Harper Albright cocked a gray brow at him. This was decidedly out of character, not at all like the easygoing man she knew. She could see he regretted the outburst immediately. The way he looked down at his shoes, the way he snuffled, annoyed with himself. The way he turned away, averted his face. And yet suddenly Harper wondered whether there might not be an awful logic to it too. An intuition struck her, and she wondered whether all his behavior might not make a terrible kind of sense. Behind her glasses, under her broad-brimmed hat, her eyes narrowed. She frowned again, more deeply.

“Anyway,” said Storm in a low, embarrassed tone, “like I told you, we mostly talked about art. She’s real smart, she knows a lot about art, and that’s what we mostly talked about.”

He was now moving back towards her, along the row of photos on the wall to Harper’s right. Harper studied his profile, noble brow to heroic nose to cleft chin. She saw for the first time—admitted for the first time that she saw—the new sallowness of his cheeks, the new weariness in his eyes. The way he massaged his left arm from time to time and nursed it. But she pushed her instinct down. She wasn’t ready to accept it yet. She drew a breath and launched into him again as if nothing had occurred to her.

“What about the coincidence then? You approached her just as she was standing before that painting …”

“What coincidence?” He was still irritated. “I followed her. There’s no coincidence.”

“Yes, so she went to great lengths to convince you. There’s no coincidence, she said—and that was the other time she touched the brooch. Suggesting that the reason she dropped her glass when you read ‘Black Annie,’ and the reason she was upset by that painting, and the reason she is contemplating suicide …”

“She’s not contemplating suicide, Harper. For Christ’s sake.”

“… are all connected with the circumstances of her mother’s death.”

“You’re driving me crazy,” he said, jutting his face at one photograph after another as he came back towards her. “The whole thing was just a mistake. She just happened to drop her glass. The picture just happened to look like the story. There’s no coincidence. There’s probably no such thing as coincidence. I read that once. It’s just some sort of mathematical deal where stuff sort of falls together and everyone thinks it’s this big synchronicity thing and the whole business just doesn’t exist. Hey, who the hell is Iago?” “Ah,” Harper Albright said.

He had stopped—he had pulled up short—in front of the photograph just beside the torch. Its glazing was alive with shadows in the flutter and flare of the flames. His face caught the reflected glow as he stared.