“You don’t have to. I just wish I could have known more sooner. And I wish I hadn’t said that about Luis. Whenever I saw him he gave me this feeling, like I always thought he was hiding something, but he must have been in the same boat as me. He must have seen them somehow and wondered what to do. Oh, that reminds me.” She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and held out a tarot card.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for another reading, Clara. I’m just going to stick to the here and now, I think. I want to rent a room somewhere here, see if I can show these paintings in town. Simple. Easy.”

“Just take it, okay? It’s the Moon. It stands for the part of yourself that is yet to emerge, for mystery and illusion. The version of events you can’t see just yet. It’s a reminder to connect with your subconscious, to trust yourself.”

I took the card and slid it into the cupholder. “Thanks, Clara. I’ll try my best.”

“You better.” A bus chugged up to the shelter.

“That’s me,” she said.

I leaned across the console to hug her, but I didn’t want to say a real goodbye. “Text me when you know what your plans are, okay?”

“I will,” she said. “Okay, better go.” She waved to me from the line, and her dark hair disappeared behind the tinted windows.

Even after the bus pulled away, I sat in the car for a few minutes, feeling like there was something I could be doing, but not sure what it was. I thumbed the card. It showed a round yellow moon above a pool of water, a curving path to the horizon, a dog and a wolf raising their heads to howl at the sky. What illusions was I hanging on to? What was the version of events, the story, that I had yet to see?

Maybe I should go back to the library, talk to Sue again. But she wouldn’t have anything new to tell me. I was still stuck on the idea she’d mentioned, that woman, the one who used to come looking for the photos. I wasn’t ready to give her up. Something about her was relevant, close to all this. And then I felt it, the knowledge dropped like a stone in my gut.

Luis. Clara had said she felt like Luis had been hiding something. Maybe she had been right about him, but not in the way she thought. It made perfect sense. The grandson. Quiet. Stuck to her side, watching. His last name was Silver. That big, swooping S at the bottom corners of the paintings.

Luis. Of course.