I gave her the rest of the story in the most straightforward way I could muster, and it still felt muddled and strange. The first piece I saw at the show was a single canvas tacked to the wall, unframed, ragged at the edges. There was a streak of green paint at the top and several more below it, seven in total. The first six streaks were various greens: pine, emerald, bottle-green, seafoam. Someone had penciled letters next to each stripe. R, R, R, R, R, R, and M. The last streak, marked with the M, had much more yellow than the others, more of a chartreuse. In the next room, I saw a painting on the wall: a girl curled up in a wing chair, wearing a dress that was the same color as the last slash of green on the canvas. She was looking across the room at something, unaware of the viewer. It was a well-executed painting but restrained compared to Ramona’s newer work, mannered and too careful. Not good enough to be shown with Matthew’s sculptures, and not what I had expected from her at all.

In the next room: one of Matthew’s sculptures, small for him, delicate even. Oh no, I had thought. What had happened? He always called that kind of work timid. More like toymaking than art. A placard on the wall said The Flame. As far as I could tell it was abstract, made from peels of metal welded into a fan shape. I tried to read the negative space but nothing emerged for me. People around me were nodding. What? I wanted to ask. What did they see that I couldn’t? Around the corner, another small sculpture. It had the fluidity of Matthew’s larger works—it was called The Idea, and it looked to me like smoke—but again, the scale was disappointing. A photographer came around the corner and took my photo, and for a moment the brightness of his flashbulb left stars in my eyes. I saw that photo run somewhere else later, I couldn’t remember where, but my eyebrows were knit together, like a disapproving schoolmarm’s.

Temporary walls sectioned off the warehouse space. They were genius for building tension, having the viewer wind through that maze; meaning, wholeness felt just around the corner, but all I could feel was frustration. Matthew told me once that I was his muse, but I had yet to see myself in any of his pieces. I wondered what Ramona was up to, too, going behind my back to Philip Louis, or to Matthew, or however it had happened. I pulled out my phone and texted her.

Why didn’t you talk to me about this???

I rounded the next corner and was shocked to see, mounted on the brick wall, a photograph of Ramona and me, blown up very large, five by four feet.