Even her art-making process had been bad. She remembered what it was like to not be sure if a drawing was going to “turn out.” She’d sit down with a clothing catalog or a photograph of a model pulled up on her father’s laptop. Then she’d sharpen her pencil and think, I hope this works. She’d fuss over the likeness for hours. Hours! She couldn’t even imagine now how she’d been spending all that time. What took her so long on a casual pencil sketch? She remembered agonizing over the eye placement, over the puzzling shape at the corner of a mouth, the absolute purgatory that was a woman’s chin, but she didn’t remember why such things had been confusing.

Her head knew what it wanted to do. Why did her hand disobey? Noses veered petulantly. Rib cages went barrel-shaped, feet and hands turned into a four-piece mismatched tool set. She remembered actually howling in frustration as she wadded up an attempt. Stabbing canvases with scissors. Hurling paint tubes across J. H. Hennessy’s studio.

She remembered how when she did turn up with a good result, she’d return to it several times over the course of the day, taking it out again and again to flush with pleasure and surprise and accomplishment. She had no idea why it had gone well and so she couldn’t be sure it would ever happen again.

Hennessy remembered this, but she didn’t feel it. Somehow all the pain hadn’t managed to carry through the years. No part of her expected to fail when she sat down at a canvas now. She knew how the paint would behave. She knew what her brushes were capable of. No part of her doubted that whatever she was looking at would travel through her eyes, down her arms, and out onto the blank space before her.

Once, one of her clients had asked her if she considered herself a prodigy. They’d been standing in front of a Cassatt she’d forged for him.

“No,” Hennessy had said. “I’m a forgery of a prodigy.”

But she knew she was good. No amount of thinking about how bad she used to be would change that. She might suck at everything else about being a human and a dreamer, but as an art forger—she might not be the best, but she was at least one of the best.

That accomplishment seemed pointless now. There was no one to show it to who mattered. They were all dead.

All except for Jordan, who had always mattered the most anyway. But where was she now?

“I am so fucking good at this,” Ronan said.