“Whatever,” he said, one corner of his mouth pulling back, fingers waving dismissively. He thought I was an amateur. “Good luck.”

With that, he drove off, gravel spitting out from behind the station wagon as he careened up the service road and around the bend. A cloud of dust swirled up as his bumper disappeared from view—and I was left all alone in the broken-down utopia that I’d spent so many years dreaming about.

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

The first thing I did was open a seltzer. The second thing was to pick up the cracked brown plastic phone and call Cady.

“You made it!” she squealed. “WHAT IS IT LIKE?”

“It’s completely empty and it’s super shitty.”

“Huh. Somehow I thought it would be, like, a resort, still. You get a welcome drink and your bed is already made.”

“I know. It’s the opposite. There’s not even a bed. I’m sleeping in a hammock tonight.”

“Who’s there?”

“Nobody. Tyler showed me in, and then he left again.”

“Is he still, like, the most gorgeous man?”

“He’s a jerk.”

“Do you think he’s the reason?”

“Reason for what?”

“That Carey killed herself. That’s what everybody says. That he broke up with her when she stopped making sculptures, and then did nothing while she slid into some massive depression.”

“Oh God.” I turned and looked through the windows at the black lake. Clean white crests rose again, and again, over the glittering onyx of the basin. “That’s mean, Cady.” I remembered how he treated Carey that night on Grand Street, with so much joyful tenderness. I stretched the phone cord over my finger, wrapping it around and around.

“You never know,” Cady continued. “They had a crazy relationship. My old assistant Bennie said they were super manipulative, both of them, when she helped install that last sculpture show.”

“Everybody’s manipulative,” I countered. “Bennie is twenty-six. She has the emotional range of a mynah bird.”

Cady laughed. “People get depressed, you know. I’m depressed.”

“No you’re not,” Atticus shouted. “You’re hungover.”

“I think—I think it has something to do with her switch to performance. I do,” I said. “Susan Bricklings-Young said she thought something happened to her when she switched. Something bad.”

“Susan Bricklings-Young,” Cady said piously, “thinks that any artist who doesn’t want to make a salable object is clinically insane. She has told me that exact thing on multiple occasions. Susan was probably just complaining.”

“Ugh, I know. I thought that too, when Susan said it,” I admitted, unwrapping the cord from my finger. “But—still. There was no reason for Carey to stop making sculpture.”

“Maybe she got sick of it.” Cady sighed. “It looked like hard work.”

“Who gets sick of the only thing they’re good at?”

“Everybody but you, apparently. What’s the studio like?”