Lia laughed and wiped at the tears that had started down her cheeks. The mysterious threads of history contained in a Paris apartment were being woven back together, and Lia wanted to know more.

“My grandmother never talked about her time during the war,” she told Alina. “What she did. Who she loved.” Lia smiled and glanced up at Gabriel. “Would you tell me more? Anything you might remember?”

“Of course.” The woman smiled.

The overhead lights in the gallery had been dimmed, only the spotlights that caught each painting still bright.

Lia leaned back on the bench that had been placed in the center of the room and gazed at the woman painted in a swirl of angry scarlets and oranges, her arms still flung over her head, her hands still outstretched. Only now her stare didn’t seem as angry and accusing, merely defiant. A survivor instead of a victim.

“Alina doesn’t want to take the Degas dancers home.” Gabriel sat down beside her. His voice echoed strangely in the empty room, the exhibit crowds long gone, almost all the staff departing not long after. “She said it would be a shame to have them hidden in a room again. She’d like them to remain part of the exhibit. She’s inquired about museum loans after that.”

“What about the rest of the collection?”

“She can’t for certain say what belonged to her family. Though I have a last name now, which might help determine which pieces are rightfully hers.”

Lia sighed. “What am I to do with the paintings in the meantime?”

“What you’ve already done.” He put an arm over her shoulder. “Share them with the world. And share the story of your grandmère along with it. Because both are extraordinary.”

“Yes.” Lia leaned into his warmth.

“When do you return to Seville?” he asked.

“I don’t.”

“But what about—”

“I didn’t take that job. I thought I’d stay here.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

“Because of the exhibit?”

“No.”

He was very still against her. “I see.”

“I hoped you would,” she whispered.

They sat like that for a long minute, neither moving, simply…together.

“I brought you something,” Gabriel said eventually, reaching behind him.

Lia straightened and turned as Gabriel placed a violin case in her lap. She stared at it for a moment before opening it. The Collin-Mézin gleamed under the single light above their head.

“I had it restrung and restored properly,” he told her.

“Why?”

“Because restoring things is kind of what I do.”

“No, I mean why are you giving this to me?”

“Because I’m rather tired of hiding things in the attics of Millbrook.”

“Ah. Yes, that seems to be a theme this evening.”

“Was that a thank-you, then?”

“Thank you. It’s beautiful. Shall I play it?”