“Where is it?” I asked, more to myself than Edgar.

“Where’s what?”

“Nighthawks.”

“Huh?”

“It’s missing. Nighthawks is missing.” I pointed at the wall, which now featured a painting of the Harlem jazz scene by Archibald Motley.

“Same painting’s been in that same spot long as I can remember,” Edgar told me with a shrug.

I shook my head. “No, this isn’t right.”

I looked around the gallery and found a museum docent on the far wall. I went up to her and asked, “Where’s Nighthawks?”

She gave me a polite smile. “Nighthawks? You mean the Edward Hopper painting?”

“Yes, where is it?”

“I don’t know, sir. I assume probably the Whitney or MoMA in New York.”

“Is it on tour?”

“I really have no idea.”

“It’s supposed to be here,” I insisted. “Right on that wall.”

“Here at the Art Institute?” she said with surprise. “No, I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. You must be thinking of a different painting. We’ve never had Nighthawks on display here.”

“What are you talking about? Daniel Rich acquired it from Hopper himself in 1942. It’s been here ever since.”

“Daniel Catton Rich? The former museum director? Mr. Rich died in 1941, sir. He was killed in a traffic accident here in Chicago.”

I turned away from the docent and bumped into the people around me. I rubbed the dampness on my face; this was sweat, not rain. A tingling went up and down my skin like the fingers of a ghost. I came up next to Edgar again and found myself staring at Motley’s painting, but all I could see in my head was Nighthawks. The lonely people at the diner. The empty city street. I could remember every brushstroke.

This was all wrong.

This wasn’t how the world was supposed to be.

“Edgar, I have to go. Can you get back home by yourself?”

“I can with twenty bucks for a hot dog and a beer.”

I dove into my wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill, which I pressed into his hand. Then I turned and retraced my steps through the pulsing museum crowd. Their overlapping voices made a deafening noise in my head, like the crash of a waterfall. I stumbled down the grand staircase and made my way out the doors onto the museum steps. Rain continued to flood from the sky, even harder than before, its impact as painful as pellets of hail. The black sky made it practically night. Traffic came and went on Michigan Avenue with lights on, horns honking, spray kicking up from the tires. People huddled under the overhang and ran through the downpour.

I needed to find Eve Brier.

Then I saw that she had already found me.