The conversation turned back to the other things we shared. We had a lot in common: He was from rural Georgia, a hundred or so miles from where I grew up; we went to the same school; we knew a lot of the same people, or rather, I knew of the people he knew, which I freely admitted, which he understood because once upon a time, he’d been my age, too, and so on and so forth.

“I’m tucking in,” I announced, when the ache in my back screamed so loudly that I was reminded to go lie flat on my bed. “Thanks again for letting me use Carey’s studio. It means a lot.”

“Don’t thank us. It’s truly fine,” he said. “She wouldn’t have cared.”

“Really?” I asked, incredulous.

To my surprise, he gave me a real answer. “No. Other people didn’t matter to her. She was kind of a dangerous person, but she had a real aura to her, a sort of unreality that was kind of magically pervasive.” The words poured out of him with a sudden rapidity. He didn’t sound angry—but he didn’t sound wistful, either. “Like you said, she was the center of attention without ever doing anything. You got the feeling that anything could happen when she was around,” he continued. “And in retrospect, whatever happened, happened because she made it happen.” Jack shrugged, turning his book over and over in his hands, staring out at the water. Then he shook his head and opened his book. “Anyway. Nice talking to you.”

“You too,” I said. “See you around.”

I went home to my bungalow with his description of selfish, magic Carey Logan burning a little hole in the back of my brain, feeling, for the first time, jealousy curdling around the edges. Carey had all of this—and she walked away, onto a stage and then into the water, like it was nothing.

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

When the backings and their lattices were done, I’d made it to the starting block. It was time to paint. No more setup, no more fucking around. I was back in the art of my business.

The twenty-four panels were arranged adjacent to each other in long stripes: four panels across, six up, wide, roomy aisles between. Each stripe was its own row: Humility was first, closest to the door. Then Chastity, Modesty, Temperance, Purity, and finally Obedience lay blank and open below the steps to the hayloft. In a few weeks, I’d move Prudence in here, too, once she was firm enough to transport, and then they’d all be together again.