Janis’s words hung in the air. My last day at the gallery? Then what?

“I’m going to show Ray’s interview transcripts to a few people. Probably the video, too,” said Janis, seeing the disbelief on my face. “Look, LAAC is by and large a marvelous place. I want it to thrive. Being here today makes me lean away from the public exposé. I’d rather use peer pressure through the right channels first. If the board gets wind that Hal protected one student at a horrendous price to another, especially a young woman of Brenae’s background, they’ll have to investigate. Hal will get distracted. These museum plans will be put on hold, and the damage won’t happen to LAAC. It will happen to Hal. That’s better in the long run.”

Was it? I didn’t think so. I looked at Ray for support. He ran a hand down his lapel.

“What you’re saying is that you want to do this gradually,” he said to Janis. “Say the board doesn’t respond. We still—”

“They’ll respond,” Janis said curtly. “This is a scandal.”

My purse weighed heavy on my shoulder. Maybe Janis would take down Hal, but she wasn’t standing up for Brenae, for her story. Her full, real story, written in flesh and blood.

“I’ll find you later,” Ray said, giving me a loaded look.

“Sure,” I said, but I didn’t keep the anger from my voice.

Janis checked her watch. “And don’t worry about the new museum, Maggie,” she said warmly. “To Hal and Steve, it’s business and glamour. To me, it’s family. I won’t let them win.”

JANIS’S DRIVER PLAYED SOFT PAKISTANI music and kept to himself, which was fine with me. I pulled the silver DVD from my purse and stared at it, wondering what it contained. What had Hal said? It was footage of people leaving parties. He’d rejected it for being trite and uninteresting. But Brenae had stowed it in the LAAC library, perhaps because she wanted to belong to LAAC history. Now that I’d seen her vacant studio, once soaked in her blood, now that I’d heard even Janis Rocque giving up on her, I realized how inexorably Brenae’s history could be wiped away.