
They’d been working for months to get ready for tonight and Alan couldn’t have done it without Isabelle’s help. Not only had she donated all her advance from the book, as well as the money from the sale of most of the original paintings she’d done to illustrate it, but she’d also overseen the renovation and design and was going to be responsible for the dayto-day running of the place.
She had a modest apartment on the third floor that she shared with Cosette and her cat Rubens, dividing her time between it and her home on Wren Island, though Alan couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent more than a weekend on the island. The other two floors were divided into various open-concept workplaces for every sort of visual art one could imagine. There was even a large room set aside on the second floor which doubled as both library and work area for would-be writers.
Alan couldn’t believe the difference, inside and out, between when they’d bought the place a few short months ago and tonight. The zigzagging iron fire escape remained, running from the ground up to the roof, and most of the original brickwork, but the windows had all been enlarged and modernized, a porch had been added out back, landscaping had been done—most of the labor and supplies provided by friends, members of the Lower Crowsea arts community and the kids themselves for whom all the work was being done. July and Sophie had painted the huge sign above the front door that proudly proclaimed the building’s new identity.
“Shall we?” Marisa asked, indicating the front door.
Alan smiled. “Right.”
He and Marisa had thought they were arriving early, but when they opened the front door it was to step into an open-house party that seemed to have been in progress for hours. Geordie Riddell had put together a pickup band for the evening and they were already set up in one corner of the largest ground-floor room, playing up a storm. Everywhere Alan looked he spotted familiar faces—friends from the area, artists and musicians and writers, counselors from the Foundation and, of course, the street kids. Some of them looked bored and sullen and he couldn’t tell if they were simply uncomfortable with all the attention or if that was how they really felt. Dark currents, he thought, hoping that once the arts court got going it would help to dispel some of those shadows. More of the kids seemed to be literally vibrating with excitement.
He led the way through the crowd to the table where they were going to set up their display for the book. They had their first customer as Alan was still stacking up the books.
“Looks good.”
Alan lifted his head and was surprised to see Roger Davis standing there in front of the display table.
He hadn’t seen the detective since they’d finally cleared their way through the confusion and accusations that had followed on the heels of last year’s events in the Tombs. Davis looked different, and it wasn’t just that he was dressed in chinos and a workshirt with a windbreaker overtop. There was a friendliness in his features that Alan had never seen before.
“You seem surprised to see me here.”
“I guess I am.”
“Yeah, well we’re real proud of what you’re trying to do here. Mike—my partner?” Alan nodded, remembering the man. “Mike and I took up a collection at the precinct and we raised almost twelve hundred bucks. Even the Loot kicked in.” Davis pulled an envelope from the pocket of his windbreaker.
“I’ve got the check for you right here.”
Alan accepted the envelope. “I ... I don’t know what to say.”
“‘Thanks’ works for me,” Davis said, smiling.
“Of course. Thank you.”
“So this is the new book,” Davis said, picking up a copy. “I never did get around to reading anything by her. How much’re they going for?”
“Please,” Alan said. “I’d like you to have a copy.”
“The money you make from these gets kicked back into this place, right?”
Alan nodded.
“Then I’m buying my copy,” Davis said, reaching into his hip pocket for his wallet. “And don’t give me any argument, or I’ll run you in.”
Alan glanced past the detective and caught a glimpse of Isabelle standing by the refreshment tables, talking to Jilly and Rolanda. She felt his gaze and looked up, smiling when she saw Davis pulling out his wallet, a copy of the omnibus in hand. Alan returned his attention to Davis.