“There’s a long tradition of it,” Jordan said. “So you’re in good company. John White Alexander isn’t what I would have imagined you’d want, though. Not with your style.”

Sherry looked around the room. “Oh, this is Donald’s style. I got to do the library and bedroom, he got the living room and the dining area. We divided the territories in the peace accord.”

“Oh, I see,” Jordan said as Sherry led the kids into a library. It was far more what she would have expected for a client requesting John White Alexander, a traditional and mannered contemporary of John Singer Sargent. There were dark floor-to-ceiling bookcases and an ornate, hulking desk holding up a Tiffany lamp. Fiddly bronzes were tucked into alcoves; the rug was a hand-knotted number so shabby that it must have cost a fortune. There was a gap in the shelves just the right size for a Jordan Hennessy take on John Alexander White.

“This is very handsome,” Jordan said.

“Thank you,” Sherry replied, but she was examining her phone with annoyance. “I’m sorry to spend your time like this, but it looks like the nanny’s not checking her phone. She wasn’t even supposed to be here today, but there was a mix-up, so I told her to stay on, and of course she took the kids out on a walk. I’m going to have to go catch up with her before she takes them to the aquarium or something. Do you have a minute? Help yourself to coffee—I just put a pot on. Follow your nose … the kitchen’s just over there.”

Once they were alone, they immediately went to get coffee. The kitchen was beautiful and unused except for the gadgets on the counter: coffee machine. Blender. Bread maker.

“This coffee is hairy,” Matthew complained.

“It’s fancy,” Jordan said.

“Everything’s fancy here. What’s that lady mean about her painting? Why does she think the painting’s bad before it already started?”

“Oh, ’cause it’s not an original,” Jordan explained, opening and closing every drawer and cabinet in the room. “Because she doesn’t want me, you see? She wants John White Alexander, but he’s very dead, which isn’t good for business. So she’s got me, and she wants me to put her li’l daughter in one of his paintings.”

Sherry had hired Jordan through fairly ordinary word of mouth to do one of her least sexy but most common forgeries: historical pieces redone with the faces replaced with clients’. Sherry’s was at least a tasteful request, her young daughter done in the same style as Alexander’s elegant Repose or Alethea, two pieces subtle enough to look like homages rather than out-and-out gimmicks. Jordan tried to avoid painting clients into the Birth of Venus these days.

“Like Photoshop,” Matthew said. “Oh, gosh, oh, no, that sounded mean, I didn’t—”