I returned to the studio, threading my way through my paintings, sitting on the steps. I did not speak. After a moment they gathered at my feet like guilty little children, looking up to me as though I was supposed to mete out their punishment and forgive their sins.

“What is the A/B vote?” I asked, my voice steady.

“A is, we tell,” Jes said. She was the strongest. “We go ahead and tell; we tell the gallery, we tell collectors, we tell anyone who will listen. B is, we wait and see how long it takes to come out, and we take that chance that it never will. Tyler and I have been on the A side. Marlin and Jack are B.”

“The problem with A,” Marlin interrupted, “is that we’re talking about at least a hundred counts of fraud in the first degree. The artworks themselves are products of a fraud, subject to state and federal charges, based on the transaction. We didn’t commit tax fraud—we took all the money through a company called Carey Magnolia Logan and paid her out through that—but we did take in over three and a half million dollars from Carey Logan. We filed a fake birth record and death certificate with the county; that’s a federal crime. Criminal charges would put us in jail, and civil lawsuits could come from any collector. All it takes is for one single piece to decline in value, and then we’re getting sued. This lawsuit alone has cost us thirty thousand dollars to defend and we haven’t even met with the judge yet. Plan A is asking to lose everything in exchange for peace of mind.”

“The problem with B,” Tyler responded, “is that if we simply wait, someone will unravel this. DROP OUT will undeniably raise the price of the other work. With B, we are raising the price of our own eventual suffering.”

“With B, there’s a good chance that nobody ever figures anything out,” Jack reminded him. “They haven’t so far. Why would they?”

“She did,” Tyler and Marlin and Jes said in unison, looking at me.

“What would Carey have wanted?” I asked.

“Carey’s not real,” the four of them said in chorus. I wondered how many times they’d repeated that to each other.

“Sorry. I’m still getting used to it. Maria, I mean. What would Maria have wanted?”

“Maria was not an artist,” Jack said harshly. “She was only a performer.”