“So why no trial?” I asked.

“He’ll be long gone before that ever happens.”

“Isn’t he wearing one of those ankle things?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s paid someone to wear it for him by now. He has money hidden in accounts all over the world. He’ll simply disappear.”

“At least all his stolen paintings were returned.”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s something.”

We were both quiet.

I wanted to tell her how much I cared for her, ask if she’d ever cared for me, but I didn’t say either, afraid to hear her answer. Instead, I asked, “How’s your mother doing?”

Alex took a moment. “She’s why I did it… You know that?”

I nodded. I had figured that out.

“My fath—Baine, threatened to put her in a dreadful state facility, and…” She took a breath, held it a moment. “It doesn’t excuse anything, I know that. But everything Baine paid me I put in an account for her care. I’ve prepaid the facility for the next two years, which is something. After that…well, I have time to figure it out.”

“That’s great,” I said, and she nodded, running a finger under the chain that held her locket, a thin gold line against her cream-colored skin, like the painting I’d been making of her.

“So why Verde?” I asked.

“It’s my mother’s maiden name. My father left when I was a kid. There was no reason to use his—” She stopped, then softly, “Look, I have to say it. I’m sorry, Luke. For everything. I never thought, never imagined—”

I was sorry too and said so. I had rehearsed this moment a dozen times, the things I wanted to say, but they no longer seemed to matter, and sorry was enough.

Alex nodded, brightened a bit, asked what else was going on with me, and though I was a lot less interested in talking about myself, I wanted to keep her there, so I told her I was painting again and how different the work was from what I’d been doing before. “I’ve even had a few dealers over, and one of them is interested in giving me a show when I get a body of work together, which may take a while but—”

“You see,” she said. “I told you once that you had nothing to worry about, that you’d get another gallery, remember?”

I said I did and remembered thinking that even then, she seemed to believe in me and how much it had meant to me. “I think I asked if you were a witch.”

“No comment,” she said but smiled and said she was happy I was painting again.

I told her how I felt I was onto something new and how I just wanted to keep painting and see where it led. She leaned in, and I could see she was really listening. I wanted to tell her everything about my new paintings because I wanted her to respect me, to be proud of me, something I’d never had when I was young and had worked so hard to get and had almost lost. I thought of Peruggia, how Simone had believed in him and his art when no one else did, and how, when she died, she had taken that belief with her, and the loss had driven him to lie and steal.