I swallowed hard and cranked up the wattage on my smile. “I really appreciate that. You won’t regret it. I have some ideas about—”

“I’m dying to hear them,” Ayala said, holding up a hand. “Truly. But first, the official tour.”

AFTER AYALA HAD LED ME through the permanent collection and the new exhibitions, she stopped in front of a gallery blocked off with plain gray screens. A small black sign was posted to it, reading GALLERY CLOSED.

“I have exciting news,” she said dramatically. “You’ve heard of Irina Venn, I presume?”

“Of course. I was volunteering at MoMA when they hosted Missed Calls—that exhibit of hers with all the deconstructed phones?”

“Yes, yes.” She nodded encouragingly. “What did you think of it?”

“I think she’s fucking brilliant.”

Ayala paused, her head cocked slightly to the side like a cat who’s just spotted a bird, and my stomach plummeted. You moron, I chastised myself. Way to drop an f-bomb in front of your new boss within the first hour on the job. Überprofessional. My fingers itched to reach for that Xanax, but I kept them at my side and my face as blasé as possible. Pretend you’ve done nothing wrong. Be as if.

She broke into a sudden, toothy grin. “Then you’re going to love this.”

She swept one section of the screen aside and slipped behind it, beckoning me to follow her.

“Here it is,” she said reverently, cheeks flushed as she gazed around the dimly lit room. “The future home of the newest Irina Venn installation.”

I looked around to see a gallery still under construction, with no signage or labels of any kind. A number of pedestals had been erected in the room, and glass-encased dioramas stood atop several of them. At first glance, it reminded me of the miniature rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. My family had taken a trip to Chicago when I was in elementary school, and I had been captivated by those rooms’ lush details. Back home, I had “curated” my own collection of miniature rooms by assembling doll furniture in a series of shoeboxes, an “exhibit” that lasted until Maggie demanded to know why her meticulously arranged dollhouse had been ransacked.

“Dollhouses?” I guessed.

“In a sense,” Ayala said, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth. “Come with me.”

She strode to the far end of the gallery and gestured to one of the final dioramas. At her urging, I peered inside. Unlike the pristine rooms in the Art Institute’s collection, this one featured a little bed with rumpled sheets, tiny cosmetics bottles strewn across a miniature vanity, and a doll-sized dress hanging off the back of a diminutive chair.

“It’s—” I started.

Then I noticed the dark red stain on the furry rug, coming from underneath the bed. I tilted my head to get a better view. Beneath the tiny bed, I spotted something pale and …

I jumped back, surprised.

Ayala laughed. “Meet Rosalind.”

“Is Rosalind … dead?” I asked, my skin breaking out in gooseflesh as I leaned forward again to examine the bloody doll.