Everyone knew who Jesse Jameson Williams was. The name instantly transported me to one of the rooms in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Four years ago now. No, five. I’d been seventeen on a high school trip. My classmates had been ready to leave the museum, but I’d wanted to stay, smitten by the contemporary art, so I hid in the restroom while my class headed out of the building. I didn’t know or care where they were going. I knew I’d get in trouble, but I would deal with that later. So I was alone when I saw my first Jesse Jameson Williams. The painting quite literally stole my breath, and I lowered myself to the sole bench in the gallery to study it. The Look, it was called. It was a tall painting, six feet at least, and quite narrow. A man and woman dressed in black evening clothes stood back-to-back against a glittery silver background, their bodies so close it was impossible to separate his black jacket from her black dress. They were both brown skinned, though the woman was several shades darker than the man. His eyes were downcast, as if the man were trying to look behind himself at the woman, but her eyes were wide open, looking out at the viewer—at me—as though she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be in the painting at all. As though she might be saying, Help me. When I could breathe again, I searched the walls for more of Jesse Jameson Williams’s work and found several pieces. Then, in the museum shop, I paged through a coffee table book of his paintings, wishing I could afford its seventy-five-dollar price tag.

“He’s one of my favorite artists,” I answered Lisa.

“Ah.” For the first time, Lisa smiled, or nearly so, anyway. “That’s very good to hear, because he has a lot to do with my proposal.”

“I don’t understand,” I said again. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” I’d read about his death in the paper in the prison library. He’d been ninety-five and had certainly led a productive life, yet I’d still felt a wave of loss wash over me when I read the news.

“He died in January,” Lisa said, then added, “Jesse Williams was my father.”

“Really!” I sat up straighter.

“For the last twenty-five years of his life, he dedicated himself to helping young artists,” Lisa said.

I nodded. I’d read about his charitable work.

“Artists he thought had promise but were having a hard time with school or family or maybe just heading down the wrong path.”

Was she talking about me? Could Jesse Williams have seen my work someplace and thought there was something promising in it, something that my professors had missed? “I remember reading about some teenaged boy he helped a few years ago,” I said. “I don’t know where I—”