I was heartsick for both of them. And I was mad.

After Bram and his grandfather had left Sunday morning, I read another chapter from the little green book to settle my mind. Instead, I cried like a child over Vincent’s death. His death and Violet’s melded together in my mind, and I grieved all over again, as if their passing had only just happened.

Then there was Bram Sr.’s revelation, a tornado itself, swirling through my hurricane of emotions. I spent the rest of the day anger cleaning, with small breaks to answer Diya’s pre-auction questions. I left the business to her and ripped the house apart. But I found no hint of the identity of the man who’d hurt Violet in the library.

I had plenty of fury left over for Monday. I stripped off the old curtains and bagged them for the garbage.

Bram Sr.’s words played over and over in my head. I wasn’t surprised that Violet never reported the assault. In 1965, she’d been at the beginning of her career. If she’d made an accusation, she would have been disbelieved, blamed. Those had been the times.

Hell, those were the times still.

I ripped the last set of velvet bedroom curtains off their rod and sent them to the floor with a satisfying thud. “There.”

I climbed down. The Phantom’s lair no longer looked like the Phantom’s lair. Without their heavy cover, the two south-facing windows bathed the room in light, the space almost as bright as the studio on the top floor.

I dragged the heavy curtains to the top of the stairs and tossed them to the landing below, burning off my frustration with hard work. Classical music filtered through the studio door above. Strena had models up there again. I left them to their practice and stomped back to the bedroom to see what needed to be tackled next.

Newspaper cutouts and pictures covered the floor. “Aw, dammit.”

I must have knocked over the hatbox with the stupid curtains.

I opened the window to let out the dust that danced around me in the air, then I carefully sat in the middle of the mess and picked up the closest photo, Violet’s old cherry-red Mustang convertible.

A pigeon landed on the windowsill.

“I don’t have a crumb of food in here. Shoo.”

He stayed where he was and stared at me.

I went back to the photos while keeping an eye on him.

Violet accepting an award. Then a picture of people I didn’t know. Then a picture of Violet at thirty-something, at what might have been opening night at a gallery, dancing with a dashing man. I’d put him under obsessive scrutiny the day before already, but I had no way of telling if the man was THE man.