She looked up briefly and met Alejandro’s eyes. Memories passed between them, blurry images in his mind of that day he could hardly recall from sickness, but would never forget, either. Being cradled in Jesse’s arms when the building exploded, the way it hurt his ears, bodies pressed on top of him for safety, the hospital, when they told him about Makayla.

“You were there, weren’t you?”

“It’s something I don’t really speak of,” Evann said. And for all her showmanship around The Artist, for all her expertise and knowledge, she never did. She and Alejandro had, a few times, spoken of that day. But never, ever like this. Never for others, and never for show or sale.

Alejandro’s eyes looked up to the final piece now. It was huge, taking up most of the wall it stood against. The piece was scarred, destroyed entirely in many places. After the explosion, Evann and her father had hired art preservationists to pick through the wreckage of the building, drawing out what remained, slowly piecing it back together. He remembered the day that he and Evann had been called to see the finished product. It looked much as it did then, but that day, her larger hand had slipped over his smaller one, and they had both wept.

“How was anyone ever sure it was his last?” the woman asked. “With the chaos in the city then, couldn’t more have gone up unnoticed?”

Evann smiled, and this time it was not her perfect, yet insincere version. Alejandro could tell the conversation was making her emotional, and he began quietly to move closer toward her.

“No, he never painted again, we’re sure of that. I believe—everyone believes, who I’ve spoken to about the time—that when he saw what happened, when his reaction to the beauty of what had happened in that building became what it became . . . everyone believes that at that moment, he lost the hope that had propelled the art in the first place. It was certainly his last piece.”

Alejandro stepped next to her then, and reached out to take one of her hands firmly in his. His other hand moved into the pocket of his coat, to touch the ancient phone he carried there.

“My brother, Alejandro,” Evann said, by way of introduction. She kissed him lightly and with obvious happiness on his cheek.

“But the hope was there,” Alejandro said, even though no one had asked him, even though he knew it wasn’t exactly his place. “It existed. And that is why this art existed, and still exists.”

“Are you a collector, too, dear?” the woman asked.

Alejandro smiled, not to be put off. “I’m a doctor.”

The older woman smiled, her eyes crinkling behind her cat-eye glasses. “Perhaps a different kind of expert.”